I’m Becoming Jaded

I’m becoming something I never wanted to be… Jaded.

I play an online game.  I can’t devote much time to it, but when I play (pretty much every day for a few minutes) I make sure that I help all my ‘neighbors’ with their stuff that needs neighborly help.  I see their crap flourishing.  I go back to my spot and I see… in three days six people have bothered to stop by and help.  six.  I’ve helped 37 and six have bothered, in two days, to stop and return the favor.  I’m pretty sure I’ve played the game for the last time.

Bear ordered me something from JCPenny’s on DECEMBER 4.   I found out last night that it probably won’t make it here by Christmas.  So many people ordered on the after Thanksgiving weekend that they are SOOOOO backed up.  Penny’s says it will ship after 7 to 10 (or maybe 14 or something) BUSINESS days… maybe… Penny’s is polite enough when they answer.  I have given up trying to get a human on the phone.  The shortest wait time I’ve ever encountered over this is 65 minutes.  Frankly their hold music and stupid recorded reassurances that they value my call is not worth the wait.  Chat is always “too busy” and they are only open during work or after I’ve put in a long day and don’t want to sit on hold half the night.

Christmas is supposed to be good.  I watch bear get more and more and more morose because all he sees is that all Christmas means is $$$$$$$$$ and presents to anyone.  He’s pretty much convinced that the Grinch was right to begin with.  Without presents and bows and glitter and glitz, Christmas means nothing to a lot of people.  When you are struggling with the reality that this Christmas might be your last (that this week, this hour, this day might be your last) you start to see things differently.  He’s struggling with not being able to get out in the cold because he can’t breathe in the cold and he figures he will be stuck inside all winter (and it’s not even winter yet) and with realizing how few people even really care.  I go to work and he has no one to talk to if I have a meeting or an issue that runs through lunch (and I work in IT… issues nearly always run through lunch…. I had lunch last week one day… it was a really nice change).  He sits around and thinks and wonders how he managed to fail everyone.

I see the Mary Sunshine posts on Facebook… the ones full of platitudes and sage advice that they spout but don’t live… I wonder if the people who are posting some of them realize how much the platitudes hurt because they ARE empty and they are drivel and come off a lot like sanctimonious horse shit.  Is that how I sound when I share things on my wall in a lame attempt to make myself feel better?  Should I stop because that’s how I sound?  Maybe it is.  Maybe I should just stop.

Maybe

I’m struggling to stay Mary Sunshine.  I’m trying to keep seeing the good and the bright side and… some days I’m failing miserably.  Even with the stupid happy pills the doctor gave me… some days I just don’t get it and I just don’t see.

I don’t want to be jaded.  I don’t want to stop trying to make the world a better place.  There has to be some irony in the fact that halfway between infusions when the RA dragon has taken its nap and I don’t feel like there is ground glass in my fingers… that this gloom has over taken… and I’m not sure what I’m going to do when Christmas is over and I can’t even watch out the window at the people who come to enjoy the lights.

Love and Light
April
12/19/17