And I don’t think it is greed-driven at all. Mostly, it’s a wish for security. I know that’s what I wish for.

I don’t have very much: I have a college education, that I’m still paying for. I’m slowly making my way through grad school so that I won’t have much more debt afterwards (there’s nothing I want more, than to be debt-free). I gave up on finding someone to share my life with a number of years ago (there’s nothing like learning by non-experience!). And so I’ve basically given up the hope of one day having kids as well. I can’t afford to travel. I can’t afford a house.

But I have some very good friends and family that I love.

So when I think about winning the lottery, I think about paying my school loan. Paying any debt my family has. Paying debts for close friends, if they have any. I want that security and I want those around me to have that security.

But once that is done, I dream of a little house – craftsman bungalow, but the older style, not the more “modern” version. Made energy- and space-efficient. Off the grid, with solar, geo-thermal and any other non-carbon energy sources. Lots of nooks and crannies, and built-in bookcases, fireplaces and an open kitchen. Built on a rise above a trout stream, with a garden to the side and orchard trees.

Other people want big mac-mansions and fancy cars. I just want security and obscurity; and space.

So often I have to sigh and tuck that thought away because it is so far away from reality it hurts to conjure an image in my head.

As for travel – I don’t even like to look at pictures of other locales for very long because there’s not point of even thinking about it.

Part of me tells me that someday God will bless me with one of my dreams – at least. I mean I’ve waited and waited for the things most people get with life: promises of love and family. I’ve tried my hand at a number of things and never been successful at any. So why wouldn’t I get some of that security?

Another part tells me He’s already given me enough with salvation, and really I didn’t deserve even that. So why would I get earthly peace of mind, when eternal peace of mind is really not that far way?

I guess I’m just human and greedy enough to wish for both.

Funny how we don’t get what we wish for.

Today I’m going back to Essie Summers and Sweet are the Ways. Essie was a very simple writer. She wrote for Mills & Boon from the late 50′s until the 90′s. These would be more recognizable to Americans as Harlequin novels. But her’s was the first romance I ever read and sometimes I just need that simplicity, that sweetness, and that hope that life could be that simple and true – because my life never is.

Sweet are the Ways is my favorite Essie Summers book. I like both Dougal and Elspeth – the protagonists. I like the setting – I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand and that area – and I want to live in a small town, or just outside of one even though I can’t. I love calm, steadfast, gentle Dougal’s pursuit of Elspeth – but that he is completely a man and acts like it. I like that she’s tough, makes a home for herself and is determined to go it alone. I like that she’s a writer.

I like these things and it makes me feel better to read them and feel that it could be real even it isn’t – and for me it will never be.

Which also brings on a bittersweet melancholy – but one I don’t mind so much. There are other books that push that longing for something I can’t have, through to my fingertips (usually Madeline Hunter’s books – which I also love!) It often hurts.

But Essie’s books are too simple – not quite real, but dreamy in a way I wish could be real. That’s why I can stand back from them, just a enough to smile.

I have. These are, of course, my favorite books but I often wonder how the real world can be all there is after I wake up from those places. I so don’t want to be here, there is nothing I want here, that it can’t possibly be real.

It’s like this life is so empty that it can’t possibly be real.

But it is, unfortunately.

And to escape it I read my books and listen to my music and talk with my friends – but I’m still here. Because I literally can not afford to change these circumstances into something that I might even remotely look forward to waking up too in the morning. There is no place to go and I’m not moving.

So what does that mean?

Just like everything else – absolutely nothing.

You can’t escape it, except one way. And that is not a fair way, or right, or… possible.

There are some of us who can never escape where we are. There’s no place to go where things would be different. And nothing ever changes for the better, it just moves side to side, in a small circle of the same things over and over again.

That’s the hardest part – the things that never get better.

I’ve tried for years to better my life, but it has stayed stubbornly the same. The local is all that changes, and even that doesn’t change much – 10 miles in 10 years.

And when you have nothing to look forward to, the days are interminable.

People try to help, but it doesn’t. Even they know that there isn’t much chance of something good happening. Just this weekend my dad was trying to cheer me up after some bad news, saying maybe things will change, because it was “time for my ship to come in” – he couldn’t look me in the eye when he said it… yeah, I don’t believe I have a ship either.

It’s funny, there are two ways to train a dog: positive reinforcement, and punishment. Repeated punishment is what leads to breaking a dog’s spirit – I know exactly how that feels. After a while it’s hard to think that there could be anything positive ever again.

