Friends With Myself

I am feeling low today.  I get these ups and downs. I don't know why; perhaps it is the changes I am making or my age which insists on asserting itself with vision difficulties, aches and pains and unrelenting flashes of what might have been.

I have led a reasonably comfortable life.  There have been emotional and fiscal and physical ups and downs like everybody else's life.   I have been relatively content.  But the last few months, that contented feeling is being replaced with other feelings that I don't like much.

The job situation is "iffy" at best.  Come May, there might not be anything to think about except, "am I eligible for unemployment?".  My gut remains, in spite of my working out.  My basement?  Well, I am still waiting for the housekeeping elves to arrive.  Hubby took my car to get new tires put on it because I CAN'T STAND the guy he insists is the cheapest, or at least the employee of his I dealt with last time.  I refuse to go back. I am bored with cooking.  I want to play.  I want to take a day off when the weather permits.  I want to spend it with a friend to whom I owe no explanations of why I am playing hooky instead of working.   I desperately need a vacation, but with the job situation it had to be put on hold.  Apologies to my friends who were expecting me.

I was not born with a silver spoon, nor even silverplate.  We had enough of everything material, though my selfish nature could certainly have used more.  We had more love than we deserved, my sister and I, from a caring extended family.  Many of my childhood friends are friends still.  There was never any alcoholism or abuse to deal with.  There was never a push to succeed, either.

I've come to realize that even though my family was a wonderful one, they were not driven.  They  did not want to escape the mundane.  They were content living in the same house, working at the same job, wearing the same styles year after year.  I remember my aunt telling me not to marry Hubby because he "couldn't hold a job"; he  had had several different jobs in just a few years.  He was eighteen at the time.  My Dad, blessed man that he was, said I didn't need college or career, or even the '66 convertible  that I lusted after, only a man to take care of me.  Sheep that I was, I accepted it all as fact.

Suddenly, my children are grown.  I wonder aloud where the last forty years have gone.  Hubby and I know each other so well, it's as if I never need say a word, but he will know what I am thinking.  I have had several jobs, all of them satisfying for awhile.  It will be hard to get another, that piece of paper that says "BA" is lacking, but the birth certificate that reads "1951" is not.  I am uncomfortable in my own skin on some days.  I crave something new.

I think back to my high school days.  I remember all the promises to keep in touch and the people I could have befriended, but didn't.  Lately, those things have been at the front of my brain.  The more I try to think about today, the more I think about yesterday. 

Am I mentally ill?  No, I am not.  Am I depressed?  Occasionally.  Am I happy?  Most of the time.  Am I suicidal?  Never.  Do I have private thoughts I won't share?  Of course.  A very few trusted friends know some of my secrets.  Nobody knows them all.  I like it that way.

So as I sit here writing yet again, I realize that this essay is not at all what I had intended.  The script was supposed to be about forgotten friendships.  Maybe tomorrow.

Today I need to be friends with myself.