Necessary Roughness

I'm having an unpleasant day. I'd call it bad, but I can't stir myself to be that invested in it.

For some reason I have not yet quantified, I am not sleeping much or well...and for the last few nights, I have quietly wept myself to sleep. It's a nebulous thing, indefinable...a mid-grade unhappiness...combined with an overwhelming lonliness that's kept at bay during busy daylight hours, but late at night feels free to roam the gardens of my mind, planting the seeds of its strangler vine where it will...

Yesterday, my son got into an ant pile. He washed the ants off his feet with the hose and went back to playing, cool. Not cool were the pustulant welts on his feet this morning - The Boy is allergic to the bites, and one of them is swollen and oozing, black around the edges, and generally fairly horrible to look at. It'll heal...but it's nasty and painful and I hate that he has to suffer it.

I have a pulled muscle in my neck/shoulder/back/I may need an anatomy lesson to figure out that part, and it bothered me all night - every time I moved, it woke me, and I don't sleep very well as it is. I couldn't even tip my head back to rinse my hair in the shower yesterday, which made the job awkward. I have a tremendous lot of house cleaning to do, still, and it won't be easy when I keep getting checked up by "Ow, that motion hurts. Ow, reaching up or down like that is unpleasant. Ow, ow, ow..."

My son, for some unexplained reason, got out of his bed in the middle of the night, wandered into the living room, and fell asleep in the massive recliner that I loathe but sit in because I don't have a choice right now...and he wet himself during the night. I've cleaned it up as best I can, and I didn't yell at the little guy - how can I be mad at him when he tries so hard? I'm more concerned with what has him wandering about in the middle of the night.

One of the cats knocked over a 9/10 full large Coke from Burger King last night (yo, FTC, this is not an endorsement, it's a reference - I just want the reader to understand the size of the thing), splattering it all over the floor. I had a large, sticky mess to clean up when I got up this morning.

I'm not feeling mentally well. Lack of sleep, worry, stress, loneliness, plaguing dreams, the constant drag of cleaning a house that is too cluttered, needs painting and drywall patched and floors thoroughly swept and mopped and toys tidied away and furniture removed or moved and, and, and...it's wearing on me. Coupled with that is the constant fear that things will go wrong (don't ask me what things, I don't know what things...if I knew what things I could do something about the things, but I don't know what things so I'm lingering in thing purgatory).

I'd like to take The Boy to a movie, get out of the house, go do something fun...but I can't. I can't pay the phone bill right now (and if that gets turned off, so does the modem, which means good-bye Internet until I can pay to have it turned back on), let alone help support the Hollywood Entertainment Complex.

I'm feeling sorry for myself, and I don't like it. The depression is pecking away at me...

And...like the sun shining through the grey and gloom...

He calls.

For no other reason than He feels like it. Right in that moment when I was typing about depression pecking...the phone rang and it was Him, and I could hear the smile in His voice when I answered, surprised - it's not His lunch time, and He doesn't usually call me during the day, anyway...except when he does it just to surprise me and make me smile. Just when I was thinking I could really use hearing His voice...

I didn't tell him I'm feeling rough today...if we only have a few moments to talk, I want to hear Him, hear His voice and His happiness and His plans...and my mental state bores me, and I can't imagine why anyone else would want to know about it, too.

So I had that minute or two...and believe it or not, that will help get me through the rest of what is looking like a very long, distressing day full of little trials, necessary roughness that every life contains but that makes the sweetness all the...sweeter.