But the treadmill of life goes on. So you take a deep breath and some pain killer for the headache and keep going – some how.

I am despising work more and more. I’m on a slippery slope, and I know this. I just don’t know what to do about it.

The proverbial “runaway train” feeling is upon me. I wish it was viable to bury my head in the sand… wait a minute…

Actually, it’s almost like I haven’t been able to move for years, and only now my mind and body are beginning to realize it. And it’s not that I’m moving so fast I can’t control things (as in the metaphor of the runaway train), but just that I have no control at all and so am not moving anywhere – waiting for orders, like a good soldier.

…I’m so tired. “To sleep, to sleep perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub.”

I wish that God would make up his mind about me. Limbo has become my life, the very definition of me.

I’ve learned too well that my taking control of anything leads to failure, yet here I sit.

No movement.

Oh how she wishes it was different
She prays to God most every night
And though she swears He doesn’t listen
There’s still a hope in her He might
She says I pray
But they falls on deaf ears
Am I supposed to take it on myself
To get out of this place
There’s a loneliness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now,
It feels like cold blue ice in her heart
When all the colors mix together
It’s grey, and it breaks her heart

There’s a stranger speaks outside her door
Says take what you can from your dreams
Make them real as anything
It will take the work out of the courage
She says please
There’s a crazy man creeping that’s outside my door
I live on the corner of Grey Street
And the end of the world

Oh there’s an emptiness insider her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now
It’s more like cold blue ice in her heart
She feels like kicking out all the windows
And setting fire to this life
She could change everything about her
Using colors bold and bright
But all the colors mix together
To grey
And it breaks her heart…Oh and it breaks her heart
To grey, Yeah…

I don’t like to think about it often, but periodically I remember that in some ways I have failed as a daughter by not providing the quintessential experiences that a father is supposed to have with, or concerning, his daughter:

1. He never warned off a young man, coming to pick me up for a first date. You know, the “I have a shotgun and a shovel; I don’t think anyone will miss you” warning.
2. He’s never gotten to listen to some man request his blessing to marry me.
3. He will never walk me down the aisle.
4. He’ll never have grandkids to celebrate holidays and birthdays with, or tell terribly exaggerated stories about my childhood.

I always regret these things more when I remember the things I’ve denied my father – even more-so than my mother – no matter how unintentional.

Of course my father only rarely brings up these things to me, and it’s always with a wishful sadness for things that have never happened for me, rather than him. And that is the way of a parent. But it reminds me… and the hurt never goes away.

Really, it’s there.

You think that things can’t possibly get any worse – how can any more things possibly go wrong – and they do. Again and again and again and again.

I try to remember that God loves me and He has to be holding me up – because, how else am I standing. Though sometimes I forget…

Little things remind me: the moon is good. My pets. Birds. Stars…

… a few of my favorite things.

I still feel that kick me sign tape – and I can’t reach it…

I hate starting the day. I hate waking up, getting up, and going to work. I would not mind at all if it just didn’t happen.

But it always does.

And I get to work and something new and bad has happened – again.

Good things don’t happen to me. My co-workers think my work-spot, or maybe my chair, is cursed.

So many bad things, one after another, keep happening. And all I feel is this dragging failure – even if I can’t control it, I feel a failure. I have the refrain from a Garth Brooks song “She gonna make it” repeating over and over in my head:

“She’s gonna make it
And he never will
He’s at the foot of the mountain
And she’s over that hill
He’s sinkin’ at sea
And her sails are filled
She’s gonna make it
And he never will”

I’m the one who “never will” – make it, that is.

I go from accidents, to kidney stones, to mistaken identity, to illness, to incest/rape trial duty, to more accidents, to vet bills, to car problems, to no place to live, to more bills, to more mechanical problems, to someone hitting my car in the parking garage, to probably losing my job – again. And this is only since January.

The people at my work are beginning to think my work space is cursed – not truly, but I think a part of them believes it because it almost can’t be real, how many things can possibly go wrong.

And all this time, I’m alone – as I always am.

…alone, alone, alone…

There is no one here to share the burden, the pain, the racking pain.

I just wonder how much more I can take.

I keep praying… please, God just a little mercy… I know He’s there, but I can’t feel it any more. And I can’t even afford to go back to my church because I can’t afford the gas bills.

So I hide my failure, my guilt, my agony, my loneliness in reading about someone else’s story. Someone else’s story, who might have it much worse, but who gets the peace of closure in the end, while my agony begins as soon as I close the cover…