The struggle is real.

So it’s extremely fortuitous that I’m not only on the roster for an appointment with my counselor but also that I’ve arrived early and thus have time to jot this down.

I’m in the midst of one of my mini meltdowns borne of one too many straws on the camel’s back. My counselor has raved on multiple occasions about what a strong woman I am, for all the blows I’ve taken, repeatedly and my get-shit-done attitude.

To paraphrase in the name of context, my husband and the love of my life was arrested in May of 2013. I bailed him out and he was arrested again less than a week later. I was left to clean up the mess left in the wake of his tailspin out of control in addition to trying to heal from the damage done to our relationship. Two months after he was arrested, I was kidnapped, raped and beaten within an inch of my life. This cost me my job, my car, my sense of security and my home. I was blessed to have family not too far away who were willing to take me in while I recovered and worked on getting back in the saddle. It took me almost two months and six different police agencies to file a police report (while ultimately was for nothing because the grand jury no-billed the charges against my assailant. It was an act of God that my assailant was arrested on unrelated charges and has been in the custody of various agencies since September of 2013.)

I got myself a good job in October of 2013 and have been there since. I was commuting 60 miles each direction every day until April of 2014, when I got an apartment in the city with my income tax return. I have since earned a promotion at work, and enrolled in college to begin work on an associate’s degree. If all goes according to plan, I should complete my degree around the time my husband is released from prison. Oh, did I not mention that? I’ve done all of the above on my own. I have survived and sought counseling and slowly but surely managed to begin to rebuild not only my life, but a good life for my husband to come home to.

In addition to all of my baggage, bills and life expenses, I support my husband. I make sure he has food and personal hygiene products, as well as correspondence materials to communicate with those he left behind. I take care of my in-laws as best I can, making efforts to see them every week or two. I also make arrangements to carry them on the 300 mile drive to visit my husband a couple times a month.

The moral of the story is I hold everything together. I fight kicking and screaming to push on, feeling that I don’t have time to falter or succumb to a sense of being overwhelmed. Well, I suppose that brings us to today. When my husband got arrested, the police kept his phone. I got him a new one when I bailed him out and voilà.. they kept that one too the second time. This past weekend the contract for two of the three lines I’ve been paying for over the last 16 months was finally up. I canceled them and now blessedly have only one line. I was going to go with q competitor’s plan where they’d cover my cancellation fees for the third line and would set me up with a new phone and number without a contract. Well my credit sucks (because of the excessively shitty hand I was dealt last year) and the competitor wants more than twice what the cancellation fees would be. So to hell with that plan. That irks me because in spite of my perseverance the actions of my assailant are still negatively impacting my life. So what else is new?

That’s not the straw though. The straw that broke the camel’s back is this: this morning on my way to work, a light came on on the dash of my car. It was the tire pressure light. No problem, I’ll handle it before I go to my counseling appointment. Well, my mood is shot after the competitor took the wind out of my sails, but I proceed to the gas station, check the pressure in all my tires and air them all up to the same approximate ballpark. The damn light refuses to go off. The final straw is the fact that I am a survivor; I am independent, self-reliant and have no real sense of defeat. I am no stranger to tactical retreat and believe it to be a pivotal step to be visited many times on the road to success. In spite of my ‘sticktoitiveness,’ I can’t handle simple, basic maintenance of my car. It was in this moment that I realized I am angry at my husband. I am angry that he left me alone and that he’s not here to handle these trivial things that clearly aren’t in my skill set.

I am a painfully rational, logical person. In moments like these, I experience inner conflict between my inherent logical nature and the emotional tendencies that go along with being female. I understand why I’m feeling how I am, but can’t seem to flip the damn off switch.

As I said, it’s fortuitous that it’s Thursday and I’ll be seeing my counselor shortly, because my otherwise exceptionally long fuse is on the brink of finally burning up.

Forget this terrible, no good, very bad day. Thanks.