Rearrangement

So, beyond my usual post-holiday, post-birthday feeling of melancholy, I am seriously freaking out. I feel like a cat stuffed in a box. Against its will. I go to bed on Sunday night with a knot in my stomach because I DO NOT want to go to work in the morning. I try to be grateful that I have a job that a) provides rudimentary health insurance and b) is flexible enough that it can work with my kids' school schedules and sicknesses, etc. But OH MY GOD it is like being pecked to death by chickens. My soul is shriveling at the thought of it and a shrivelly soul is just not cute. Ask anyone.

I have just been overwhelmed with this feeling that there is something I am meant to be doing and apparently slingin' joe isn't it. Which, yay, but I don't know what it IS. Maybe I can't know till I quit the job I have. I think part of me is waiting for permission to quit. Part of me wants my husband to say it's ok. Maybe that is the thing I need to do.

Oh. Something just occurred to me. I need to feel used and exhausted and empty because that's how Shawn feels. I feel guilty because he has the bulk of the bills on his shoulders, so if I am miserable and burned out, too, I feel less guilty? I would feel bad to be happy while he's not?That is CRAZY. How is both of us being a mess any good? Wow. I didn't know I felt that way.

I have been reading Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight. In it she talks about how when a caterpillar goes into its chrysalis, it doesn't just sprout wings out of it's body and emerge a butterfly. It almost completely dissolves into goo and that goo reassembles into a new creature. That's how I feel. Changing. It's not gonna be easy or pretty, but I feel in my hopeful heart that it will be worth it.