Disconnect

It's so hard to sleep now.

I've always struggled with the act of shutting off my faculties and submitting myself to unconsciousness but the sheer exhaustion that accompanied my recent daily life made this necessary evil a good deal easier.

No longer. 

Now I again dread nightfall, when my body is weighed down by the blackness and my mind runs rampant with emotions.

8 days ago my identity was solely encapsulated by the little nuggets I called my charges. I lived, breathed, and poured my sweat, blood and tears into personifying love for them. The triplets I nannied called me "Mama" and, though I always corrected them, the description felt apt.

I raised the girls from 7 months of age to 2 years 2 months and those nineteen months felt like a lifetime. I fed them, clothed them, cared for them when they were sick, did their laundry, caught their vomit, kissed their boo-boos away, taught them how to roll over, walk and talk. I used to joke that if I wasn't covered in someone else's bodily fluids it was only because I hadn't gotten out of bed yet. 

I loved the girls and no personal sacrifice was too great for their sakes.

And now I've been cut out of their lives.

The stress of working for their father had my health in a scary place and I found myself forced to notify the family of my intent to find other employment. I gave them five weeks. This surely, I supposed, would be enough time for them to find a new nanny, for me to personally train her and get the girls accustomed to her, and for me to be gradually phased out of their lives. Five weeks, I told myself, was just long enough to say goodbye.

Two days later I got in a disagreement with their father. 

When he came home from work that day, he asked to speak to me privately, then told me that my services were no longer required, effective immediately. He took his keys and escorted me out of the house.

He didn't let me say goodbye. 

I raised his children and will never get the chance to hug them one last time. 

I left my home for my love of this family with nothing but a prayer that things would turn out. And now I have to find the strength to pick up the pieces of my heart and walk away.

I'll never again hold my girls and tell them how much I love them.

Or grasp all three little hands in mine as we cross the street.

Odd are that I'll never see them again period.

I know I existed before them and I always knew I'd have to exist after them. But those three little girls and their brother have changed me forever and it feels like my heart will never stop bleeding. 

It's so hard to sleep now...

Hide it Under a Bushel

One of my biggest vices is that I consider nothing so big a problem that it can't be avoided and ignored until it goes away. I am aware of it, I consider it a flaw, and I'm pretty sure it'll sort itself out if I just leave it alone for a little bit.

That was a joke (but sadly also true).

I could make a list of all the seriously big issues I've squashed down in a box and hidden in the back of my closet but that would mean opening that door and acknowledging everything that's wrong, I'm petrified that unleashing that mountain would bury me alive. I can't do it.

But then I wake up one morning to find that one of my demons has escaped its box and is sitting on my pillow, watching me. And instead of dealing with it, I run.  The only problem there is that it's loose now and can follow me.

So it does.

It establishes a perch on my shoulder and whiles away the hours scratching at my face and yanking on my hair. It spends days whispering in my ear, weeks gnawing away at my nerves. At some point I'm faced with the horrifying realization that I can't ignore it any more and it must be dealt with immediately.

And lately all of my issues have come out to play.

Tonight my health demanded the spotlight.

I was diagnosed about 5 years ago with a pre-existing condition that makes it really hard to get insurance after a move. It's chronic, it's autoimmune, it's inconvenient. I was sick for two years before the doctors finally realized that my problem was more than stress and those tests? Never again. Never ever ever ever ever again.

When I got diagnosed I was put on medication: 15 pills a day, every day. I couldn't stomach that for long so they swapped me to a Tier 3 drug. That means that when I moved out of state and every insurance company refused to cover me, my medicine would cost $300 a month. As someone living perpetually paycheck to paycheck, this was simply not an option and I stopped taking my meds.

That was a year and a half ago.

I've been mostly fine. Some foods make me sick but if I avoid them it's not an issue. Every now and then I'll have an... "episode?" but it goes away by the next morning and hasn't been consistent enough that I can't ignore it... until two weeks ago.

All of a sudden my body was rebelling against me, alarms were blaring, and tonight I realized it can't be ignored.

My inconvenient health issue has suddenly become a serious problem that needs to be dealt with immediately.

And that paralyzes me.

Please pray.