Grind

I watched a grist mill, once.  Powered by water, stone wheels turning, building shaking, gears and posts rattling, tremendous noise as much felt as heard.  The miller poured corn, the wheels turned, and out came the meal ready to use.

Relentless grinding turned whole kernels into dust.

I know that feeling.

It's Silly Season, holiday time, the time of year when advertising and social pressure tell us we must give gifts or we are bad people.

Consume!  They tell us.  Consume and spend and don't think about the debt or the damage you're doing to yourself by being part of this environment, just consume!

And if you can't buy, buy, buy?  You're worthless, useless, you don't love your family or your country.

Bullshit.

I'm tired.  Tired of being a mother, tired of being a lover, tired of being the friend no one really wants around because she's always fucking broke and can't go out and play, so she either has to be carried or plans have to change to accommodate her broke ass.

I am tried of being a burden, and this time of year exacerbates the feelings, multiplies them one-hundred fold.

There will be no tree at my house this year, second year in a row.  I can claim it's for practical reasons - there's the toddler to worry about, pulling on branches, yanking ornaments off, climbing the tree, tearing into gifts and the like - but it's as much about affording one as anything.  I hate to admit it, but impractical as it is, I like having a tree in the window.  I like driving up after dark and seeing the lights.  It makes me smile.

Still, I can't pay the phone bill or even buy toilet paper, so how can I justify a tree?

Shit, I am sweating how I'm going to get gifts for the kids.  The toddler won't know any better, but The Boy?  He knows there are usually gifts and he will not understand that Mommy has no money...all he'll know is that while other kids are chortling with glee over their new toys and games, he'll be looking at a scarf and wondering where it all went wrong.

His father has money to spend on presents, so he'll get Christmas there.  I'm so far behind, so deep in the hole, that even if back child support and the next month's as well were paid, it wouldn't make much difference.

Sigh.

In the end, I have my family and we have a home and food, so I really shouldn't complain...and I know how lucky I am to have what I do, even as I will have to do without a bit.  It still wears me out, though.

Unlike the dusty meal at the mill, though, I can't just blow away - though I feel like I have nothing left of me to give, no more resources, no more endurance, well...on I go, slogging along the path towards the inevitable end...feeling the wheels as they grind.