I can't sleep. It is after midnight and I have a million things to do this week and I am so tired and yet sleep eludes me because my mind races and deliberates, mainly over recent events. I am angry and sad and so damn bitter it isn't funny and I push all this aside to be there for the people I love but all of it turns into a resentment that churns in me as I mull it all over and over again in my head.
Tomorrow I am supposed to go to my daughter's preschool open house and the next day she is supposed to start and my anxiety level is at an all time high for a plethora of reasons. You see, it has been months since I have seen these people and the obvious questions will arise of "How are you?" "How was your summer?". Most of the time I would politely answer "Fine, how are you? How was your summer?" But at this place and tomorrow, I am going to have a very hard time doing that.
I have been going to this church on and off my whole adult life and even though I am not terribly religious, it has recently been a large part of my life as my children went to preschool there, I worked there, sang there, and did other various things there as well. This summer was quite possibly the worst of my entire life and my retort to these exchanges of pleasantries is supposed to be fake and "fine". I suppose I could reply with "Well, my husband came hours away from death, my cat did die, my pet squirrel ran away, the Air Force is starving and persecuting my sister, we are thousands of dollars in debt and counting with medical bills, oh and this lovely school let me go last month. How was your summer?"
My bitterness in this situation in particular is that if one good thing came out of my husbands 2 week hospital stay, it was that I became acutely aware of the people who care about us and the people who do not. It is sad to say, but in that church, the numbers of the latter are staggering. The preschool director spoke with me hours after we were admitted at the hospital out of sheer coincidence, but I heard from no one there again until the day before he was released. There were no texts, calls, visits, nothing but two Facebook posts from the people whom I had called co workers and who my children had called teachers for years. Even the two priests from the church came for several hospital bedside visits. Then again, the seafood restaurant that my husband had worked for off and on since 1998 couldn't be bothered to even do that, even with the late owner being a personal friend of his.
Honestly, if it were not for my grandparents involvement and the choir in which I have found a mini family, I would have nothing more to do with that church. Last week was the first time I sat through a Sunday without bursting into tears and leaving. I debated sending my daughter back because not only was I dismissed but one of the best teachers there, was let go for what I believe to be personal reasons rather than on the basis of professional merit. This is bad business and makes me question what exactly is going on there and since I am now just an outsider parent, I have every right to. But at this point, there is no other school to send her to that has an opening and I also do not want my troubles to be inflicted on her any more than they have to be. Therefore, we are giving it a shot and we will see how it ends up along with the rest of the mess surrounding me.
When I went to visit my sister she brought up a very valid principle of basic attribution psychology. Basically, if bad things happen to a person, it is perceived that they must be bad or deserving of these negative conflicts because bad things just don't happen to good people. This is the Just World Hypothesis and is an assumption that a person's actions always bring fitting consequences to that person, so that all noble actions are eventually rewarded and all evil actions are eventually punished. Most intelligent people read that last sentence and realize that bad things happen to everyone but in this culture and especially in a religious one, this is ingrained and can be conveyed unconsciously by many. My fear is that this was already present with this group of people tomorrow and by not playing the game with a smile on my face, I will simply confirm that I indeed, must be a bad person deserving of all my woes.
