This week I was greeted with the news that the situation up north has deteriorated, when any reasonable person would have expected that things couldn't have gotten much worse. The situation with the business and the industrial relations body is coming to a head in the next few weeks and for us, it's looking very ugly.
Mum is in a pretty medicated state and my sister has taken over handling the case, her recommendation that we settle out of court seems to be the right course of action, but mum can't understand how heavily the evidence is weighted against us. She wants to fight, in court, and for dad... a loss could result in us losing the business, maybe even her house.
Before this week I could have stated with some conviction that my sister was holding up well but the stress is getting to her and in our heated phone call on Thursday night, she was able to share some of that stress with me.
In turn I can't help but feel that this latest setback to my family is putting my recovery at risk. It's been a very sober three weeks now, during which time I have started putting some things in my life back together, even making tentative plans for the immediate future... the way a person does when they can actually see a future.
Still, I find myself growing so weary of reality so quickly.
I've been thinking lately about the person I used to be; someone others would have described as being cheerful, happy, social, relaxed, trusting, even positive. Every day that passes, I find the very idea of that person ever having been here more and more foreign.
I wake up drenched in anxiety, I spend the day lost in a haze of disinterest and at night I walk home cloaked in feelings of regret, remorse and an ever-deepening sadness about my life and the fortunes of my family.
Recently I've been noticing that I don't find many things funny anymore, taking other things way too seriously and also being quicker to anger. Alongside all of this... a growing sense, one that gnaws away at my conscience, that part of what is happening to my family is somehow the result of my actions (or inactions).
I don't know how to explain that this idea isn't just the warped thinking of someone who wants to be down on themself or someone desperately seeking to attach some karmic meaning to the tragedy that's playing out before them. It's just hard to accept that so many truly shit things, occurring with such cold indifference, should rain down in a such a short time.
Mum is in a pretty medicated state and my sister has taken over handling the case, her recommendation that we settle out of court seems to be the right course of action, but mum can't understand how heavily the evidence is weighted against us. She wants to fight, in court, and for dad... a loss could result in us losing the business, maybe even her house.
Before this week I could have stated with some conviction that my sister was holding up well but the stress is getting to her and in our heated phone call on Thursday night, she was able to share some of that stress with me.
In turn I can't help but feel that this latest setback to my family is putting my recovery at risk. It's been a very sober three weeks now, during which time I have started putting some things in my life back together, even making tentative plans for the immediate future... the way a person does when they can actually see a future.
Still, I find myself growing so weary of reality so quickly.
I've been thinking lately about the person I used to be; someone others would have described as being cheerful, happy, social, relaxed, trusting, even positive. Every day that passes, I find the very idea of that person ever having been here more and more foreign.
I wake up drenched in anxiety, I spend the day lost in a haze of disinterest and at night I walk home cloaked in feelings of regret, remorse and an ever-deepening sadness about my life and the fortunes of my family.
Recently I've been noticing that I don't find many things funny anymore, taking other things way too seriously and also being quicker to anger. Alongside all of this... a growing sense, one that gnaws away at my conscience, that part of what is happening to my family is somehow the result of my actions (or inactions).
I don't know how to explain that this idea isn't just the warped thinking of someone who wants to be down on themself or someone desperately seeking to attach some karmic meaning to the tragedy that's playing out before them. It's just hard to accept that so many truly shit things, occurring with such cold indifference, should rain down in a such a short time.
