sometimes i just want to quit at life

it has been a rough week. 

i’ve been feeling awfully sick – sinus congestion that i just can’t get to go away. it’s the first week of school so things have been wild at work. an unexpected staffing change left the after-school program short on adults, so i stepped in and have been working (with middle-schoolers, mind you) from 6am to after 6pm, blowing my nose about 100 times an hour. uncertainty about a future i’m pouring my heart into has been adding significantly to what feels like such a heavy load. and, to top it all off, my car got stolen. 

seriously. from the parking lot at school on a sunny, bright morning. completely gone, just like that. 

the stress and wearyingness of all of that piled and piled until last night i just felt like quitting at life. the kids i worked with after school were terrors, my head felt like it was going to explode mucus, i’d cried and whimpered myself to sleep the night before feeling incredibly overwhelmed, i’d been running around campus all day putting out fires here and there, and then the san jose police called and told me they found my car and if i didn’t come get it in twenty minutes, they’d have it towed and i’d have to pay to get it back (i was forty five minutes away). i had just settled into the idea of claiming insurance money and being done with that crappy car, and now i was going to have to pay to get it back, probably trashed and empty. 

i just wanted to quit at life. 

i seethed and sighed for a while, feeling like nothing in my life was working, nothing at all. i processed a lot of frustration and anxiety and sadness and exhaustion (and snot) and then did my best to let it go. the boy brought me my favorite meal for a late dinner (only after i was locked out of my house for 40 minutes, of course…) and told me repeatedly that things will get better. my battered heart didn’t want to believe it, but i came around to choose to believe it. 

and as i knelt that night by the site of my bed, i thanked god for millions and trillions of blessings and beauties in my life and decided not to quit, but to keep going. 

and things are getting better.