I Don't Know

I gave up on my personal life being my own anymore.  I tried desperately to figure out what would make any of this shit better.  I decided that I would try to improve my professional standing during all of this personal drama and applied for a position at work. I got an interview and my qualifications and work history recommended me for it so I thought I had a very good shot.  It seemed at the time that I managed to excel at my work because it was the only escape I had from the rest of my life.  After a nerve wracking interview and agonizing waiting, the job was given to someone that has a tenth of my experience and a twentieth of my professionalism but who was the proud owner of an Associate’s Degree.  A. Fucking. Associate’s. Degree.   I was beyond crestfallen. I felt so hopeless.  I had NEVER gone on an interview and not gotten the job.  I thought that this would be the springboard to freedom with a higher paying salary. I had already counted my money up from the raise.
 I’m trying to convey to you the desperation that led me to my next decision but it’s not working so I’ll just tell you, I decided to get my degree. 

Now my days went something like this. 

Get up at 5:30.

Get a shower

Get the kids up with some semblance of breakfast

Ensure that they made it on the bus

Wake whoever up that was going to take me to work that day

Or

Take the stinking ass truck to work and then it would be picked up later

Or

I would take my break or my lunch break to go and pick Tucker up so that he could drop me back off.

He wasn’t an early riser you see and his waking early was out of the question.

Work all day with numerous interruptions and phone calls to run to the bank, call the bank, look up directions and give them over the phone yadda yadda yadda.

Get off work at 5, wait for my ride

Change into barn clothes

Grab the kids

Go to barn, saddle horses, ride horses, unsaddle and groom, feed horses and calves after I’ve waited interminably for Tucker to get done roping with all the 1800 yahoos that he has out at the barn. 

Get everyone loaded and get home at roughly 9pm…cook supper…do dishes…do a load of laundry.

Get the kids bathed and in bed.

Go to bed and perform before I can go to sleep.

So tell me where the hell I thought I had time for college in all this?

I picked online college so that I could at least try and keep up. My newest incarnation of the brilliant plan included getting a degree so that I would not be passed over for any more promotions at work ….um just two long years later.  Wow.  I’m smart. In any case, it was part of my master plan.  I was never going to get ahead without a degree and it was time at 37 to figure out how to do it. 

I had one desktop computer in the living room I had to share with everyone but I still used it.  I started school. I did well. I mean of course I did.  Have you met me?  Even with the screaming kids and the TV blaring and having to cook supper and do dishes and laundry and feed horses and ride horses and haul feed and work full time and everything else.  I managed it.  I sort of blocked everything out except what I had to do and soldiered on day after day.  I was taking 2 classes every 5 ½ weeks.  It set a brutal pace with papers and tests and lectures and discussion groups and my resolve and doggedness began to slip. 

I started to just get sick all the time, my stomach hurt, I had colds, I was just ill.  I finally went to the doctor one day after I just couldn't function any longer.  My ears hurt, my stomach was heaving, I was congested and miserable.  I was weak and tired but couldn't sleep comfortably.  He told me I had an upper respiratory infection, two ear infections and very likely a stress induced ulcer.  He he sat me in comfy recliner in a darkened room after giving me a breathing treatment and had the nurse hook me up for a liter of IV fluids and some anti-nausea medicine. They tucked a warm blanket around me and said to call someone to come get me. I called Tucker and told him he’d have to wait awhile longer and then come in and get me when I was done.  He didn’t want to come inside.
You see Tucker could sell religion to the Pope or smooth talk you out of your panties, but he HATED groups of people or new situations. I should have let this be another warning.  He was a puss when it came to stuff like this and it showed his weakness.  Lots of people are shy or phobic but the fact that he refused to come into the doctor’s office to get me and get me to the truck alright showed how little he cared to overcome anything in order to see to my wellbeing. I have a fear of stepping anywhere outside my comfort zone but I slept in little better than a chair for most of a month by his side while he was in the hospital.  I talked to countless strangers and doctors and nurses and washed his ass when he couldn’t.  I went above and beyond to care for him and stepped way the fuck outside any comfort zone I had previously set for myself to do what he needed and demanded. I was a little pissed but the medicine they had given me was making me fuzzy and I had no comeback for him. I snapped my phone shut and just laid back.

The doctor came in and sat in a chair across from me.  Are you feeling a little better?” He looked genuinely concerned with his eyebrows all squinched together and I remember thinking I must really be sick because he looks anxious.

“I am, actually.” I pulled the blanket around me and said, “This is cozy and I feel relaxed and not puky anymore.”  He reached over and patted my hand and asked if anyone was out front that he could bring in to sit with me. I told him that my fiancée was in the parking lot and didn’t want to come in but that I’d go out to meet him when I was all done.

He asked why he was still in the parking lot and did he need to go out and get him. I sat up and said, “No. Just leave him be…he won’t come in here.”

He sat back in his chair as if literally taken aback and said, “Well then why is he your fiancée?”

All of everything in me that shouted and railed against everything I continued to let that man get away with cheered the good doctor at that moment. Why indeed?  Why was I letting my health, my mental health and my financial health be ruined by this excuse for a man? For the sake of money? For the sake of a clean getaway?

I looked at the good doctor then and blinked and blinked again and simply said, “I don’t know.”