They tell you that things that are worth doing are hard. But how can something that is supposed to happen feel this much like getting torn limb from limb, shaken apart on an atomic level? It all leaves me with this general sense of wanting to run away, leave everything behind me, and not look back. Be the bird I'm getting tattooed on my wrist after Christmas or the butterfly whose wing I'm buying myself a necklace of (both to remind me that when people hurt me, I have the ability and the right and the responsibility to fly away). And then I'm reminded, that that was what I was doing when I came here. I was running away from complicated and into the great blue yonder...and then life happened. I became a person, and the people around me wouldn't submit to being the scenery in my epic adventure, but stubbornly insisted on being people themselves. And anywhere people are people together, life happens and things get complicated.
I'm hurting more than I can say right now. Maybe that's selfish, maybe life's not supposed to be about me, and maybe that's my whole problem, but knowing those things doesn't make the hurting go away. One boss is treating me like I'm already gone, the other like I'm a wasted investment. My coworkers are talking about each other behind their backs, which only leaves me to wonder what they say when I walk out of the room.
And then I get through women's Bible study and ask the friend for a ride home, which turns (halfway against my will) into grabbing dinner along the way and communal griping about our days and our jobs and it's a rough environment. A playfully abusive one. It isn't healing or comfort. It isn't recharging. It's draining. And then I get home after my family has gone to bed and it's too quiet, which is almost easier than getting home when everybody's still up and bustling and I can't figure out to save my life where I fit in with them anymore. And when I feel like one tightly compacted ball of pain and hurting, loosely contained by too-thin, easily-bruised skin, it's hard to enter into their conversations and their playing and their tv-watching; but when they ask what's wrong, I can't communicate, I can only complain, and so they don't understand. All Mom can say is "at least it's almost over." And I don't know how to make her understand that that's half of the problem, even if it's 100% of the solution. Quitting this job that has been my life, my waking and my sleeping and my eating and my breathing for three-hundred and twelve days (7,488 hours, 449,280 minutes, 26,956,800 seconds) is like quitting a drug. Is it what's best for me? Yes. Is it God's will for my life? I think so. Is it easy or walking on rainbows or fluffy bunnies? Um, no. It feels like lying and betrayal and cowardice and losing a vital organ and losing everything I've worked for. It feels like losing friends I love and kids I love and work I've let become a part of me and a world I've fought tooth and nail to become an integral part of and someone I legitimately care about, faults included. It feels like everything is upside-down-inside-out-backwards and I can't get my bearings.
I'm already gone from the place I have belonged for a year, even though I haven't gone anywhere yet. I don't feel like I belong yet or anymore in the place I have always been and have always been able to return to, until now. Doing the math, that adds up to a whopping zero places where I feel at home right now, and that's starting to really take its toll on me.
