I looked at my phone today and realized that it’s just about a month until the next legal thing. This time, however, it’s not just another spot on the calendar. No, this time, there’s an official letter to go along with it, with a court date, and a time. The panic set in swiftly, and my heart has been in my throat ever since.
A friend posed a question recently:
Are you a person who believes that worry is an external thing called a “pit” that forms in your stomach like a peach seed of fear, or that the “pit of your stomach” is a location that’s always there, but when you feel a foreboding feeling, that’s where you feel it?
After this morning, I feel like it’s a bit of both. You feel it in your center mass, heavy, like it’s suddenly created its own gravitational pull. Then it becomes that peach pit, that seed of fear, and it grows. It plants itself in that fertile pit, and it puts down roots, and it grows. Like grains of sand in an oyster, that pit just build up, as though each worry multiplies and adds another layer. The pit grows, and sits solidly in your stomach like that Thanksgiving dinner at your weird aunt’s house that year.
And that’s where I am right now, in the scared place, with the rock in my gut. I’m just worried about everything. I feel like I get that one little tiny worry what’s going to happen, and now it’s just spiraled into everything else. I add a layer of what happens if he needs to set bail again?, then I add onto that a layer of what’s going to happen the next week when they have the actual arrangement? All that builds up, culminating in what’s going to happen if things go really bad and he has to serve time? What happens if he’s not allowed to stay in the country? I think that’s one of my biggest fears.
There was an awkward moment the other night. We were cooking stuff for dinner, and he grabbed my phone to set a timer and to Google some ingredient substitution. Of course, Google being ever so helpful as always, showed him my last search terms, which were all related to things like “when is bail reset” and “foreclosure vs short sale”.
I’ve started putting away extra money every week, trying to build up a little cushion. I’m trying not to touch it. It’s Halloween, and I fucking love Halloween and dressing up and making a costume, but this year I’m opting to simply use one of my kigurumi again. I need to be an adult now, in case I really need to be one in a few weeks.
