Overwhelmed

By everythingness and nothingness.

Work is overloading me that's for sure. And it doesn't look like it will improve anytime soon. I have vacation time coming up and that always stresses me into worrying how things will be done before I go, and then worrying me that I'll be away when something needs to be done. About 10 days ago I was at melting point. I was at a place where it felt like it was tumbling down around me and I didn't know how to deal with it. But I've managed to shore it up again. It took me an hour on Friday night (after pulling a 15-hour day) to just get things sorted into folders from the pile that had erupted on my desk that day.

My heart feels pulled in every which direction. People have come into my life. Then left it. Then want back in. Why didn't they just stay in the first place? Am I a 'filler' yet again when things go wrong for them? I ask myself why do they keep coming back and sniffing at the door. For some I know why and it has nothing to do with the heart, more to do with basic financial needs being met. And I will not be anyone's bank account - not again anyway. And then there is a newness about some feelings and they, too, scare me a little. Why can't I just relax and let what will be, just be.

I spoke with my mother the other day and her voice is getting worse (she has a cancerous growth next to her vocal chords) and I fear for her. In ways I didn't fear for my dad, maybe because she will never let us in. At least he did, he let us feel his pain and his fear, he let us 'participate'. How awful to want to participate in a parent's death but it really did help knowing every step of the way what was happening and how he was feeling and what he needed from us.

And you know there is nothing that I shouldn't be able to handle, nothing that I can't handle. So why this feeling? Over the weekend I felt dizzy, and yet not dizzy, just off balance, physically. Like I was toppling over. Almost a feeling of being hung over. And as I don't drink, it certainly isn't due to that. I feel I've been pushed off my axis. I'm discombobulated. And plain overwhelmed when I should be able to cope.

Too much everythingness and in reality it's nothingness.

Me, I'm getting older and I'm plain

As plain can be

Got a bank full of mother's dreams

Maybe mother just didn't see

That love would be the only thing

Her daughter would ever need

Oh, I am the heart not taken

I am the late blooming rose

The one thought not worth breakin'

With only her mother's dream to hold

Who really knows

On this less travelled road

...Maybe the hearts not taken

Are truly made of gold

~ Nanci Griffith ~