A New Beginning

It's crazy to think that something wonderful like finding love could start a slide down into the hole I find myself in now. I suppose it makes sense. It's transition-- those new beginnings, again, which also bring endings. Even wonderful new beginnings call for the end of the way life once was. I knew that. I knew when I found Sean that I would need to recalibrate my entire existence, my time, my commitments, my focus, but, you know what? Life got in the way, and I just never managed to. And it got in the way in a big time.

I was so busy being with Sean and being in this new relationship, and living my life-- first of all trying to make a living as a waitress and bartender, but then adding in the birthdays and weddings and celebrations and rock shows and baseball games and just all of it, I completely ignored my summer flu, and ended up catching pneumonia.

Yikes! No, really, pneumonia, as in "life threatening illness." It threw me for a loop, and reminded me how unpredictable life was. I knew I had to take care of business and get back on track-- but I didn't. For necessary and wonderful reasons, but, nonetheless, I didn't.

Still sick with pneumonia, but feeling better on all sorts of nice helpful drugs, I had my best friend's wedding to go to. "Wedding" is really and understatement-- it was a glorious weeklong event in Montak, Long Island, full of families and togetherness, everyone pitching in and creating wonderful memories. I was one of the bride's maids, and actually put together the bouquets and boutonnieres (still recovering from pneumonia). It was probably the best wedding I'd ever been to, and that Sean was there with me the entire time was tremendous.

There was certainly no time for being focused and creative on my own work then, and not when I came back, either, in debt from the wedding, and being out of work for two weeks from pneumonia. And when I got back to the restaurant, I found that all sorts of rumors had been going around. About me. Coming from one of the owners.

Apparently I was variously, stealing, a coke addict, and insane. People laughed when they heard. No one believed it, but somehow, I got taken off of the bar, where I actually could make a little money, and put back on the floor, waiting tables, for almost nothing. I confronted the owner about these rumors and demanded he apologize for spreading them, as he had no evidence, since I wasn't stealing, on drugs, or crazy, and it was illegal to defame a person's character. He apologized, grudgingly, and barely talked to me again. I later found out that I had threatened him and his four year old daughter.

Huh?

Not only that, but the boss "hated" me and had probably put a curse on me, which he had been known to do before. I found another waiting job, one that I thought would be great, and quit the last one. Moved on. I couldn't bear to be in that environment anymore. I thought the new job would be better, make more money, and it did make more money, but it wasn't better. I left it, with promises that a friend would hire me as a bartender. He didn't. I was unemployed.

It would have been no problem. I could have found another job waiting tables, I have almost ten years experience-- but the same day I gave notice/was fired (the manager didn't like that I was quitting, so he axed me that morning) I also found out... wait for it... that I was pregnant.

Yes, pregnant. Having a baby.

This brings me to today, two months later.

Wait a minute. Such an elaborate story! All the details! And then, boom! two months pass with not a word?

I don't know what happened. I don't know if it was shock from finding out I was pregnant, depression from losing my job and being unemployed, or hormones from the first trimester, but the last two months have passed in a haze of staring at the television and not being able to get up off the couch, I mean, literally not being able to get up except to eat and pee. My body was heavy, my head was heavy, I fell asleep all the time. Now I have been known to be a couch potato, but this was different, and I never took naps unless I was actually sick.

Two months passed and it was as if I was in hibernation. Asleep. Dead. I just wasn't there.

The most disturbing to me is that, in all this time, I have barely written a word, nor painted a picture. I haven't even kept a journal. I have some sixty plus journals from some twenty years of keeping them, but in the last two or three months I've written almost nothing. How is this possible? Not even about having a baby. Not even about something that life changing. I want this baby. Sean wants this baby. But I have been completely frozen in being able to process it. Frozen in being able to move forward. Frozen in being able to find a job. Frozen in writing my novel.

Here I am, in the last couple of days in this whopper of a year, and I've got to say, I can't stay in stasis anymore. I need to move. I need to be creative. I need to be productive. I need to be in action. I need to get back to who I am. Because I'm sick of who I've been... or not been, because I feel like I've just been a void. In fact, I'm not going over all this again. This entry is just a prologue. This is just to catch up, because I feel like I can't get past this year without acknowledging it. So, this entry, acknowledgement.

Now, it's time to let go of all of that and start over again. Start over? Get back? No. I'm moving on. It's time to keep growing, and shedding the old skin. I don't know what's coming next. More changes, I'm sure, but I've got to get back in there.

Breathe deep. Jump off the edge. I think I have wings.