.

I'm profoundly depressed right now, for a lot of very valid reasons. Normally I'd need to write a post to see the validity, but luckily I married the right person, and he validates my stress and anxiety when I share them with him. But that sharing occurs often, and I feel like a wholly burdensome partner, so I'm trying to get it out here and not weigh him down any further.

I don't have the energy to describe all of the factors that are leading to this point. A big reason my coping ability is so low is the intense, prolonged knee pain I've been in for the last 18 months. I don't have it in me to deal with manufactured in-law drama, school drama besides getting there and back and finishing my million assignments on-time, maintain a house, and still be a good person. So I'm withdrawing into myself, bit by bit, and becoming more apathetic than I've ever been. It's a hard place to be. I put all my emotional energy into my nursing and then into my marriage, and there's nothing else left.

December 15 is my last day of my BSN, and I can't wait. Next semester it's just residency and an online class, and taking (AND PASSING!) my NCLEX. Then working. Contuining with my Masters, although with how I'm feeling right now, I don't know if I'll continue anytime soon, or even at APU.

I'm living an emotionally devastated life, and I don't know how to change it, except to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And it's killing me.

powerlessness.

The weather outside reflects my mood. My father keeps saying that it's earthquake weather, and it keeps echoing inside my head and rumbling out of my eyes...my core is shaking. I am under such immense stress that I feel myself tearing. Shearing. Pulling and pushing and under no control of the turmoil.
It is, to say the least, exhausting.
That's what has been so enduring lately - the lack of rest. I feel dead, all day every day. Life has become the process of putting one foot in front of the other and putting out the fire under my step. My dream after marriage is just sleeping.
There are issues with the house we're buying. Not with the actual house, not with the financing, not with anything that you would expect for their to be issues with. Nope, we were on our shit and all of that is totally handled. The issue is the sellers.
They had four goddamn repairs to do that were minor as all getout. Replace the wood under one eaves. Put a plate over the pilot light of the water heater, add a strap to it, and add a drainage pipe. It would take a shitty handyman about 4 hours to fix it, but they've waited until the absolute last day. And the tenants are still in there. Not only is my real estate agent not putting pressure on them, she's saying that I...YES ME...told the tenants they should be out by 5/11. Monday. When Sam has to be out of his apartment by Saturday, 5/9. Why would I tell them a date I never even had as an option in my brain?! As a matter of fact, I told them the 7th. As a second matter of fact, it's not my responsibility for their vacancy.
So for 2 days, we'll have to have all of his stuff in a Uhaul parked against my parent's garage and hoping we don't get robbed. 
Well Erin, that's not so bad. Why are you freaking out, you may be thinking. Well, because I have a very amazing group of friends that are willing to help me throughout the day of Saturday to move us, get us unloaded and partially unpacked. If we're delayed and don't get our keys until Monday, we'll be alone. And that means we'll be unloading alone. And that means that I'll be in so much physical pain that I may actually not leave bed and say FuckItAll to LIFE. Which I can't afford to do. Not with the school program I'm in. Not with my marriage commencing via wedding in 15 days.
So, like most humans, the fear of pain is motivating me and making me fiercely aggressive. I am gearing up to fracture and could care less what the fallout is.
By fracture, I mean: scream, cry, roar. I'm already doing it extensively. I can't bear the thought of going home, taking care of the dog I'm dogsitting, hear the shit my parents will dole out like candy, do laundry, pack my life, and ultimately have NO CONTROL over whether I will have the home I've worked hard for by Saturday.
Someday soon, it'll be better. I just wish I could exert some type of action to make it so.

tempered.

I ruminated on the year that had just passed by. It was, like it is for everyone, the beginning and the end of so many things, but there were more than the average notable occurrences. Most importantly, it was the last year I would ever be single (at least I hope). Really, who goes into marriage assuming that it’ll someday end? Not me. And not Sam, thankfully. We met in February and intend on walking through this life together. As a part of that, it was also the last year I would spend New Year’s Eve alone. It was the last year that I would feel lost from my path; nursing school has begun and as the culmination of four years of work, it feels like a big part of me that has been waiting to bloom has finally started to. It was the first year I lived without the fearsome pain of endometriosis, and had to live for 365 day the reality of never having a period, ovarian cysts, terrifying bleeding, suffocating pain, or the possibility (however slight) of giving birth to my own offspring.

It’s an odd thing, accepting that bit. It’s easy to accept something when you have the capability, and a little harder to swallow when it has been forcefully taken from you…more so when you yourself is the one who did the taking, to survive and thrive.

I realize I haven’t blogged in quite some time, and as I was talking to my friend Kathleen today, I realized why that was. Simply, it’s Sam. Blogging began as a way for me to expel my deepest self with force and words. I was unable to do it in regular life, primarily because I was too busy, or often because it was too much for me to reasonably expect my friends to listen to as I processed my life and feelings. Life is not easy, and I am poor, but instead of therapists or making my friends hate me, I turned to this venue. Writing it made it true. 

And now, honestly, I tell everything – EVERY SINGLE THING, that poor bastard – to Sam. He is in every way the best thing to happen to me. Also, the idea of spare time to write these days is a mirage, and I think that if I am going to devote a certain time of day to writing, it needs to be creatively, not just regurgitating the same things I’ve already verbally worked out with Sam or another friend.

I’ve decided a few things though. 2015 will be a big year that much is certain. Sam and I will be moving into our own place with a spare bedroom for our loves who need a place to land for a while. We will be getting married in May (the date isn’t known by many because we’re eloping and don’t want to cause a fuss), I’ll be completing my B.S in Nursing at the end of the year and beginning my preceptorship in anticipation of the NCLEX, and I’ve mentally committed myself to volunteering in a nursing home, ideally with hospice patients who don’t have their own family to sit with them.

I just watched a documentary called Serving Life, about inmates volunteering in Angola penitentiary’s hospice program, and what the warden said has stayed with me: it’s about taking care of each other in this life. I’ll dig your grave, and someone else is going to dig mine.

I’ll hold your hand and dig that grave for you, because I am capable of doing so, and not everyone is.  

There was a lot more that happened in 2014. Mental health advocacy for friends, cosigning on a car for a friend, refinancing my own, getting different health insurance (saving me thousands every year – THANKS OBAMA!), two knee surgeries, not missing a single day of nursing school despite those surgeries and still managing a 3.8 GPA, loving not only my life-partner but his family, road trips, tears, fears, and everything in between.

My best friend told me today that I am mellower these days. That Sam has calmed me down. Truly, I think that I am now tempered…that the fire of these last few years has done its job. I felt my blows. I hardened, and sharpened, and am formed in the best shape so as to slice.

So as to slice.