Dissociated Thoughts

Life's a Unicorn Turd

Life is like a unicorn turd: sparkle sprinkled rainbow feces, so much good and bad intertwined. The icing from the cake that landed on the floor upside down. The sweet and course all rolled into one.

Good news, bad news, I'm tired of the news. My life is chaotic enough without the media making it any worse, so I've been trying to stay away from the news channels...

In real life, highs are being overshadowed by uncertainty. I knew having kids wasn't easy. I've known that for a while now. What I didn't know was how difficult it would continue to be after said children reached adult age. I phrase it like this because I have to look hard to see emotional maturity in my oldest and I see my baby, at 21, struggling to find herself in the middle of a failed engagement, an engagement that has lasted since she was seventeen.

My hands are tied with these two. Good and bad times are like the tides of the lake nearby, rolling in after some idiot on a speedboat exceeds the boating speed limit along a residential stretch of the shore. My oldest, who refuses to interact with family, is pregnant and living far away from any help we might be able to give her. She refuses to tell her grandparents or myself where she is living and her phone was just disconnected, so the only way we have to contact her is through Facebook or Snapchat (neither very reliable when important issues require haste). Worries about her and the baby run rampant through my head, especially since she has chosen to live in a city rife with crime far away from those who love her. Yesterday I received pleasant news from her though. They were able to see the sex of the baby on the last sonogram - I'm going to have a granddaughter. Unicorns and rainbows, here I come!

Also in recent happenings are the trials of my youngest, who is finding the strength in herself to leave her fiancé of four years and try to remove herself from a controlling relationship. She's never been on her own before, having moved in with this young man right after she graduated high school. She doesn't want to come home to start over. She wants to stay in the college town where she lives and get an apartment by herself. I'm trying to be supportive although I, of course, have my misgivings. Her father, on the other hand, is vehemently against it. He thinks she needs to move closer to family - either closer to us or to her grandparents. He doesn't want to help her get settled and instead has told her she has to do it all on her own. I've tried to agree to disagree with him, but he is like a bulldog on this and thinks his way is the only way. It's been causing arguments between us because I can't just cut ties and let my girls fend for themselves if I can help them (to a certain extent). All the younger one wants is our support and her dad isn't willing to give her even that. He says he is worried she won't be able to make it on her own, that she is too small and timid and bad things will happen to her and she is too far away for any family to get to her quickly to help her if something does happen. Which way is better, trying to support their decisions or cutting them off entirely and forcing them to go it completely alone? We were raised to think differently on this and I'm afraid the headbutting has just started. Man! Isn't it supposed to be easier when the kids are grown?

Now here's an additional thing to be thrown into the mix of sunshine and shit that is life, I was just promoted at work. I've been doing the work and working the hours already, so I might as well get paid for it. I haven't had a full-time job since I stopped teaching. I've worked the hours at my part time position, but I haven't been considered full time until now. I'm good at what I do though, so it should be a piece of cake (upside down), right? My parents and husband don't think I'm healthy enough yet to have that added stress in my life, but I'm willing to give it a go. I mean, what's it going to do? Kill me? My body is already on top of that one. I'm willing to give it a go. I can always step back down if my health gets bad again.

Ups and downs and all over the place and then there are the pets. The cat who thinks he needs to gorge on his food only to puke it back up mere minutes later, the dog who thinks he doesn't get enough attention, the other cat who thinks she needs to be fed and petted 24 hours a day... and the lizard, who causes absolutely no problems, is quiet, and is exceptionally easy to care for.

Never time for a mental day because the chaos seems to find me. Maybe I should take a day to go fishing, hiding out, and enjoying some time away from the world.