Reaching Out.

I need to go back to work. This is a need of two parts.

The first part is pretty obvious. Budgeting only works if there's something in both the "Income" and "Expenses" columns. Or if there's nothing in the expenses column, but that's not actually possible, ever. Therefore, there must be something in each column. Right now, my income is $289 a month. I can almost pay my half of the utility bills out of that. Almost, but not quite. Since there's also rent, gas, groceries, car insurance, and (imminently) daycare to pay, there's definitely a touch of disparity between the columns.

The second part is less obvious, but more important. (More important than groceries? Well, yeah. One assumes that the person I'm living with won't let me starve, or let us get evicted, since I've covered his ass more than a few times on both counts.) I no longer have my own identity. I'm a mum, a housewife, a friend, a lifeline, a food dispenser, bandaid giver, warm blankie... I'm many things to many people, everything to the one who matters most, but I am not me any longer. There is no me; I don't know who I am, or was, or could have been. I think that keeping house would be a rewarding life in and of itself, if I had more support from accross the room, so to speak. I would love to just be a stay-at-home mum. But that's never going to happen, and as long as I keep pretending at it, I am on the receiving end of constant, blatant hostility. And so, I need to return to work, find something of and for myself that does NOT involve anybody else, and I need to do it fast, before I forget that I'm a person altogether.