Life in the Trenches. Or something.

A/N: This is not me passively-aggressively begging for money. This is me venting, hardcore.

I had a very bad day yesterday. I woke up mad at GuestDog, because she barked at the mail carrier and woke me up. Which she has done every single day she's been here, except Sunday. I love GuestDog, but I'm getting really cranky about the rude awakenings every day.

I found some decent clothes and went out and mowed the back lawn, then took a long shower. It wasn't what I wanted to do, which was break things or throw furniture, but it was something. The physical worked off some of my prickly energy, and the shower helped ground me some - scrubbing every inch of myself is pretty mindless, but also reminds me where the numb spots are, gives me something specific to think about. And I can listen to a playlist on my Kindle.

I may yet need some Angry Girl music tomorrow (as in Wednesday, because Tuesday hasn't ended for me, yet), but even if I do, I will already be better than today. Listening to Breakfast Club and Blast From the Past and Contact in the background while I did other things helped. A lot.

My depression is very "angry at myself" based. I'm angry at too many things, but not all the time. I get angriest when I get overwhelmed, when I feel like I'm failing, when everything just seems to be coming at once.

I had reached out to a local woman, asking her basically if I could pick her brain about business, since she owns one or two and is successful, and because of my miswired circadian rhythm, I fell asleep yesterday morning instead of staying up for her call. So being awakened by the dog barking at the mail carrier, me looking at my phone and realizing I'd slept through something important, something meant to help make this new direction in my life easier, was just that little bit too much.

Money is a thing for me. I grew up in a household where we never talked about money. That was Mom and Dad stuff, and none of our business. I knew we were poor, though things got easier by the time I got to high school, but I had no idea how my parents made ends meet, or if they didn't. I seriously wish my school had taught some kind of budgeting or living on your own for real class, because reality was a big surprise. I was one of those, "But I still have checks left, what the hell do you mean, I don't have money?" And I'm good with numbers. Gah.

Anyway, money's always a sore spot for me. Even if everything else in my life is going relatively well, not being able to take care of my own basic needs makes me feel like a huge failure. That is where I am - too many things coming down at once, with little income in the foreseeable future. Everything costs money that I need now, not in two months - my meds, food, a storage unit I'm desperate to get out of (we've even made room in the garage), bus rides, EVERYthing. And the bank decided my "extended" overdraft (all $30 of which is fees, which is completely asinine) was extended enough to close my account. So I'm in a really hurty "What kind of fifty-year-old woman can't take care of herself? How can you be such a failure?" place. My worst critic truly is myself.

Money failure always hurts more, pokes harder at my self-esteem, and sometimes, like yesterday, it makes me very angry. At myself. At my brain that refuses to go to sleep at anything approaching a reasonable hour, and equally refuses to awaken early enough for me to get anything done with requires leaving the house. If I want to leave the house, I have to simply stay up. Going to sleep isn't an option.

I honestly have no clue how I functioned all the years I was a single parent, except that it involved three or four hours of sleep a night and about five alarms in different places in the room. And out of the room, sometimes. And a kid who didn't get to school on time, sometimes.

Anyway, this one was especially dark because over the last week, I have come up with a fantastic idea for taking my editing to a new level, and it WILL change my life. I have absolutely zero doubt. I can feel it, deep inside my soul. The energy is changing. And I was am so excited about it.

And then, I get a day like yesterday, and it makes my usual depression feel like a stubbed toe.

I think of all the things I "have" to have money for, and it just seems hopeless. How do I go to my doctor appointment in two weeks, and pay a $5 copay, when I don't have the $5 to get on the bus to even get there? How do I send in my med mail order when I no longer have a bank account to give them the debit card number for? How do I find a way to pay for that storage unit, and for a way to get those belongings here, when I have neither the money for the storage place, or a vehicle with which to move the stuff? How do I buy the things I'm going to run out of tomorrow, which are part of my fairly strict diet, when I don't even have a frakkin' quarter to put in the buggy at Aldi, even if I had a way to get there.

I'm just so frustrated and angry and when my brain does this, it sucks the energy out of me and makes everything I do that much harder, that much more painful.

I think in my next life, I want to be a butterfly. I'd start out as a worm, hibernate, then get pretty for a few weeks, help flowers and trees have sex, and move on to whatever's after that. Yeah. Helping flowers and trees have sex. Sounds perfect.