♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦
Topic #157
What keeps you up at night?
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At any given moment, what keeps me up at night can change. It either morphs, grows, or resolves—because that’s what any problem does. I hate when I can’t resolve something, especially when I’m made to sit on it and wait. I don’t mind, as much when the steps I take each have results in a positive direction. Patience, I have in excess, although to some it may seem that’s not at all the case. But, to them I say, not allowing abuse and negativity isn’t a lack of patience.
This world could use a lot more straightforward action in the face of abuse and those things that enable it. But, I don’t let that keep me up at night, because abusers would be so excited if I did.
What keeps me up at night is usually financial concerns. It’s not something I can resolve right away, or without a lot of effort. Certainly, this isn’t a problem that I experience alone. So many of us struggle to make ends meet, and there’s not going to be any reprieve without major reform. Good luck with this, when people ignore the truth for what they want to hear, or have bought into silly propaganda that holds them back from making effective changes across the board.
Financial concerns have kept me up at night for as long as I can remember. It used to be something that would resolve in a couple months, but now, as a single mom, the struggle stretches on. Daycare is a large part of that, as is rent and grocery bills. I haven’t gone on vacation in twenty years, because I can’t afford to. I rent a house with another woman, so I can keep a roof over me and my daughter’s head. A few groceries, and the basic supplies like shampoo and toothpaste, diapers and wipes, add up to several hundred every month. Car payments, insurance, doctor visits, and random other things that come up round out the list of my responsibilities and my pay doesn’t cover it all. My savings is all but dead. The kicker is that I still have about three years of daycare to pay before any semblance of relief will happen.
And yet, there are those worse off than me. I have no idea how they manage it. My mother grew up with nothing, and her fear of falling back into that is my fear. Neither education nor experience on the job is any guarantee that poverty isn’t waiting next month. A lot can happen to change everything, and it takes just a moment.
The fear of not being able to provide for myself, and now my daughter, is what keeps me up at night. My fingers are crossed that I will weather this difficult time, and I have the assurances of colleagues who have gone through this that I will. Yet, the struggle is still mine to experience and survive in this moment, and the stress is very real. Dismissing my feelings won’t help me through, but neither will wallowing in them.
Stress takes a toll on one’s health. Balancing in order to mitigate any extraneous incidents, such as stress related illness, is a job. And let me add, it can be yet another cost: healthy food/supplements, gym time, preventative care, prescriptions, and so on.
See how cyclical it gets?
Let’s hop on over to see what keeps the other authors up at night…
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