How knowing I'm helpless is a comfort.

Helpless should simply mean "without help" but, like most things, it's not that simple.
My good friends at merriam-webster.com tell me that helpless is:
1: lacking protection or support : defenseless
2 a: marked by an inability to act or react b: not able to be controlled or restrained

I have been talking to a few friends lately about how out of control my life feels lately and the effect that it is having on me.

In case you don't know my roommate just moved out, and although I've been searching through friends and craigslist for a month I have yet to find a new roommate and am faced with either a tremendously high rent that will carve into my savings for July or spend every moment not at work packing up and finding a place to move to (still an incredibly daunting and expensive task.)Or stay for the month of July with the tremendously high rent and STILL have to pay moving expenses.

I just re-did my budget last month based on my new (lower) income (my pay is commission based) and was looking at only having $200 for non-fixed expenses each month, and so any place with higher rent is definitely a bad thing if I want to continue to eat.

In addition, my birthday is tomorrow, the 16th, and it also marks the one year anniversary of the last time I saw my Dad...He passed July 1st, 2008.

Talking to a friend late last month about all the stress in my life she suggested I ask around and find someone to host my birthday for me so that I wouldn't feel it another burden. I asked and immediately someone offered, and I was relieved that I wouldn't have to worry about it. But subsequently her apartment was broken into and then her father took ill and she flew home for a bit. So she just finally called today to say we could still have it this Saturday at her place. I'm not sure I want to even try, since it will mean a lot of work planning it myself, and I really don't know how I'd handle it if it was not a success.

To go along with my housing drama I have my mother's housing drama in that she is planning on moving this summer from the house I grew up in across town to the house she grew up in. This means that at some point I need to go back to Ohio and bring back even more "stuff". It also means that I've talked to my mom a lot about all of the stress she's under in figuring out the moving, trying to find time to deal with two households worth of belongings that need to be sold off and trying to get the best price for the stuff possible. They had an auction yesterday and made less money than they had hoped and the auctioneers did not take away the excess as my Mom had thought they would. When I expressed my disappointment in this (which is really just for the added stress on my mom) my brother got defensive and "virtually" hung up on me.

While discussing my feelings with a friend and saying how much I hated not being able to control all of these things in my life my friend commented on how hard it is to be "helpless". A little light went off in my head. Just like when I was first mourning my father and was in some way comforted when, on occasion, a feeling came up that I had a name for--sad, or angry, or isolated, etc. Somehow knowing that what I really feel is helpless (marked by an inability to act or react) is a comfort.