(Editor’s note: if you came here looking for happy-feel-goody sentiment, you may just want to skip this post.)
My mother has the maddening trait of telling me, “someday you’ll understand.” It’s maddening because she uses it as a club to beat me and my feelings about something into submission. She also says things like, “I’m sorry if you’re mad/sad/hurt/etc.” instead of just apologizing for whatever it was she did/said.
To me that’s just a lot of passive-aggressive twaddle. I try really hard not to pass that particular legacy on to Spawn. Some days I’m more successful than others.
Given this fact, more often than not I’d rather eat glass than admit when she’s right about something. Y’know, except here, on my anonymous blog.
Of all the things that I will supposedly understand “someday” I have arrived at one such understanding. That understanding is this:
The older you get, the less you handle change well.
Here lately I have seen a mountain of change. Most of it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, especially taken as separate events, but taken all together it’s just enough to really depress me.
I am unfamiliar with being depressed over change. And I don’t like it. I don’t like change, and I don’t like feeling depressed about change.
Of course the big change that is staring me in the face is the end of my job. I think that’s probably the one thing that all this hinges on. If you’re read here any time at all, you know that I am Planny McPlannerson and I like my plans to be planned out. I like to know what to expect. It’s probably one of my worst character flaws, because it keeps me from trying new things a lot of the time. I have never been, nor will I ever be, the sort of girl who can just “wing it” through life. So the fact that the job is ending, but I don’t know how or when (though all indications tell me that the first of the year will find me jobless, hooray), or what lies in wait after that… well, to say that I am unnerved is a bit of an understatement. No time is a good time to lose a job, but the holidays seem to be the worst time to face unemployment. And the manner in which this job is ending — by my boss being sick — just is the cherry on top.
So, I’m packing that horse-collar around, trying to orchestrate a small Christmas (by staying within my means), and little things have just been piling on. Things like my next door neighbor dying. My mother’s best friend’s husband dying. (Two funeral homes in one day is not fun, folks.) Local family businesses succumbing to the economy after two and three generations. Shifts in the local news media that have resulted in a good many people I know losing their jobs. War, famine, pestilence, stupidity… stir until well-blended.
Oh! And I’m sick! Yay!
I’ve really been surprised by my reaction to all of these goings-on. I’ve noticed that stuff that would ordinarily roll right off my back is instead getting on my last good nerve. And it’s a little alarming, to realize that I am turning into a crusty little old lady, except without the old-lady trappings. All this change is making me crotchety.
And I can tell you this, if it were not for Spawn I probably would not have put up the Christmas tree this year.
Humbug!
– Mox
