It's 1:50 am. I went to bed at 10:00 with no less than two Vicodin in me. It didn't take the pain in my back away. It just knocked me out. But I woke up a little less than two hours later in such agony that I left the bed and our bedroom so that I wouldn't disturb Charlie. I know I need to go to the chiropractor, but I just haven't had the time. I'm on my feet all day. From 8 am to 5 pm, I literally sprint between customers..."fetching" their orders. I don't sit to eat, I don't sit to answer the phone, I don't sit. There isn't time. We're right in the middle of graduation season and it's intense. I've never really worked in a situation like this before. Not even as a kid. I've always had a job that afforded me the opportunity to sit at some point. Even if it was for a 15 minute break. THIS job is constant movement. And I don't mean I just stand in one place...I mean I am running the whole time I'm there. I should be losing weight. Oddly, I'm not. Not only that, now I'm having the worst bout of sciatica I've had since I was pregnant with Caris. Somewhere around 1:00, I just started pacing the living room floor in the dark. I cried; softly, so as not to wake family and sleeping dogs.
It's funny how when you're in pain, there is not much joy to find in anything. EVERYTHING is bad and the bad isn't just bad, it's horrific, tragic, and every other adjective you can think of for mass quantities of suckage. For example; as hard as I'm trying to be grateful for this job, I'm finding a multitude of reasons why I should quit. It pays crap. Actually LESS than crap. All three of my kids make better money than I do. Oh hell, let's leave Averie out of it because she makes a very nice wage. Which is my way of saying to Caris and Bry.."See? You DO NOT want to end up like me when you're my age. Completely unskilled. Completely unmarketable. Struggling. Working for crap wage because you need it. Please, for God's sake, finish school, I beg you!" Couple that with that I REALLY should not be working with the public because I have a really hard time hiding my disdain for stupidity. The icing on the cake is that standing, running, and fetching have now caused me such agonizing pain that I get no sleep. A painful Pua who has had no sleep? Not good.
Here's the other thing...I have been waiting and hoping that sometime soon, some kind of creative wave will return to my life and wash over me. That the heavens will open and the muse will come back and make me want to write, share, and be Pua again. But since the whole experience with my cousin living here, I just feel bruised. I thought helping someone was supposed to make you feel good. I honestly had been a big believer in karma. I hesitate now to be so inspired. I feel hurt, and kinda pissed off, and pretty darn jaded. If this is the reward we get for being hard workers, kind and thoughtful human beings, considerate fellow inhabitants of this planet, well then fuck it. I'm tired of always being the good guy. Honestly, what does it get you? Nothing but stabbed in the back by unscrupulous people, taken advantage of, looked over, treated like a lower life form? I'm tired of struggling for every damn penny to pay the bills and living from paycheck to paycheck. I'm tired of watching people I love and care about struggling as much, if not more than we do, and getting more and more despressed about their own situations. I'm tired of watching my poor husband work and worry while the assholes that come into the flower shop are pissed off because we don't have a certain color of orchid to match the fabric of their couch. This is your concern? That is what you worry about up there high on your hill? Fuck you. Fuck your couch. I'm Simon and if I'm going to be totally honest with you, I just want to say it's probably really unhealthy for me to be on Facebook. I should totally quit. It's not good to always be so jealous about everyone's new things, or fabulous vacations, or new houses, or exciting lives, etc. etc. It hurts my heart when I see pictures of my kids having fun with their friends and I see in the background that those friends parents are at these events with them having fun. I can't help it. I wish we had the money to host events and do fun things with the kids. But we don't. So they go and do fun things with their rich friend's parents. Why do I stay? Because I'm OCD. Because I'm insecure. Because I don't want to feel left out. But ironically, all it really does is intensify all of those feelings. It's messed up.
No one really needs to remind me of the good things. I KNOW the good things. I have a long, happy marriage to my best friend. We have fun together and we laugh a lot. Healthy, beautiful children. Roof over our heads. I know. I know. Remember, I'm in pain and I've had no real sleep for a couple of weeks now, so everything shitty is exponentially greater in its shittiness. I'm venting.
I realized recently that my job also reminds me of how much I miss House of Tiki. I am still grieving. My general state of discontent rests solely on the fact that when the tiki shop closed, my whole world caved in. If it feels like this for me, I know it feels ten-fold more to Wes. He lost way more than I did. I hurt for him. But there's no denying I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself. To tell the truth, I don't know quite what to do about it and it's a helpless feeling to feel like you really don't have a choice. Again, I sense that Wes is probably feeling the same way. Our former characters and sunny dispositions have been replaced by two really grumpy douchebags. We're Statler and Waldorf. And right now, life just kinda sucks.
