There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger
Well, so much for my determination to write consistently. Lately, after even a week of not writing, I end up with the feeling that I couldn't possibly ever find enough words to catch up with what has gone on during the gap. Not that I have to, I suppose.
In a continuing chiaroscuro theme, I lost my job and got engaged in the same week. So, I've been scrambling to cobble a few random jobs together, figure out how to apply for medical assistance and unemployment, and popping down to the cities to visit my fiance's parents and friends and start planning the wedding, and performing in two concerts in as many weeks. An awful lot of things in my life are going really remarkably well. Just a few "flies in the ointment," right?
Only they're industrial-strength mutant-horsefly-behemoths that sound like buzz-saws and raise welts the size of golf-balls when they bite.
I am devastated over losing my job. I've never been so personally invested in a job before, and the way it happened was so unexpected, and so utterly out of my control, that I constantly think that if I had actually done something wrong that would be easier to cope with. Instead, I just feel betrayed and set up to fail, with absolutely no recourse. In the meantime, I'm under a mountain of debt that I had just started to whittle down. There's no end in sight, and I just feel lost. After having a job I truly loved--the first time that's ever happened to me--and then losing it, I can't think of anything I want to do next. I wasn't planning on there being a next.
If that weren't enough, it has just begun to truly dawn on me that what happened between me and my priest was not just an "affair." It was sexual abuse. All the little things he did for me, the ways he went out of his way for me, his telling me I was his friend and part of his "inner circle," asking about past heartbreaks, even pushing me into therapy...it was grooming. I thought he saved my life, when really, he saw that I was lonely and vulnerable and used that to push me to the brink, got a rush out of watching me decompensate, my depression growing worse and worse the more he "helped" me, until finally he got to swoop in and heroically walk me to the hospital.
But, but, but...I'm getting married. I am singing better than I ever have, and really getting into teaching voice. I have an incredible church community, and I still work with a wonderful kid from school, and I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I just hope people aren't too taken aback if they ask me how I am and I answer honestly: "I have no idea."
No comments:
Post a Comment