Facing Facts

It takes a whole lot of time for things to sink in - for the truth to seep into your brain and once it is firmly lodged there - to face it. This is where I am now - ready to fill out endless forms and finally relenting to all of the necessary steps that must be taken - to sort out how I will carry on until the end. Pages and pages of them - as if one million years of official records and tax returns couldn't make the situation self-evident - I dutifully check off the boxes one by one.
I lived for many years with the luxury of a good job with all of the trappings of security that trails in its wake - yet I have always looked around me and at any given moment thought "there, but for the grace of God, go I" - in other words, I was terrified that blanket would be torn away and I would find myself in a place where everyday living felt like walking around with a begging bowl - back to the times when I was just getting started when I was less than self-sufficient. It will be a lost memory for some people whose parents, like mine, did not grow up in the long shadows of the Great Depression, carrying that unrelenting fear of want - and the fierce pride that makes any whisper of dependency unbearable. But now my frequent grand schemes to crawl back into the world of work - even temporarily - my denial about my physical capacity to contribute in that way - has been all but extinguished - flickering in the background but faintly in the sea of 'could have'...'should have'...
Formally ending my weak attempt at self employment by dissolving the wee consulting firm I half-heartedly embraced last year. Frankly such is my anxiety about this that one begins to calculate the financial advantage of not being here at all. It is down to that...the weighing of my liability - the cost of prolonging this. As a result of all this worry - the stress of the pending move - I have literally made myself sick - feverish - curled into a ball only to emerge momentarily for the endless cleaning that constitutes showing your sanctuary to potential buyers. Adages swim through my head about whatever morality tale is playing out - descending from more than enough to something that is still so much more than so many in this world enjoy. I blurt this out - over-share - as it is my way of taking these pieces and assembling them into some kind of shape I can hang onto - to assure myself this is not a dream - put it away - and create some space for hope to creep in.