I Want To Break Free

Imagine being in your late 40's when the realization that you've never really had autonomy over your own life slams into you like a slab of concrete. That's what recently happened to me, and processing this obvious truth while also trying to come to grips with the fact that I never knew before now is not a little thing. It all started with the weather ...

Yes, the weather. Stay with me here. Last year I changed jobs to one that gives me a 4 day work week. It was a blessed and much needed change, as a single mom of four kids. And yet this day off has lately turned into something else: I obsessively stalk the weather forecast, and absolutely lose my mind if my day isn't "perfect," or at least as good as the days I'm trapped inside at work. 

That was the key: my using the terminology "trapped." As I was trying to tease out why I was getting so worked up over the sun being out, I caught myself using the word trapped quite a bit to describe a large portion of my life. 

I took some time to think on this, and it all became so very clear. As a child I was a child, and obviously you don't have autonomy at that age. When I became an adult I did have a few years where I ran my life: I worked multiple jobs, started a band, lived in an apartment. I had dreams. Then my ex came along, and a quick perusal of my other blog posts will show you how that turned out. We weren't dating long when I'd surrendered all my independence to him, collateral damage of his insidious abuse and control. 

We were together for fifteen years or so, with the abuse only getting worse and my grasp of my life slipping further away. Then the wolf entered, an evil being who used my abused state to worm her way into my life as my "friend" and take down my home from the inside. She used her considerable skills in control on my ex and mirrored the "perfect partner" to him, and I was kicked right out of my own family.

Yes, getting away from that abuse and evil was a blessing and I'll never say it wasn't. But the independence I thought I was gaining? In many ways I still didn't, because now as a single parent I was forced - trapped - into jobs that didn't fulfill me just to keep food on the table. I still didn't have autonomy. I was trapped in a whole new way.

Last year, as I said earlier, I left a toxic workplace for one that seemed to give me a little more peace. And in some ways, it has. But at the end of the day, I'm still not doing anything I've ever wanted to do with my life. I see people who are apparently independently wealthy posting memes about "do what you love and the money will follow" and I want to scream. 

The money hasn't followed. I'm still forced into things I don't love and don't want to do. I'm still trapped. 

Disclaimer: in no way am I speaking about being a mom. That's actually what I want most of all, and desperately miss: being a stay at home mom. My feelings of being trapped have nothing to do with parenting my children. Rather, they have everything to do with being forced to be away from them. Trapped outside the home, as it were ...

So what does all that have to do with the weather? I think in my mind, the "perfect" day off has started to represent a small slice of the freedom I desperately crave but can't get. And from there it became its own monster. I see my days at work as being trapped, and in a way I am: I'm trapped at a job I chose because I had to, because I was trapped into a life as a single mom by choices other people made, after I was trapped in an abusive marriage, where I was trapped at home and not allowed to leave or make any decisions. 

I'm tired of being trapped.

I want to break free.