What Am I Made Of?

I’ve been on one heck of a wild rollercoaster the last months, but the last few weeks have been beyond the scope of anything I could have imagined. I shared last week that our separation agreement was at long last signed (tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees later; the delays and arguments defying to me, and many others any reasonable explanation).

The good news is that my daughter and I could finally look for a home, a very modest one but a place to call our own. A mission to find two homes actually, some pretty weird goings-on at the house in which she’d rented a room at university resulted in a mad search this past week for new accommodation for her (a long story – but I’ll let your imagination run when I tell you a pig was involved. As in a farm animal, and that’s far from the worst of it). We were successful in one search, and hoping for good news soon on the other.

A dear friend said to me that it seems like I’m trying to squeeze three months’ worth of tasks into the next two weeks and I don’t think that’s at all far from the truth. Between coordinating efforts with social services, doctors, hospitals, lawyers, insurance companies, movers, superintendents, contractors (though let me not forget the efforts of friends to make this all a bit easier), I’m trying to keep my head from spinning off. In the past, I've seemed to always be able to juggle and orchestrate myself through any difficult situation. This set of circumstances however, take the prize.

Everything that is - in or out - of my control is sucking every ounce of energy from me. What was it that I was told about taking it easy before I start high dose radiation treatment in less than three weeks? What I’m trying to accomplish is beyond reason for even a healthy person,  and to go it alone in this state of poor health is even more of an outrageous challenge.

As I scrolled through my to-do list on my iPad (over thirty phone calls alone in the last two days) I sat back and wondered to myself where I’m to find the stamina and strength to pull this all off successfully. What are my limits? When is enough, enough?

As it happens often with me, coincidences occur that seem as if they are only puzzle pieces falling into the place that they were meant to land. Within hours of having that chat with myself to take stock of how I’m to attack the weeks ahead, a  Facebook friend posted quotes from various authors with advice on how to write effectively. The following from Kurt Vonnegut caught my attention.

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Who knows if our life plan is predetermined or bound by fate (I've been reading up quite a bit on Buddhism and Hinduism these days), but if there’s any truth to those concepts – it’s quite the sadist who wrote my life story out for me. And is this my chance to prove what I’m truly made of?