Trials and troubles

Ever feel like you're just beset on all sides? That's how I'm feeling recently. My sister has been released from a mental hospital for the fourth time. My mother continues to be one of the most difficult people I have to deal with, especially because of her bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses I do not have the strength to go into here. My father suffers from depression, and now in the midst of my sister's illness and my mother's illness, and his own relative lack of work, he has been sinking. And I am only a man, able to do only so much without cracking.

Now as my loans from grad school begin to mount up and I see the damage that I have done to myself, the debt I've accrued, I feel increasingly trapped. I will no longer be able to afford my health care that I just got, because thankfully my boss seems willing to increase my hours. Meanwhile, I'm not sure I can afford moving out of my parents' house because of the payments I have to make for my lonas, plus whatever health care I'll need to get. And even if I can move out, I don't think I'll be able to save too much money.

Meanwhile, the job still sucks and I am sick right now, though it's just a minor head cold brought on by excess stress, lack of sleep, and bad air quality in my room.

It is so difficult for me to move through the ordeals with any sense of peace. It is more like I try to escape the ordeals, get a momentary reprieve, and then feel like I'm right back in hell again. I so want to feel free, but living at home, working a job I don't like, and being in debt makes me feel so trapped.

Every time I stop to pray, I don't feel like I'm doing it right. Or rather I feel it's not enough. And I honestly feel so overwhelmed by the burdens that I don't believe faith is enough. For I feel I lack some kind of wisdom about the world and how it works, and have made too many mistakes.

Yet I'm only 30 years old. I wish I was feeling like my life was just getting started. I do not feel that sense of possibility and potential. I am more living in a state of regret, resentment, anger and pain, and I wish I could find relief.