I Can’t Even With Life Right Now

It’s too much.

I can’t even with life right now.

I. Just. Can’t. Even.

I haven’t written in a week, which is like a lifetime for me. I have a few articles that I’ve started but my anxiety has run such amok that I can’t stick to a single topic.

When you can’t even with life, it’s when everything is so unbelievably overwhelming and your anxiety is sky-high. Combined with a sense of dread, it’s rendered me almost immobile.

So what do I do? I write about this emotional paralysis on Medium.

First, there’s the ongoing situation at home. Living with a spouse you’re divorcing is the worst. Divorce takes so damn long, I could have gotten a Ph.D. while waiting.

For the most part, it’s been okay. We even hosted a small get-together without too much awkwardness.

Pause writing to write an email to the mediator reminding her to send me the draft of the Marriage Settlement Agreement, which she said she’d have a week ago. And of course, I apologized so that it seemed like it was my fault for not following up.

The bad part is with everything opening back up, the kids want us to go everywhere. Together. It was so much easier to avoid our typical, nonstop family activities when there’s a worldwide pandemic.

Fuck you McDonald’s, for providing a Legoland coupon on the back of your receipts. It’s up on our fridge, serving as a constant reminder to the kids about all the things we should be doing.

I’d rather stab my eyeballs than spend a day as a faux family. Down the road, maybe. But not right now.

One of the articles I’m writing for Medium is dedicated to how the sound of his eating is like glass across a chalkboard. I need out.

Next up, the kids.

Pause writing to open up my bullet journal and write down this weekend’s playdate for my daughter.

Both of my kids are in a remedial summer school program in hope of them catching up to educational standards as a result of COVID.

Surprisingly, I’m not worried about my son being behind. The bonus part about Autism is that once that kid learns something, it usually sticks. He’s not a savant like you see in bullshit TV shows, but he’s good at learning.

My daughter. Sigh. She was supposed to be the easy one when we had her. The neurotypical child (since then diagnosed with ADHD). Her reading was behind when she was in Kindergarten. Then Covid put her even further behind. So now I have a kid going into second grade barely at a Kindergarten level.

Pause writing to cross out a line item I saw out of the corner of my eye in the bullet journal. It was a task that I accomplished earlier today.

It’s hard to teach a kid who isn’t motivated to learn. The last thing they want to do is learn from mom and dad.

And there’s the Mom Guilt. I work from home. But really, my job is so chill. I’m not truly working nonstop for 8 hours. I could dedicate more time to helping her learn.

I attempted to have the playdate be a drop-off one so that my daughter could get her social groove on while I still managed household chores, but the mom said she’d prefer to stay because her daughter has been getting high anxiety. I know the mom very well so it’s all good, but damn I fucking hate yapping with a parent for four hours when I’ve got stuff to do.

The kids would normally be in a summer program but in my cheap effort to save money for divorce reasons, they’re home.

On the subject of money: did I mention divorce sucks?

I’m still waiting to get the necessary documents so Joseph can get me off this fucking loan.

But Murphy’s Law has made it the worse housing shortage in frickin’ history. Unless the last housing bubble, people are putting real cash down for these homes. They have something to lose if they default on the payments. If they have payments at all; there’s so much equity in people’s homes that it’s easy to buy another house with a cash-out refinance.

My only goal is to buy a detached home in one of four cities neighboring my kids’ school. If I get a condo, the HOA fees will chew through any chance of saving up for a bigger place. Plus, the point is to keep the standard of living relatively the same for both kids. I’m just trying to get my foot in the door while their dad lives in a massive, newly-renovated house with a pool.

Pause writing to check if there are any work Slack messages. Checked Outlook. Have a meeting scheduled immediately after the mediation session. Because I’m the idiot who didn’t put the damn meeting in her work calendar. Had to select Decline and Propose New Time and ask for half an hour after the mediation meeting is scheduled to end.

I’m still hoarding money. Thankfully, I’ve gotten the $500 Medium bonus every month. I need every penny to battle the real estate war.

But with things opening up, it makes it hard to not spend cash. My friends want to go out. I just get a soda, no dinner or drinks. The Nordstrom Anniversary sale is coming up. I peruse through, add items to my Wishlist in anticipation, then realize I’m not going to buy any of it. Things that in the past I would have thrown money at to simplify my life are gone.

Not that with two incomes we were loaded. But we did well enough that I could buy clothes from Target without worrying about paying the bills.

I keep a post-it with a running total of the cash I have saved up. On May 12th, I had $2592. Today I have $9201.19.

