Me & Mother Abigail

I have a new fantasy. When I need to go to sleep I put on the thunder on my sound machine and I imagine I'm sitting on the porch of an old, dilapidated farmhouse in front of acres and acres of grass that's waving in the wind in Nebraska and there's a thunderstorm coming. I pretend I live there and write stories for a living and never go to work at a hospital. I love that fantasy. It makes me feel like Mother Abigail in The Stand. I'm absolutely haunted by the idea.

I've never been much for reality. Never. Why is that? And more importantly, why can't I find a way to live a different reality that I'm comfortable with? One thing is this: I buy stuff because I'm trying to fill the void I have from not doing what my heart tells me to do. Then I have to do more of what my heart doesn't tell me to do in order to pay for all that stuff. And then I get even further away from my heart.

I asked my husband the other day if we could take enough money out of retirement to pay off enough bills so that I could stay home with him. He said we just can't and I understand that but I also know that the chances are that by the time I can afford to stay home with him, he'll be dead. I know it as well as I'm sitting here in the dark typing on my laptop at 12:48am listening to him snore beside me. And I told him that but he doesn't think it's a good idea. So we'll spend our years together like this. Me working and being so incredibly emotionally spent by the fucking insanity of a hospital emergency room that I have absolutely nothing left for anybody on my days off, including....no...especially him. And I'll order another movie or another book or some colonics equipment to fill the void inside me.