Off the Grid - Week 65

With no full-time job, no benefits, a few weeks remaining on COBRA, an extension for unemployment I can't use because I now have three part-time jobs, I'm not sure if I'm off the grid or squashed against it like an unsuspecting insect.

Not an insect. A pin ball. We are all pin balls in a rough game played by a mindless child with a bad temper. I cower in the corner when no matter how hard the little wretch shakes the table, I don't shift. Not until his hand has slid from the lever, then, quiet and forlorn, I slide straight past and into the hole only to be jerked back into play the following Monday.

Like a thief sorry only that she's been caught, I want now the benefits of having had my own family without the eye-opening distress of actually having ripped my hips clear open and living with the results.

This year, when I've turned angry and emotions, spun like the arrow in a cheap board game, have landed on old friends and family, I've been silent here and in that silence seen my cowardice.

I am condemned. But I must not be silent.