Rubies in Crystal

I am drifting numbly through the days, spending most of my time alone.

My son is working through massive issues and I want to support him in that process in any and all ways I can.

The 'ex' or 'father' is being inexplicably, oh, can I say it, cruel, refusing to speak, even hanging up on me, not paying child support for our daughter who lives with me and is returning at last to school to take a night course that may help her get back on course.

I have employment worries as my employment insurance is coming to an end, and while I have a good independent business idea have not been able to afford the courses I need to prepare myself for marketing my services.

I continue to look for work while feeling caught in a nethersphere of possibilities all of which are indistinct like balloons you can't quite catch and which you're not sure if you could whether they could carry you to a place of security.

Of course I worry continually about my son in the midst of his bifurcated family that is warring with itself continually, if that metaphor is apt.

One of the main reasons I moved to Vancouver, a move that only lasted two years, was to remove my children from this situation in the hopes that they might regain their inner strength and happiness and energy to forge their lives. It didn't happen - I wasn't able to find full-time work and so we returned to Ontario. Where the worst things happened. Everything I feared with the 'other' household came to pass. The effects have been disastrous. In retrospect, I wonder if we should have remained on the other side of the country because we would have become used to West Coast life eventually and it might have been much healthier for all of us. My kids would never agree to this vision of what life 'could have been like' of mine, but I wonder if I'd just 'stuck it out' in Vancouver if somehow we could have bypassed the breakdowns both of my children have experienced since returning and once again spending all or a large part of their time in the other household (and I would include the total and irrational rejection of my son for an entire year by his father/the other household as part of the 'problems' generated by that household).

With no answers, but many ruminations, I drift humbly through the days, spending most of my time alone in intense meditation.

Perhaps it is life that is the poetic itself: the 'messiness of reality,' the chaotic undercurrents.