The Tunnel Darkens - 12-7-08

It started with the Thanksgiving Day conversation about relicensure. Yes, that’s where it all began, the spiral downward, the devolution of my positivity, my power, my hope which is the cornerstone of the Secret. Steadily, like an accelerated dry-rot, I find myself here. I can no longer see meeting my mate, I can no longer see leaving teaching after this year to stay home with my family. I salt my food with tears and stain my pillow with them and dully accept that there is no way out, neither now nor later. I see going through this year at Newsome Park and the remotest possibility of transferring to another school in the district. I do not see somehow sliding into another district closer to home, nor getting a position outside of the classroom. I see this as my future.

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I did take something from Mom’s lecture about the economy and all the layoffs. It informs my perspective, perhaps in the way Mom intended. I see now no other job. Forget leaving the workforce entirely to be a housewife and stay-at-home mother. Talk about a pipe dream. No, there isn’t even an option outside this job, in this district. I saw that when TowneBank’s stock finally took a dive. I can’t risk joining any company now – last to join, first to go. These enormous layoffs are by no means the last we’ll see. The economy looks to be in store for these dismal conditions for at least several years. So I stay. I can appreciate the job security. In Newport News, I have tenure. I can’t be fired outside an act of God.

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And so I am left here, on a barren landscape and weak and blind enough not to see all the good in the face of all the hopelessness and pressure felt by those left with no job at all. But I do appreciate that fact, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am looking at a long haul ahead of me, struggling every day for peace and happiness, remaining a person of small things, of small pleasures. God, that’s a bleak picture. It will go on so long I will truly forget what lightness is like, what it feels like to be eager to wake up.

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Unlike my grief all those years ago, when I had the sharp-edged blessing of ignorance, with no idea how long I would have in the valley in which I found myself – and a good thing, or I never would have survived – in this situation, I may not have an ending date, but I do know I have at least seven months, and quite possibly a year or two past that. And the only comfort I have is knowing where my next paycheck is coming from – a significant blessing and one so many hunger for, but it can’t give me joy, only a quiet acquiescence. There is no joy in the world right now. Those with no jobs certainly have none, and it’s dying out with those who have the jobs left, with the added responsibility left by those who have gone. All belts are tight, all eyes shadowed, all shoulders bowed. And I am one of them.

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And I am afraid I don’t have enough faith to withstand reality, the reality of the economy. I don’t have hope enough to keep believing a man will come along and marry me soon and support me so I can escape this. As long as I see it as an escape, I suspect God will hold it away from me. Something about motive. He says he rescues us, but I rather think that’s from actual danger or emergencies, not a lingering despair and stubborn unhappiness that resists all attempts at manufactured happiness.

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When I had talked with Mom on her birthday about my quandary about Match.com, we talked a long time, and to help me see that the universe is working for me behind the scenes and that all of the creation of my future doesn’t rest solely on my shoulders, she told me that Jinxie, one of her neighbors who I absolutely love and who was quite taken with me, wants to bring her son, Tyler, to the house when I happen to be there and see if we hit it off. Mom hesitated to tell me that – Tyler and I were supposed to be ignorant of the well-meaning machinations of our mothers – but she told me in any case because she wanted to encourage me that my belief in my future was putting a lot of things in motion. And I didn’t get all my hopes up about Tyler even though he’s absolutely hot and has so many of the qualities I want, mainly because he lives in New York and shows no inclination to relocate back home. But I did start thinking, even wondering, if he might fall in love with me enough to move back here with no regret or bitterness, which did for the first time make me wonder if I could really ever be enough for a man to move to me willingly. But anyway. It did encourage me.

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But now I think dully why would it work with Tyler? Why should he be the One when no one else has been? Before, I saw that history with a new, more reasonable perspective, that my mate is so perfect for me, that there could only be one person for me, that of course it would take a little time. But now, I just can’t see things that way. So much for the interpretation that staying at this job would allow me to coast so I could focus all my attention on attracting my perfect mate. What is actually happening is that this job is stressing me out so much I can’t see myself investing any energy in anything else. I couldn’t respond to a man if I tried, and I can’t picture, with all this mental fuzziness, a man putting enough effort into a first meeting with me to warm me up enough to respond.

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So I’m left with the depressing, lonely picture of staying alone in this job for years. I weep when I think of my son, wanting him so bad and wondering if he’ll ever come. I supposed I don’t want him so well as I did before, as I’m not doing such a good job of investing that desire. And yet I think now that all this would be so much more bearable if I was in love. I probably shouldn’t think of love as such a drug, but it sure would dull the pain.

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And it’s cold, because it is now getting on to the middle of December, so the winter has begun, despite delaying for as long as it could for my sake. And that winter which would be the first winter I would spend not alone is starting to stretch on the way all the others have done.

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It’s Sunday night and I’ve been crying sporadically as the clock crawls closer to bedtime because it means I have a whole week at work ahead of me, and that’s how it is now. That’s how it will be, as I have lost hope having finally grasped how bad the economy is. This is what is in store for me. That is my future. And as depressed as I am about my present, how can I generate good feelings to bring about a different future? When everything is bad or worse, how can you turn things around? This would be where God comes in, but he’s giving every sign that I am supposed to stay where I am indefinitely, and giving no sign – as ever – that I can at least have the comfort of finally meeting my mate.

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My mother asked me to distinguish and prioritize my desire for marriage and my desire to stay home. I rebelled against separating the two, running true to form in wanting everything which should be beneficial with the Secret but hasn’t proven to be yet. But I had to admit to her I wanted marriage most of all desires. I want not to be alone. I want to be seen. I want to be touched. I want someone to tell me they are choosing, above all things, to be by my side. And after talking with Margaret today, the day of Morgan’s baby shower, jeez, again I just want to get it over and done with and stop dealing with comments and expectations. But how dismaying to face the possibility for the first time that I may have to pick and choose my future, take marriage now and maybe staying home with my family later. Will I have to wait to have children for long like so many others do for finances’ sake? Will we struggle with money like so many others do? I know I’m being greedy, but I have long since accepted that part of my nature is the unqualified desire to have all or nothing, despite my efforts at moderation. But if I had to choose, I would choose marriage. But I also don’t know why I’m killing my hand to explain all that. I don’t have any belief left. All I see, all I feel and hear and taste and smell, is more of the same I’ve always had, chained to this classroom and my empty bed. I am tired. I am so tired. And I fear I am only breaking up my future to add to the shards of my present laying jumbled at my feet.

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Is there anyone who would love me? Anyone who would like the look of me and be compelled to be near me? Is there any second glance in my future? And any man who could do the work at first because I can’t seem to raise my limp arms or dark eyes? Do I have to do all the work? Can I never feel the exhaustion, or doom myself if I do? Is there anything more in store for me?