An Excerpt From A Day In My Life: A Written Realization

Something happened today that probably hasn’t happened to me a lot yet; a few times, yes, but my awareness has definitely awakened today. I realized how fast time was moving. I mean, I really recognized the time slipping away from me. Lately, I have had thoughts about my daughter looking so grown up these days, and I realized my son started kindergarten yesterday, and today he is almost in the fourth grade. How did this happen?

Along with those thoughts, I have also realized my parents getting frailer through these last few years. My mom’s health is starting to take a toll on her body, and my dad is still going out every day to work, but he is getting so exhausted now. That all is understandable, considering my mom is sixty-six with diabetes, and my dad is seventy-one and still works circles around some twenty-year-olds.

Then, there is me. I’m tired but feel guilty for even thinking that way. Yes, I do help all I can with my parents, as my children and I have been here living with them for quite a long time now. I do my best to help out in any way I can so my children and myself will not feel like burdens. I help financially. I do the chores. I help them keep up with their bills and banking by paying them online and making sure they don’t overspend. Neither one knows a thing about using a computer. If something goes haywire, and they get messed up on something, I make the calls and take care of the problem for them. My dad likes to say I’m his secretary.

So, I do that, and also take care of my kids and all their needs; take and pick them up from school, take them to extracurricular activities they are involved in, make sure when we have breaks from school we have some family fun, all the while, I try to keep up with my writing, and continue with another career course that I started recently. All this with extreme fatigue myself, because of having the most aggravating chronic illness I believe there is; hypothyroidism. Honestly, I can’t seem to find the correct way to manage it yet. Nevertheless, I have some hope; they have finally decided I need an endocrine specialist instead of just coming in for six-month check-ups to see if the medicine I’m taking is working. Hypothyroidism is more complicated than that. Those who have it or know someone that has it can relate, I’m sure.

However, all that I just spoke about is fine. It’s a somewhat normal life, except for being extremely lonely. I have no close friends around, nor do I want them, because I have no time. Even so, that does make for a lonely life, doesn’t it?

So, I'm sitting outside on the back porch today. All these things I realized were happening, knowing my parents will not be here forever, knowing my children will inevitably grow up soon to leave me as well, and knowing all I have dreamed about for years now, is life for myself after this life. Well, it may not happen for me. Time may not be on my side.

I think about my dream to travel to Tuscany a lot, and I can see myself living out my life there. The question that came to my mind today and made me cry was; will I ever have the financial stability and the opportunity to travel and live where I want to one day before I get too old and find myself still stuck right where I sit? I didn't feel confident at all that I would make it there in this lifetime.

I was sitting watching my cats, and the scary cat lady scenario came up in my thoughts, and I felt this overwhelming sense of being alone one day, just these cats and me. You know, precisely like several cruel people that I have met in life predicted I would be. Namely, the hag who stole my fiancé away after eight years of giving all I had, the sad excuse for a human that would call me up on Sunday mornings, just so she could remind me how pathetic I was, and how she ran the show now. I'm just saying…I have moved through so many cruel and unnecessary realities in this life. I sigh with exhaustion thinking about them.

If you don’t mind, I’m not going to go there today because this is really about the sad realization of how time is getting away from me and being alone without having all my ducks in a row yet. Seeing as I’m in my middle forties, it’s just scary. Life can change in a blink of an eye. You can be blindsided and cheated by people you’ve trusted and loved the most. You can find yourself starting over more times than anyone would want to; this is my circumstance from forty-four years of life so far.

How could this be my life? I ask myself this question all the time. How do I find strength to keep going, to keep a focus, to keep faith? Right at this moment, I really don’t know. All I do know is that I will keep hanging on by tying knots in my rope. And I will write poems to express my feelings, to share with others who will support me out of friendship not pity. Because I would like to make it very clear that I am not a constant pity party. I’m just one of the unlucky ones in life who always has to keep going and pray that when I am at the end of this life, that I will have finally found a peaceful contentment.

I realize I'm nobody

today. However, really,

I've known this anyway.

Why must I put myself

out, when all I've

ever gotten is a life

filled with doubt?

Who do I believe in

when I'm sitting with

these sad thoughts,

all alone?

I look up to the sky,

and out through the

trees, and my insides

want to scream "Jesus,

set me free!"

The turmoil I've had

to live with for so

many years; the

disappointing romances,

the failed life attempts.

I keep grasping at every

rope I can, and when one

breaks, I fall and fight

my way back up again.

I steadily try to shake off

all my doubts and fears, that

one day I will be left

all by myself here.

Day after day, I realize

my loneliness will

be the only one to

accompany me to

the grave after death.

Yes, one day, there

will be no more life

for me to try, and I

know the first question

I will ask God is WHY?