You Can Have It All..

...except for your sanity.

On Tuesday of this week, we signed our lives away. No, really. In the morning, we had our house closing. In the evening, we bought a new car. Not a brand new car, mind you, but a new enough car. Surprisingly, buying the car took more writer's-cramp-inducing signatures than closing on the house did. However, as Cassidy says, looking at the interest/numbers/monthly bills of a house in comparison to a car makes buying a car look like a cake walk. He joked that everyone should buy a car on the same day they buy a house! Everyone should be so lucky...

So, we are moving into a new house. Not a brand new house, mind you, but a new enough house.

And we now have a second car. I no longer have to go to Westfield with Cassidy in both the mornings and the evenings, with Scarlet, if I want to use the car for a day. For something major - doctor appointments, job interviews, photography gigs. Or even something minor - getting out of the house on a rainy, dreary day. Taking my kid to the library to see her favorite fish tank. Buying a new purse because my strap broke.

All of that is within my reach. Right now, I could go anywhere, do anything..within reason, of course. I do mostly everything I do with a two-year-old in tow. The freedom and the endless possibilities are overwhelming, just the same.

And everyone keeps asking me, "Are you happy? You've got to be so happy! This is what you wanted, right? Right???"

Of course it is. But the weird looks I get when happiness isn't my first emotion. God, it makes me wish I had a simpler mind. I am happy, but I am a lot of other things too. My mind has the processing power of an overheated computer, I'm telling you. I'm rarely ever just one thing. I'm bittersweet. I'm a mixed bag. I'm thinking of the past, the present and the future all at once. Always. It's like time is happening all at once in my head. The absence of time? It exists. In my mind. Say, I won the lottery. My initial feeling would be joy, sure, but within 30 seconds I can assure you I'd feel nauseous, nervous, scared, undeserving, stubborn to the change it will bring to my life, reflection on the past and how hard I've worked, extreme over-thinking of the future and how it will all change. Scarlet's future. Having a second home. The work this will all bring. Will people take advantage of us? I don't want to be in the news! I don't want people to know I won the lottery. Oh, god. We are going to be on TV? Does this mean I have to stop budgeting? Sometimes, I rather enjoy budgeting. Oh, god. Should we switch doctors, cars, homes, everything? Should we upgrade our lives? Should we do that NOW? I need an idea of when this all changes? What should we dooooo? How will our lives change? How will our futures change? How will WE change?

Winning the lottery is a great, great thing, I think. But, happy? That's just too easy.

You can write me a prescription for Xanax about now, if you want, but I'll never take it. I process things fast and pretty early. I have always gotten by that way. Take freshman year of college, for example. Within a few hours of my parents seeing me off, I curled up in the fetal position on my new twin bed and cried for about...oh, eight hours. I missed dinner. I missed night one of parties. I missed meeting new people. Everyone, including and especially my new roommate, thought I might be crazy. I wasn't crazy. (well, I suppose that is subjective) I was just processing heavily, instantly. I thought of my past, my present, my future. It overwhelmed me. Happy? Yes, I suppose. Excited? Yes, I suppose. Somewhere in the jumbled mess, I really was happy. I really was excited. But I had to process to get there. I had to feel everything, all at once, all the time. I got to a good place after a day or two, or four, and never looked back. And then when all of my dorm-mates finally went through their homesickness and processing, I was there for them. And man, theirs lasted even longer than mine! Geez. I was better off than most, believe it or not...Sometimes you just have to get it off your chest right away. I don't always feel things so fast, or even at all, so I have to take full advantage of non-numb times when I do.

So, right now. New car, new house. Happy? Excited? Sure, maybe, somewhere? I'm a lot of things. I'm thinking about monthly bills and I'm feeling undeserving of these sudden life changes and I'm feeling overwhelmed about new decisions and I'm adjusting to the changes. Happy and excited will certainly be in the limelight of my mixed emotions. Eventually, they'll take center stage while every other emotion sits idly in the wings. This, I know. I just need a little processing time to get there.

The fact is, I'm not simple and uncomplicated. Sometimes I really, really wish I could be. Wow, what a life that would be! And other times I throw in the towel in defeat and bask in the knowledge that I have people I can over-analyze to. I'm ok being a little nutty. Besides, if life were so simple, what the heck would I write about??