Thirty-Six

I am slowly coming to terms with my life as I know it now. I realize that I can't change anything around me, I can only change my reactions to it. I can't force someone to hire me, I can't force A to work less hours, I can't force a stranger to become friends with me. I am still trying my damnedest to focus on the positive, and ignore the negative. I am trying to stop complaining about what I don't have, and enjoy and embrace what I do have. So I spend up to 14 hours home alone every day- why do I treat that as such a huge burden, such a torture? Why can't I learn to love the peace and quiet, why can't I learn to fill the hours with the hobbies I used to once love but never had time for? In the basement I have stacks of paperback books I've not yet read, I have several boxes of sewing supplies for the quilts I used to make. Upstairs in the studio A made for me, I have all my art supplies- paints, pencils, beads, colored paper, clay, a closet filled with empty canvases. In a spare bedroom I have my treadmill set up, along with a TV and a pile of exercise DVD's. All the things I always wanted more time to spend on and enjoy when I was working full time. Now I have that time, and I rarely do any of it. The hours pass by every day, and I have no idea where they go or what I did. Am I truly that depressed? I have plants sitting on the front porch that need to be potted. I have Halloween decorations half taken out of storage that I need to put around the house. I have a stack of new recipes copied from cookbooks that are simply gathering dust on the kitchen counter. Why can't I do anything? What is stopping me? There is no one else here but me. No one to control my time, no one to tell me what to do or not to do, no one to criticize me, no one to make me feel stupid. Just plain me, an overweight unemployed childless depressed 40-something housewife. Me, and a clock that ticks away my existence, by the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks. Why am I wasting that time? Why don't I see it as a gift that has been given to me? I have a husband who makes enough money that I can afford to stay home and do whatever it is I want to do. I don't have ANY commitments- no children, no family around. In the months I've been staying at home, I could have created a painting a day, I could have written an entire novel, I could have put away all the old photos into albums, I could have baked every pie known to mankind, I could have spent my time working with a local charity and made a new friend. But I haven't done anything, at all. And I don't know why. I don't know what paralyzes me every day when I breeze through the empty house like a ghost. This house is three stories, yet I rarely leave the main floor. I hover around the living room all day long, ignoring everything else. The cats get around the house more than I do. Some days I don't even turn on the TV, I just sit and stare. Or worse, I sleep the hours away. Most of all, what I feel is shame. Shame because I am wasting this time, shame because I can barely function and I don't know why, or how to change it. Shame because I have to lie to A at night, when he asks me how my day was and I say oh, just fine honey, I had a great day. I think he knows it's bullshit, but he pretends to believe me because he doesn't know what else to say, what else to do. There are a lot of women on my block who stay home all day, I see their cars at home, see them in their yards sometimes, but they all have children. I wonder what they do all day long, alone in their own homes. Are they as bored as I am? Are they watching the clock tick, counting the minutes until someone else will be there with them? Are they just sitting in front of the TV watching Bravo all day long? Most of the houses on my street have a stay-at-home mom. I can't even apply that label to myself. What am I? I hate saying I'm unemployed, because I voluntarily gave up my career to support A with his. In the beginning I used to say I was at home full time working on my art, but that is a crock of shit, as I've only completed two paintings in all this time. So who am I? What am I? What am I going to do with myself as time goes on? I keep applying for jobs, but me and another 100 people apply for each one. What will I do with myself if I continue to be a "stay-at-home" person? I am lost, but I am trying to find my way. I am trying to focus on something, anything, other than being alone. I am alone, but I am surrounded by wonderful opportunities that others would love to have. I just can't seem to get my head around it. Why is it so hard to be alone? Am I making it harder than it has to be? Am I just ungrateful, and whiny? A tells me all the time that I'm spoiled, a princess, but he says it with love because he is the one who spoils me and he does so happily. If I am unhappy, it's my fault, it's in my head, and it's something that only I can fix. But how? Where do I begin? It's been nine months now, of staying home alone, in a new city, a new state. This is my life now. I have to deal with it. Soon. It seems like such a simple thing. I'm not setting out to find the cure for cancer, no one is putting pressure on me. I'm only trying to rouse myself out of this black hole, and paint a landscape of a beach, or read a good novel, or bake a pumpkin pie. How hard is that? And why can't I do it?