I try hard to not to complain. I try even harder to try to always remember the incredible things in my life. But let’s be honest. It is hard.  When the chips are down, when the bottom has fallen out from underneath you, when the doors seem to all be closing, it is really hard to remember that there is something worthwhile in your life.

The last two years, and I looked it is about the two year anniversary, life has tested me in ways that I don’t think it is possible to prepare oneself for. I recognize that some of the things, or events if you prefer, are simply fate or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some were completely within my control. It was a combination of lethal disappointment and in some ways hardship that I wonder if we will ever recover. Will those I love ever be the same?

I could lie and tell you that I have grown stronger or that these last two years have made me a better person. I could say that through the last two years I have become a better wife or mom, or even writer – but this too would probably be a lie.

I could blame my disease, my husband, my move, my own laziness – and all of it would be components. I could tell you all about bipolar when mixed with stress, disappointment and anger and weave a story that would at once make you feel sympathy and on the other make you feel like you have taken a journey only those of desperation could ever find.

I recently started going to church. But lately I wondered if I haven’t been going to sit in a church for pure ego. I am not much for secular religion and many times whatever the Pastor says angers me rather than lifts me where I want to be. But I realized that the reason I keep going is not in the hope of a God but in the vain attempt to be noticed by God. I find this sad; this need to be seen by any religious figure simply because I don’t know how much more I can take.

My life these last two years has had so much of the negative that there are times that I can’t remember those shining pieces that are such a part of my soul. I simply can’t see despite the laughter, or feel despite the love, or even understand despite the knowledge. It is like that elusive sleep when all you want to do is escape for a moment of time.

Like I said, I recognize that some of it is my fault. I certainly didn’t have to keep my children in really, really expensive childcare in the hopes that not only their social skills will be better but their brains would be constantly fed.  I didn’t have to give my children great Christmas’, instead budgeting tightly. There was no demand that I continue my prescriptions or my doctor visits. There was no one determining that work, my job, could not be.

But there were things so out of my control. My husband, his ups and downs, trials and tribulations which I feel so keenly. The debt that was piled for legitimate reasons but can’t seem to be managed.  The time my child went to the emergency room because of a call I made to make sure that he was okay. The job I wasn’t hired for, the sports my child had to play, the uniforms, the shoes, the new clothes my children constantly need because of their age.  These and a thousand other things are completely out of my control.

I recognize all these pieces. And I recognize all that I have, at least in my sane moments.

I have these children, these incredible beings that give to me more than I could ever give to them. I have a car, my husband has a job, and we are living virtually free under my mother’s roof. My family is, for the most part, happy and healthy. And I have the opportunity to try and be better than I ever knew I could be.

There are days that these gifts are so hidden I simply can’t see them. There are days when it literally feels that this world, a God, fate, or even my marriage is the cause of so much misery in my life. There are days when I simply walk out and get in my car with the wonder if this time will be the time that I drive away. Sometimes I think that I can walk away and literally give it all up. But the only way I would do that is in death, I wouldn’t leave my children behind. And those are the hard days, when I realize the release in death.

I try and not complain. But sometimes it is easier to whine about the truth of my life than to remember that I must continue working with it. Sometimes there isn’t any reason to get up in the morning and I know that I have to anyways. And there are times I recognize that I don’t have enough gas in my car to get anywhere.

I don’t try to be the Jones. I have no interest in being someone else. I just occasionally wish God would bend down and at least let me know I am doing it right. I just need fate or a random person on the street at this point to let me know that the path I am walking, the uphill climb to finding not peace but fulfillment is the correct one. Or if they wish, maybe they could tell me to give it all up and face the disappointing reality that the disease I live in has been right all along; I simply need to walk away.