Baby Steps, They are Not so Easy to Make

For me the New Year is a new type of beginning. THIS New Year is a new type of beginning. I am beginning life without my father.

I am glad the Holidays are over. I don’t think I have ever been struggled so greatly in my life. I struggled, with my Mom and my Brother, to make it through the Holidays. Personally, I didn’t need a holiday at all. I want nothing, I need nothing. Except my Dad.

And he is not here. And it stinks.

We “celebrated” Christmas for the children. We tried to celebrate. I am not sure we did a very good job at it.

If it wasn’t for the kindness, the overwhelming graciousness of my Dad’s closest friends and people from his company, we would never have been able to buy anything for the kids for Christmas. I am so proud of my kids. They didn’t complain about the small Christmas, or the lack of overwhelming amount of Holiday Cheer that we usually drown ourselves in. They got it. They understood why things were different this time.

I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. I have to wake up every day and try to accept it anyway. I wake up and we try to do homeschool, and over the past week we are getting better at it. Our routine is finding it’s way back into our lives.

I wake up and try not to overwhelm others with my misery. I used to be able to start my day with a cuppa coffee, twitter, and facebook. I was able to chat about my life with friends, write about my wicked silly kids and read up on the latest news around the world. Now, I don’t know what to do or say.

I am taking Baby Steps. I am trying NOT to emotionally vomit all over the internet. I am trying to find some sort of normalcy in my every day life. Homeschool is the best part of my day. It helps me to feel normal again. It helps me feel like I can take another step.

I haven’t really done much in the cleaning department. That is one aspect of normalcy that I could do without. I never much cared for it anyways. And there is another Baby Step attempt at humor.

I made another Step in the direction of normalcy and opened up Quicken to pay some bills. Not the best choice for me. Of course it is a good choice to pay bills, but we have pretty much nothing to pay bills with. I really didn’t need to open up Quicken to see that we didn’t have enough to cover the bills. I didn’t need that smack to the back of the head to wake me up. I was completely aware that we are on the fact track to, well, nothing. I don’t know how to get my husband on the same page and help him to see that what is happening is serious. While I take Baby Steps to get back into a normal routine, I am working on Dave Ramsey’s Money Makeover Baby Steps and trying to save our house, and get out of debt. I feel like I am doing this all alone.

I wish I could go back and pretend I didn’t just look at our bills vs what we have to pay them.

I am thinking about taking Baby Steps backwards to stare into the face of denial. I want to wake up and pretend that my Dad is still alive. I want to pretend that I just paid all my bills. When the phone rings I want to pretend that the bank is not going to ask me, again, about foreclosure.

But, I don’t want to stand here wishing my life was different, wondering how everything went so terribly wrong. I want to move on, take Baby Steps and feel like everything is going to be OK. I just don’t know how to find that strength. Not today.