Checking In

It's been so long since I updated, and I've been terrible about responses to others ( on blogs and boards) that I wonder if anyone still checks in here.

I'm here.
I'm just too depressed to write anything.
I wanted to write about Katrina, and how I felt about the images we saw, but I couldn't.
It was too big, too much.
I was home sick from work on Weds and Thurs of that week ( I turned my head wrong or something, and a spasm in my neck gave me a headache. A stress migraine or something. I decided to call in sick, and I never do that for myself. I tend to save the sick days for my family obligations, but the headache was pretty bad) .
I watched the News about Katrina obsessively for 3 days. I was overwhelmed with the News of Katrina. Like many of us, I cried, and I prayed.
( And more than once I was thankful that 14 years ago my Hubby talked me out of naming our daughter "Katrina")

But I coudn't write about it, or how I felt about it, or write anything at all.
I read alot, but couldn't write.

I've had some set backs in my life lately, some heavy strss stuff , and I've felt guilty about my problems in the midst of those that had so much more to deal with.
Last week at work I broke down and cried, and a friend told me that it's okay to cry. She told me that even though my problems were small compared to the enormous troubles of others, that they were still problems.
She told me I shouldn't feel guilty for worrying about my stuff, because no matter what happened outside of me, my troubles hadn't gone away. She said that just because there were people with bigger toubles, that didn't mean that mine were any less real.
But it still feels like I'm just whining when others have so much more to deal with.

So I don't write. So I do the hermit thing, that is so comfortable and so not helping me or my family.

I wish I was one of those people that could just climb into bed and not come out.
I want to say, " I'm depressed." And have that be enough of a reason to quit.
My Mom did it, she would just drop out when things got too hard to deal with.
I sometimes think she spent most of my childhood in bed.
She was sick, but she was also weak.

Sometimes I wish I had that luxury, but I don't have anyone to take care of everything if I just drop out, give up.
She had me.
But then I think about all those that have troubles so much bigger than mine, and remember that I promised myself that my child would never carry the burden of my moods , that I would never make her take care of me.
So I get up, and I make the most of what I have, and I laugh when I don't feel like it.
And I pray for people I don't know.
And I wish I could give more to others, because that is what I want to do, more than anything.
More than climbing into bed and hiding from the world.

But I can't, because we are being sued, and I have to respond to these papers we got served to us last week.