Playing at Atlas

Fifteen months ago I was bearing an oppressive weight. Even thinking about it now makes me feel jumpy. It’s hard to write about that time in our life. Talk about paranoia—I think that for the rest of my life-- every time I think of those instances-- it will give me the “the other shoe is about to drop” feeling.

I would open my eyes in the dark of each morning, and the brunt force of that oppressive weight would smack down on me. I would scurry around, looking for ways to distract myself. Oftentimes I would be at work well before daylight.

I would come back home in the dark as well. You see, if I could keep busy I could distract myself. I wouldn’t have to think about it. I made myself sick with it.

Soon, however, work was no reprieve. It wasn’t that people were mean to me, or I was asked to do something I did not agree with. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the work load. It wasn’t even the fact that it was somewhat of a dead-end on the career advancement line.

Don’t lie. That bothered you too. You were given a lot of leeway at work, but you would never really advance beyond what you already were. Your growth was done. You felt disregarded, at the end. And if you couldn’t advance, how were you ever going to fix it?

I just could not make it stop. I did not have the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had the weight of my family’s existence. I was crumbling under the weight of our own existence. I was trying desperately to find a way for us to survive.

I was throwing Hail Mary’s like there was no tomorrow, because there really was no tomorrow. I brought the concept of creative household financing to a new level. I was crumbling. We all were. I caught myself chanting, in my inner dialogue, “Make it stop. Just be done,” WAY more than once.

My husband had closed his store, and there was no way I could help him come out of his sorrow. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t pay the bills by myself. I especially did not have money saved away for emergencies. Which did occur, like they always do. People were losing their jobs everywhere. My children, of course, picked up on the distress, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t help them feel better, because there really was no end in sight.
And then, last June, things started to change. The weight lifted slowly, but by January it was gone. I felt lost. It was a freedom I had not experienced in several months, maybe years. I WAS lost. When you have been operating under extreme circumstances, and molding your behavior to meet those needs, well, once that weight was gone, I did not know which way to go. I still don’t have a full idea about the direction I should be taking.

I know that, for us, this was the right choice, the right step. The next few steps are a bit hazy, however. The relief is that I do not have that oppressive weight any longer. Any yet…

In our circle of family and friends, we were the canary in the coal mine.

And now I do have the weight of the world on my shoulders, because we have family and friends going through the same situation. Unemployed, underemployed, only contract work, no insurance, just short of losing their homes, please, please, PLEASE don’t let the car break down!

You should be able to do something. You should be able to fix this. You’ve been through this, and you came out the other side—can’t you at least find something comforting to say? Was the whole experience for naught?

What do you say? It’s like the death of a friend’s child. You can say, “I’m sorry,” but that just isn’t enough to make the pain go away. You can even say something like, “It’s God’s will,” but really? Is it God’s will? Is it God’s will to have us suffer? And even if it is, does that utterance really bring comfort?
You can say that it will get better, but you just don’t know. It could get better, but when?

I want to say something; I want to do something, anything to fix this for our family and friends. I’ve got nothing. I feel hopeless, and I can feel the weights on each of our respective loved ones’ shoulders.

So I am doing what I know to do at this time. I am writing about it, because we all need to talk about it, and not in the way the talking heads on the news channels talk about it. I think many of us are afraid to talk about it, because it is embarrassing, because it is scary, because we don’t want to hear about other people’s problems when we have our own. Nevertheless- circling the economic drain is something many American families are doing right now/have been doing for two years/ will be doing soon if it really is a double-dip recession.

And we need to support each other. Be there for our family and friends. Help our communities as best we can. We need to at least talk about what is happening.