Drops of Radiance

I never really understood the pressure of living on your own until I actually did it. Everyone kept giving me the same rant – the same speech – and it was always “I know, I know, I know…” But I didn’t really know. How could anyone? And now, in between going to graduate school full-time, working 20-30 hours a week waiting tables, and coaching a high school cheerleading team, even sitting down to take a breath seems like a waste of precious minutes. Even now, this second, as I write this small passage, I feel as though I am wasting essential sleeping time, since even that has been cut back in order to let me have enough time in the day.

            I hardly see or talk to my friends. I have found new friends in the people I work with at Applebee’s, since I see them more often than I see any of my friends I have had for years. I live each week on about $200-$300, depending on how many hours and I can fit in and how well people decide to tip on a particular weekend. I can’t always afford groceries. But, hell, I don’t really need to when I have all but stopped eating. The stress of my life has gone to such an extreme that I have eaten perhaps two full meals in the past five days. Everything else I have tried to eat has upset my stomach, or else I simply haven’t had an appetite. I almost never can afford to buy new clothes. Budgeting my money to afford shampoo and body wash has become a chore. And that oil change? Maybe next week…

            I live every moment with a worry in my mind. Perhaps I am developing an ulcer, and that is why my stomach is messed up. I have nightmares nearly every night, over things as stupid as Applebee’s. Nightmares about getting too many tables to handle, pissing off the customers, and having them stiff me…

            Because really, my day-to-day life is in their hands. People just seriously cannot wrap their minds around the fact that I live off of that tip, and when it is only a 10% tip or less, that’s one more notch in my brain. One more reason to worry. One less bottle of shampoo I can buy.

            I can honestly say it is a rarity for someone to tip 20% if their bill is $40 or more. $40 should warrant an $8 tip, but I generally see numbers as low as $5. Every servers’ goal is to have a 20% average tip at the end of the night, but 15% is more of an average, because of people stiffing. We don’t get a paycheck because of taxes, because we are only paid $2.65 per hour.

            But, listen. I’m ranting, and that isn’t what this is about. Well, it is partially, I suppose. But this is more for me – I have so many things bottled inside things have been seeping out of me in more than one way – tears, vomiting, etc. The words on here are supposed to make me feel better. I’m still not sure if they do.

            I worry constantly. I’ve been told I care too much, which I know to be true. I care too much about my job, according to my favorite manager. I stress too much about money (but who wouldn’t when they are nearly $100 grand in debt?). I live with a boulder in the pit of my stomach. My father has become a completely different person than the one I grew up with, and he is engaged to a woman he has known less than six months.

            I still can’t quite put my finger on what it is about this that makes me sick to my stomach. I know I should be happy for him. I know that. But, my parents separated the same month as my prom and graduation my senior year of high school, four and a half years ago. I went away to college and got to ignore the situation for that entire time. They divorced some time in there, but it was all so nonchalant that I never really felt a blow. Then, I graduated from college and moved to my own place. My mother lives in Oregon now, and also has found a new love of her life, and this has finally become real. This is where I finally realize that my family is over. I never had a sibling to share these feelings with. My best friends were nearly all guys and had no emotional capacity.

            I feel so terrible sometimes that I become numb. Those are the times when my stomach tightens and disapproves of anything I try to put in it.

            I feel like I have no control. The systematic way I live my life cannot divert or else something will falter terribly – like my money situation or my grades (which are nearly failing anyhow). Everything is so out of my hands that sometimes I feel the world moving around me while I sit and wait and hope that someone stops to see me. To talk to me.

            I feel so terribly alone. I have such contradictory feelings of thinking that I should stop feeling sorry for myself and get the fuck over it, because by God no one wants to see me cry over my not-quite-so-miserable life, and feeling like everything is completely tumbling down and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

            Plenty of my friends have divorced and remarried parents. Plenty of them have money problems. Many aren’t doing well in school, but most are in school. Some live on their own and have full-time jobs. So why is it me that can’t eat, that is always on the verge of tears, that can’t find a single moment of joy in a day?

            I’m not sure. That’s what makes me think more that this is all completely irrational.

            I have been desperate for a moment to write. For a moment when I could do something that I like instead of something that I need to do. For a second to breathe and talk to something/someone that can’t tell me I’m too emotional or care too much or think, worry, whine too much…

            But this computer still can’t give me warmth when all I feel in numbing cold. It can’t show compassion or empathy. But I guess it will do. It has to, what other choice do I have?

            I feel like I’ve come to a place in my life where I absolutely hate it. 

I want to sit down and be creative. Write. Play on photoshop. Take a few minutes out of my day to actually enjoy things, like a good book. But I can’t.

When did that happen? Sincerely. I remember longing to be 21, much less another year older. Every birthday from here on in is going to be less and less exciting…and that is all I have left to look forward to.