A better day.

I don't know why really--I guess I'll just chalk the whole thing up to hormones. :) I mean, it's far from a great day, I'm just so unhappy at my job. Four and a half months to go though, I'm SURE I can make it through that--right? I cannot believe I'm halfway through this pregnancy; on the other hand it's been such a tough one it feels like I've been pregnant forever! I wonder if I'll ever have a pregnancy that's not riddled with fears and bizarre afflictions.

I had a thought today, while driving into work; a pretty staggering one, actually; and that is that my life has turned out exactly how I wanted it to. And that sucks. From the time I could think for myself I was trying to figure out how to rebel and from the time I moved out of my parents' home and into my first college dorm I excelled at it. Now I'm 35; I have a masters' degree that I have no intention of using, I'm an alcoholic (recovering, but still...), I'm working at a dead end job; AND I have an amazing husband and a gorgeous daughter and a beautiful house on a quiet lake. It's not ALL bad, it's just so frustrating that it's what I made for myself. I wanted to go to Vassar or Sarah Lawrence, you know? I expected to have a real career that I loved. But it was so important to me to "prove myself" by drinking to excess and sleeping with as many people as I could. WTF? WTF was I thinking? How could I have done this to myself?

So here I am, trying to pick up the pieces. I'm trying not to mourn what I've lost for myself but to think positively about where to go from here. It's hard though, when my choices feel so limited. I feel like I'm stuck in this place of "I can't change my reality so I guess I'll just have to change how I feel about it." And right now that feels like a major downer. My husband makes like $16 an hour. When I'm working that's about what I make too. We're JUST making it. We have NO extra money. How do you build a life with that? What do you do when you're in your late 30s and you realize that you've both made absolutely terrible decisions up until now and that you're screwed? How do you deal with that?