Friday, July 6, 2012

Out of the Soil of my Mental Breakdown

Last weekend it finally happened: I had a mental breakdown from the stress of our living situation.  


The kiddo and I both got an upper respiratory infection on Friday and after trying to spend two days holed up in my bedroom with the world's crankiest almost-three-year-old I just finally lost it.  I spent at least 2 hours a day crying in the bathroom while so I wouldn't freak the kiddo out.  (Luckily she didn't seem to mind watching a lot of movies in my bed... she just wouldn't nap or eat or stop jumping on my head when I asked her to.)  Since we were sick that limited the places we could potentially have gone to escape the house and I basically just steeped in the misery of feeling like an interloper in my own home for a few hours too long and couldn't see my way out of the misery.  It's insanely hard to keep thinking to yourself, "God, it's just so disrespectful and rude that she won't stop smoking when she knows we're sick!  But is it also disrespectful and rude of me to begrudge her for it so much when this is her house and she is being more than generous in letting us stay here still?  Probably.  But it's my CHILD that I'm worried about... shouldn't she care too?" and not really have any resolution to that thought cycle.

I don't know what broke inside of me exactly there that I couldn't pull it together, but when I finally saw Andrew after he got off work on Sunday I told him that I felt like I had no control over our lives anymore and that I was just insanely miserable staying here and was considering trying to move into my parents' house for a while.  Sure, they might want to teach Sadie songs about Jesus and guilt trip me for not giving her a spiritual education, but I don't think that's too bad.  (We are all more comfortable with the "devil" we know, right?)  Plus at least my child's health wouldn't be permanently scarred by them.  Which is a HUGE bonus.  Anyway, he finally got the point that I wasn't just trying to complain about his mom's smoking - I was trying to talk to him about what else we could do since he's been applying for transfer positions for over a month and hasn't even had a call-back for an interview.  I even applied for a position in the Seattle Public Library for a full-time job that I feel I'm more than qualified for, even though I had hoped to not work for the next 3 semesters so that I could just finish my degree and get into a career position... but my desire to be out of the house vastly outweighs my desire to finish my degree by next year, so if I'm lucky enough to get an interview I fully intend to knock their socks off.

So, the actual update here is this: we are moving on to Seattle by the end of July.  We both found in our job hunts that the Seattle area have many, many more job opportunities than Oregon does, so our chances are infinitely better there.  (And I'm selfishly giddy here since I have several good friends and some family up there.)  Andrew has some paid time off saved up at his work so we're both going to keep hunting until that time and if we don't have anything by then we're just going to move anyway.  Andrew may end up coming back down here after his paid time off runs out and living here a bit more just so we can be sure to have insurance and an income, but that's going to be a last resort because I'm pretty sure Sadie would be beyond upset to have to live without Daddy with us for very long.  We figure that the Costco stores will have no choice but to take him seriously if he shows up in person regularly to ask about jobs, though, so at this point it's all or nothing.

We can do this.
We can do this.
WE can do this.  

4 comments:

  1. You CAN! And you'll love living up here. It's freaking awesome. :)

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  2. Abby, I smoke(as you know)... and I find it completely repugnant(and many other stronger words) that she smokes inside with your child present(sick or not). IF I smoked in my house, and a child was even visiting- my butt would be outside, and the house would be aired to the best of my ability before young guests arrived.

    Hang in there! I know you gotta manage, but don't lose sight of the fact that this is pretty f**ked up! You guys will get through this, and into a better situation.

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