I don’t fuck around when it comes to hustling and saving money.

Unfortunately, Joseph is a hoarder and he keeps buying toys for the kids out of our shared account. He always has some excuse for it. When I ask him to stop, he promises he will. Then next day, there’s another Amazon package. I don’t have the mental capacity right now to handle the inevitable melodrama if I enforced not purchasing things.

Pause writing to dismiss old meeting notifications popping up.

The next area of my life is my friends. I don’t have family here, they’re the closest that I have.

Since opening up about the divorce, I feel like I’ve become closer to a few of them as a result of my newfound life honesty.

It sucks though, when they plan for weekend trips away or dinners, that I tell them, “I’m in a poor man house buying mode but I’m good to join you whenever I get a place!”

Pause writing to text back a guy who is vying for boyfriend status. More on that later.

I talk and text regularly with Ellie, my friend who is having an emotional affair. She plans on coming out to visit and I hate that I can’t say, “Of course you can crash at my place!” I don’t know where I’ll be sleeping, let alone any guests by the fall.

I have Southwest Airlines credit from a canceled flight last year. Another friend is having a wedding anniversary party in Vegas which I intended to use those tickets. Instead, I won’t go. I’m hoping I can transfer them to Ellie so that she doesn’t need to buy plane tickets but she can foot the cost of a hotel if we go to San Diego for a night.

Pause writing to yawn. Didn’t get to bed until 4 pm last night and got up at 7 am. That was due to an ex-boyfriend situation. I need to work out. I just want to nap.

In one of the more positive areas of my life, I’ve got two guys that I’m solidly dating.

There’s Marc, who has been around for a while. But he’s the worst at texting. So really, the only true times we chat are when we go on dates, which isn’t that often given that we both work and have kids.

It’s really, really hard to date when you live in the same house as your soon-to-be-ex-husband.

Then there’s Thomas. It’s like he’s a pseudo stand-in for my ex-boyfriend Jon. He texts me constantly. He’s highly sexual. He adores the hell out of me. Unlike Jon however, Thomas is dying to jump into a serious relationship with me.

Pause writing for a phone call from my son’s behavioral therapist. Write down the extra session in my bullet journal. Add it to the shared Google calendar.

I’m a little conflicted with Thomas. I love that I met a guy who douses me with compliments and wants to chat nonstop. But there’s another part of me that’s not sure if I’m fully physically attracted to him (he gained weight during the pandemic but is actively working to shed it). He’s not photogenic so I can’t look at pictures and decide. But when we’re in person I do have a good time.

Not as much fun as with Marc though. That guy makes me laugh so damn hard.

The negative part is that Jon texted me last night, which prompted me to fire off a massive letter to mail along with the poetry book he had marked up and given to me. I was up until 4 am. In a nutshell, I wrote that under no circumstance will I reply to a single message anymore, ever, unless it’s to say that he’s single and he’s checking to see if I am. There is no other purpose for him to message me when he’s got an 8/10 happiness score in his relationship (his words). I’m the reason it’s not higher.

Like dude…if I had an 8/10 relationship I sure as fuck wouldn’t be messaging to tell you that I miss you.

It’s one thing to go No Contact. It’s another thing to really lay down the law and make the boundaries black and white. There’s no room for leeway.

As Ellie puts it, it’s absolutely cruel for him to message me when he’s perfectly happy with his life right now. Like thanks bro, did I need the reminder that your life is better without me in it?

The final area of my life is self-care.

In the grand scheme, I’m doing great. Relative to how things were pre-divorce. But the weight of everything that I’ve listed is a lot of work to juggle.

My hands are tingling and shaking like crazy from the anxiety.

A lot of people have written me to thank me for my writings and how they’re in the same boat. I want to give them proper, thoughtful responses like I normally do but right now, I just can’t.

My Healthy Girl Summer is out the window right now. I’m struggling to work out, drink water, take vitamins, get enough sleep…the list goes on.

You know things are bad when I’m letting my skincare regiment go. This is the first time in a decade that my face has broken out. That’s cool that it happened right when masks are no longer needed.

Pausing writing to lay on the bed and promise myself it’ll be a 20-minute snooze despite knowing my track record will be 10 times that.

I got up from my unrestful nap and still shook from anxiety. This is when I force myself to take a deep breath and identify: what is it that’s causing me to feel this way?

Except I couldn’t figure it out. The physical effects of generalized anxiety, when it goes haywire, are no joke.

The only answer I have is…it’s because of life. And I just can’t even.