The Better than Others Days

Stumbled across this today.

I realized recently that I've spend 5 months waiting for something else bad to happen. I'm waiting for someone else I know to die, waiting to get sick, waiting for something to break, waiting for life stresses to come in and take over...

• He died Tuesday.
• That evening and on Wednesday day, I had already shifted into "support others" mode driven, in part, by the fact that I had no say in anything...things that, as horrible as they were, I expected (granted - 50 years from now) that I would be solely responsible for.
• Thursday was the family viewing. Thursday, being driven home, we got pulled over.
• Friday was the funeral.
• Saturday the check engine light came on.
• Sunday I got pulled over for a broken headlight. 
• Monday his sweet girl went to the vet for peeing blood.
• Tuesday I had to take his ashes to another state. They were not mine to keep.

That was just 1 week: I wonder why I'm waiting for awful to continue? And a lot has happened since.

I'm really hoping for just moments - hours, afternoons, maybe a whole day? - where I'm taken care of. Where I don't have to figure out things for others, to drain my energy consoling another, to take care of things on my own, for someone to ask what I need instead of telling me what I should/shouldn't and after they ask to just listen - letting me trust them. 

I've had a few moments. They were awesome.

I don't want to be selfish. I want to be helpful to others. Sometimes my body and my heart and my mind have gone through a day or a week or a month(s) of being completely drained.

People say some days are better than others. Today is a better-than-others day. I used to call them "not awful" days. The pre-January Stephanie always searched for the silver lining. I haven't done so well with that recently. Maybe I just start calling days like today my new "good" days.

I realized yesterday, after a suggestion was made to me, that the gloom-and-doom comments I've been responding with - in completely honest fear of the other shoe dropping - maybe those are part of the reason that I'm not finding people available to be there when I do collapse.