personal struggle wednesday

sometimes most-times it's hard to work where i do. outside of many of the reasons my family and close friends know about...and thank you for listening...working with exceptionally elderly folks, seeing those go from walking to walker-ing to wheelchair bound- seeing people come in...and then leave-to home, to Home, to hospital, etc. it makes you face your life in a different way.

ever so often, a long term resident will pass away, it's happened before, it happened today. it. is. strange. it. is. sad. and often i look at someone who has passed, who's life i only knew for mere months and think about my own mortality, my own life.

i end up spending many of my days walking by, next to or slowly behind one of my residents, smiling politely, then once past thinking to myself in a panic, "i don't want to be there...ever." a personal struggle i have-outside of this place is managing to dismiss where i am currently in life and look to what is next. once married it was job, once (unfulfilling) job it was house, once house-one unfinished house-it's what is next, what is next. it's pathetic. it's angering. it's a struggle. i can't figure out how to be present. how to be here and in the now without becoming fearful of the "what if's" of the future, the excitements of the future, the tomorrows, the "in a couple months", the "when the house is done's." the "when we have a family's." the "when the agency is really up in and running's" the "when i find a real job's...."

but here i am (or there i am, as i am not here..but looking there). on top of this personal struggle, forcing myself daily to come into a place full of people who are literally at the end of their lives. just waiting for the end of their lives. i can't help but struggle even greater with thoughts of how i must "live my life to the fullest" "live life this way or that" to a point where my thoughts are consumed with not now, not ACTUALLY acting out this "fullest life" but instead pondering, mulling, focusing on what it will be like to be there....wherever there is...it's not here. and that's a problem.

today is rainy and windy and cold...like yesterday and the day before. today is hard.