Catching up

Here's the hard part of climbing out of the financial grave we've been wallowing in for the last couple of years: Catching up.

You see, when you have to sell things off, and you have to contract your lives to a small space in the universe, you'll eventually end up with the worst of everything you had. You can't afford to maintain your belongings properly, so they fall apart faster.

As we slowly save and catch up we are seeing this more and more. The paint on the walls have needed touched up for a couple of years. Unfortunately, the paint store our colors came from was bought out and now we can't go in and ask for a can of Frontier Tan for our walls.Trying to match it has proven to be difficult. So we have to consider completely repainting or touching it up with a poor match and having those spots glaringly remind us that our neglect and lack of money has ruined our walls. We still aren't in the financial space to consider repainting everything, so we live with the glare of neglect.

We recently rented a Rug Doctor to clean the carpet in the main living area. It too, was a task that fell to the wayside after money tightened and my ability to scrub on my hands and knees instantly disappeared. This was something we used to do every six months. No mattered how many times we went over the carpet we weren't able to get it as clean as we used to. Its so disheartening to know that we've ruined our carpet simply by being too poor. We are far from sloven, but the deep cleaning we neglected to do over the years certainly shows.

It feels like poverty and pain has ruined so much more than a few calendars worth of days. It will take us a long time to be able to repair all of the things we've had to neglect and to rebuild what we've given up. It's nice to be able to start, but it's overwhelming to consider how far we have to go.

Adventures in something else

I think about this blog often, but I've stopped fleshing out ideas regularly and I've stopped putting them on the page as often. Our financial situation has settled in and we are working as hard as possible to slowly rebuild. Enough quiet and peace to write eludes me.The struggle to figure out the next step, the guessing which trail will lead us out of this dark canyon are done. We have a path that we've committed to, and its just as hard as any of the other options that we found.

We work hard, and we try hard to do what needs to be done. We sacrifice as much as we can in order to give our kids what they need. We make hard decisions daily. We live in a hard place. I suppose we had no choice but to harden.

We had a tiny bit of money this winter. It was enough to finally travel to see family. The days leading up to our trip were beyond exhausting. But the chance to leave, see people and get out was too much to pass up. I haven't really gone anywhere since I got hurt. I spent a night in Oregon for a job interview, but beyond that I've been increasingly homebound.

We traveled. We celebrated. We came home excited and happy. We all thought everyone had a great time, laughing, joking, and just enjoying the family members we got to see. Every single person in my little family was so happy that we spent Christmas with the people we did. We started talking about the next time we could go somewhere and the next time we could see more family.

Nearly a month later it was brought to my attention that people hadn't enjoyed our visit as much as we had. I didn't realize that the jokes we made and the light-hearted teasing weren't jokes that people appreciated. Or that kids who are always in constant motion and who interrupt and talk over each other and finish one another's thoughts and sentences were being rude. I didn't realize they were being anything but the people they have become.

The hardness, struggle and isolation of the past four years has made us unpleasant to be around. Its not that we want to be terrible people, its that we can't help it. The light and joy of never knowing dark, dark fear and unending pain has long gone from our lives. We are changed. We have changed into a stronger, more resilient family. Unfortunately, resiliency means that we are more like a thorny, poisonous cactus instead of a delicate, ruffled fern. We don't know how to be anything but this way. Its how we've survived.

But I won't mourn for the days that are lost. I've already done that. I feel bad that people expected something different from us.

I've been open in our fears and struggles. I've been open in our losses and pain. And now I need to be aware that even though its all out here, people will never quite know what this journey is doing to us.