Now I'm a taker, not a maker

Oh, don't get your knickers in a knot ---- this is not a political rant, despite the title. At least, I don't think it is. You know the old saw about a fish not being able to perceive water? At T minus 12 days until the election, it may be that everything is political and I'm just in denial, but I'm not intentionally trying to raise hackles or pit family members against one another.

My taking, at this point, is internal. I am once more in the place of being entirely "give out", as we say in these parts. Every day I wake up to the brilliant sunshine and deep blue of a Carolina sky in October, and think that this is the day I will feel good, have energy, not fall in the pit. Some days, I almost make it. I live in fear that I've almost used up my allotment of taking, and the people I love the best will back off and leave me to wallow in the hole. That hasn't happened yet, but since disaster-thinking seems to be my metier these days, I fully expect it.

Who knows what brings this stuff on? I can list the circumstances and get some pretty good agreement that some things suck right now. Top on the list, and seemingly the trigger, is putting my dying mother in "the home" a couple of weeks ago.  Of course it's sad when you are watching your mother die by centimeters, fading away like an old photograph. But doesn't that happen every day to people all over the world? Do they all become struck with the inability to function like normal human beings?

I have one task on the agenda for the day ---- pay bills. I've kind of been waiting until all the 3rd week payments get deposited ---- Jill's check, pension, social security, royalties. It's usually better not to take out more money than the bank says we have. But the funds have arrived, and still I stare at a towering stack of unsorted mail, some of which is emblazoned with bolded and highlighted due dates. That's what happens when you're a taker. You live off the dole and don't pay your bills. Ooooops. Sorry. I just couldn't help it. I'm a 47% kinda gal.

I'm not without resources. I have friends, family, professional help, even medication. I can't quite figure out if I'm being stalked by my old pal, depression, or whether this is a perfectly understandable and transient reaction to life. But that's what shrinks are for. Me, I just have to do at least a little of the stuff I know is good for me (I found a new AA meeting yesterday that I like!) and, as my ever-lovin' wife keeps telling me, go easy on myself. Easier said than done.

Maybe, just maybe, there are seasons for taking and seasons for making. Perhaps the cycles of ebb and flow apply even to me. Resistance is futile, and probably detrimental. Hasn't it been true, so far, that even the most painful losses later bring forth sweet fruit, as long as I don't harden my shell, hunker down, become immobile? Can I trust that it will happen again, that after the darkness, light will come? It seems, this day, this minute, so far away. But maybe just a spark, a tiny flame, a quickening of life, is all it takes to keep lifting my eyes toward the sky.