[Warning: whining ahead]
I've just been phoned by my boss (who is a family member! Nepotism is awesome!) to tell me I've lost my job (not awesome) due to poor performance, or as she put it, "poor fit" (super-non-awesome). I can't say I've been doing the job well, to be honest - if I were more organized and more focused... but I haven't been able to take the medication that was supposed to help me with that. It's amphetamine, and I can't deal with the obsessive behavior and heart problems that come with it.
Oh well. Shit happens.
My wife and I are planning a move to Maryland, because we can't afford to stay here. We're hoping a 25% cut in rent will help us afford things, but... now that I've lost my job, I don't know if we can actually get the apartment we want. (Cheap, reasonably sized 1br, you know? Nothing outrageous.)
So add that to the stress of packing stuff up to move, plus the fact that this would be the first time I've really moved my place of living outside of this town. (I've gone to college in other places, and had rooms on or near campus, but it isn't the same.)
I don't know what the hell we're going to do.
I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.
I know it's crazy to feel like I need to do everything myself, without assistance from my parents... I feel guilty, though. My wife (who grew up in a poor household) often expresses frustration with friends and acquaintances, including me, who grew up well-off and are used to "having things handed to you on a silver platter". I'm not entirely sure what this entails but I think it's everything from assistance with rent and letting the moved-out kid use parental laundry resources to buying the kid a car (my mother did this, and spent three times as much as she should have, and I REALLY feel guilty about that).
Is it crazy to define your self-worth in terms of whether or not you receive assistance from others? Of course it is. Nevertheless, it's what I do. I've been doing it for nearly ten years and loathing myself intensely the whole time. Luckily I have enough self-control not to do anything especially rash. But I've been suicidally depressed from time to time, and since my brother offed himself and made suicide real to me in a way it hadn't been, the temptation is stronger.
Before you pick up the phone, no, I am not a danger to myself or others. I'm still here, typing, aren't I?
I often feel that there aren't enough hours in a day, days in a week, or dollars in a year to allow for everything that needs doing to get done. These days that feeling has been getting really intense.
So combine worry for the future, concern over relationship issues with virtually all my friends and family (except my father, I know where I stand with him), attachment to Stuff (aka worship of Mammon) and fear of losing it, fear of becoming homeless, despair over ever being able to pay for the important things in life (like taxes and health insurance), fear of losing my wife to depression or divorce - after I finally managed to get it through my head that maybe I don't have to be lonely my entire life... I think with all that anxiety rolled up into a ball and crammed into a single brain, it's easy to tell why I'm jittery and have trouble focusing.