Landslide

Maybe it's just that you don't notice when one stress comes at a time because you can handle it and move on, but it seems sometimes that you never get one stress at a time you get a handful that all pile up at once.

I consider myself pretty laid back. Most people consider me fairly laid back. Most of the time I put off making plans or promises because I like to kind of go with the flow or make last minute decisions. But that doesn't mean I don't like plans and organization. In fact I think part of the reason I hate making promises and plans is because of how much I hate breaking those plans and how much it bothers me when someone breaks my plans.

So I'm stressed right now. Plans have been broken...really broken. My roommate was supposed to move out on Tuesday and fly out on Wednesday morning. I was planning on renting a carpet cleaner on Wednesday and cleaning the carpet in her room so that I could begin moving my stuff into her room by the weekend.

My birthday is on Monday and I took the weekend off of work and then scheduled to be off on my birthday so with my normal days off I would have off Saturday through Wednesday. I've been talking to friends about possibly camping for the weekend or doing some other fun weekend stuff that I don't normally get to do because of work.

My roommate had 5 friends helping her move her stuff on Tuesday. But she continued to go through the 15 years worth of papers and mail and books and receipts and birthday cards and clothes and games and belongings she has amassed at a snails pace while everyone stood around trying to get boxes to load into the truck. The piles of stuff were insurmountable and when we finally decided to leave to head to the truck yard where we had to load a 6'x7'x8' cargo container floor to ceiling her room was still FULL of stuff.

When I say FULL I do not mean a normal person's room full of stuff. The normal person doesn't own as much stuff as was still remaining in her room. There is easily 3-4 peoples' stuff still in her room.

From the cargo yard they went to return the truck...at which point one would think she would return home to pack more. But instead she went dancing. At 2AM she decided that she couldn't finish by 10AM and used my computer to reschedule her flight for a day later.

Wednesday when I wanted to be clearing out her room it was still full of stuff. In addition the upstairs had recycling materials and stuff for Goodwill and bags of trash and an enormous pile of boxes that she had collected over 7 years. I spent the day sorting the recyclables and breaking down boxes and finally had a friend come over and we loaded two cars entirely full and took most of the recyclables to the drop off station. (The bags of computer electronics, and batteries, and old medicines all have different drop off locations so we couldn't do those). When we got to the drop off site we still had to pull pages out of binders and spiral notebooks before depositing them. When we went to leave and go home she told me she was instead going to meet an old boyfriend for dinner...she didn't return home until after I went to bed at midnight.

This morning my roommate told me she is delaying her flight for another day. She believes she can get it all done in one day. I'm looking in her room that is still completely full of stuff and KNOW that she can neither go through it all in one day nor can she have time to do things like take the ever-growing pile of stuff to the salvation army or get a new copy of her car title so that she can donate her car, or take her uncle's computer back to him on the northside of Chicago. So either she will have to delay more, or she will leave it all for me to do. Neither is an option pleasing to me.

My roommate has known she was leaving since January and has been home since March.

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At work I have someone I work with who is quite incompetent. She only works a day and a half a week at my store and yet I have at least one customer a week tell me they will never shop with us again because of her. I came in today after two and a half days of heavy labor to face a pile of catastrophes she has created.

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My grandmother is sick. She broke her leg and bruised several ribs in a fall last week and went into the hospital. She has gone downhill quickly. She has not been able to swallow and has a feeding tube. They said that when she tries to swallow some of the food is going down the wrong tube and into her lungs. She is not coughing/gagging properly and so the food is slipping down her windpipe putting her at risk for infection and pneumonia. She has been asleep most of the time with painkillers and has developed bad bed sores on her backside. There is a possibility she won't last long.

I had not solidified my plans for my birthday weekend and decided today to book some last minute tickets home to visit my grandmother and family rather than having a party or going camping or rafting or skydiving as I had been considering.

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I mourn my plans. I suffer from the loss of my expectations. I want a hug to last a few days and insulate me from the world. I want a large, fluffy, white and sweet marshmallow to envelop me and block out light & dark and good & bad and time & memory. I want to rewind or fast forward or pause or erase. I want to trade places and let someone else take over for a few days of my life. I want to hit and bite and scream and hug and cuddle and collapse. I want release.

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