Still Out Here

Hello?  Is anyone still out there?  Just a few spiders, lurking in the cobwebby corners?

I have been gone a LONG while.  Much longer than I would have guessed.  Here I am, up at oh-dark-thirty, blowing the dust off my long-forsaken blog.

I'm reasonably sure that no one out there will ever read this, and oddly, I'm fine with that.  I think the main reason I quit blogging was because I was becoming dependent on the approval, or at least, the attention of others.  I wish I could say I've matured so much that approval doesn't interest me anymore, or that I no longer seek attention, but that would be just flat out lying.

I was going to say that I haven't changed much, but that's not altogether true, either.  I have.  I'm unhappy.  I've been unhappy for a while.  People began telling me that I'd lost my smile, and they were right.  I still haven't quite recovered it, and I'm not really sure why.  Where the smiles have gone, or why I even lost them in the first place.  Why I don't feel happy, like I used to.

I love my husband and daughter -- they are not what's making me unhappy.  They are both wonderful, and I'm thankful that they are still the bright spots in my world.  JF, Offspring, and I have been through a lot since I last sat down and typed out my thoughts.  JF went through a layoff; a job search; a job that did its damndest to kill him; and a new job that has been everything he could have wished for (except in the salary range).  Offspring graduates from high school next year, much to my wishing she'd stayed small and needing me.

I spent the lion's share of a year sick.  I picked up an intestinal bacteria overseas, and it was not the most fun year of my life.  I think that's when I began to lose my smile, along with 77 pounds.  After all, it's hard to smile when you're retching up to 15 times a day, unable to eat anything more substantive than yogurt.

I still laugh, feel joy in small things, and enjoy experiences around me, but it just doesn't feel the same.  I'm not really sure how to pinpoint what is "off", but I know that all is not right within me.  I don't think that I'm depressed -- at least that's not really how I would categorize it, but I'm still at a loss to explain exactly why I feel off-kilter.   Actually, that's a good way to describe it -- off-kilter.  The feeling that something, somewhere is slightly askew.  Tilted.  Wobbly.

All I know is that I should be asleep in bed, contemplating the inside of my eyelids, but I lay there in the dark, with hot, silent tears running down my cheeks for no good damn reason at all.  I'll be damned if I know what provoked it, but it got me out of bed on a must-get-up-early-in-the-morning night when I know I'll be tired as hell, trying to manage a classroom full of children who could not possibly care less about addition and the 3 components that make up a book.  Children who will fight, bicker, and talk all day long, and still manage to get nothing done except driving all of the adults in the room slowly bonkers.

So, instead, I ramble the house while everyone is asleep.  I dust books off, and read to keep the demons at bay.  I try to kill time online, but I know I'm only making my morning worse by delaying.  I now have only fours good hours left to rest, and that's if I fell asleep right now.  Instead, I ramble away to a long-forgotten blog, and wonder how I can get that smile back.  If I can get that smile back.