Let's Not Pretend

Relationships issues haven't been the only issues that I've been dealing with.

I am at a major crossroads concerning career and family life. Every single day I drag myself off to work, which is beginning to feel more and more like an absolute dead-end of career with a lot of potential is I felt like scrambling to it at the crack of dawn, standing for 8 or 9 or 10 hours, scrambling back to daycare 2 minutes before closing. Instead, I get to work from 9 to 5 and watch my clinical skills go down the toilet as I fight on the phone with insurance companies and just deal with a ton of other annoying crap.

I will cut to the chase: I am considering leaving work and going back to school, not necessarily for nursing either. I spent the better part of this day on the phone with various administrations and entities, including but not limited to Social Security, my state's insurance program for children, Blue Cross/Blue Shield or myself, and more of the like. I have crunched out two separate budgets, one for the way it is now and one for the way it might be if I left work.

Can there not be a happy medium?

If I leave work, I retain my benefits, but I will only keep my head above water if I stream-line EVERYTHING. I will no longer have to deal with a ton of nonsense, the by-products of the most expensive and yet broken system imaginable. I will have tons more free time with Penny and be more available to Sadie, but I will be saying good bye to a lot of the extras.

All I know is that something, SOMETHING, has got to give. I certainly don't want it to be my sense of sanity that pops loose. Maybe after having a little bit of time to gain perspective I can return to work but in a different way. Perhaps mental health is just too intense for me, hits too close to home.

I don't know if it's the insurance battles and other red tape, or if it's something else like "delivering care" constantly that is driving me up the wall. I just feel like I don't have a minute to myself, a minute to think clearly, or what. All I know for sure is, I feel like I'm clawing for a way out of this mess. Everything feels so complicated and I wish it wasn't so.