2020 has been a shitty year. There is no more eloquent way to say it. “Shitty” might actually be the official definition of 2020. Even with COVID-19 and all of the unknown in the world, 2020 was on par to be a pretty exciting year for us. I took a job at a high school. I was super excited about this, because it was something so different than what I’ve been doing the last 4 years. Don’t get me wrong. I love my elementary kids but learning new tactics and programs seemed like a challenge I was looking for. With this new job, we decided to move closer to my new school. We put our house on the market, sold it in one day and started the house hunt for ourselves. We found a great house that we were very excited about, and then we heard the words “you have cancer.”
All of a sudden, these changes seemed so overwhelming. The thought of a new school and being the new employee that everyone felt sorry for (even though they didn’t know me) sounded awful. Feeling weak and vulnerable are things I’m pretty terrible at. There is also the fact that the new house was more expensive than the one we had just sold and we weren’t sure what cancer was going to cost us. We all know horror stories of illness not only taking a toll on a family physically and spiritually but also economically. We didn’t want to be in a place where he had taken on more than we could handle.
I was absolutely blessed to get my position back at the elementary school I was at. I know I could have made it work at a new school, but I didn’t know what cancer meant for me and I wanted to be somewhere familiar with people I knew. This year is going to be intense enough. If serious cancer treatments are going to be part of my life, I want to feel comfortable asking for help and reaching out to those around me. I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t do this in a new environment.
We decided to continue with the sale of our home. This meant we had two options, be homeless, or move in with my parents. We chose the second one. My parents were actually the ones to propose the idea of us staying with them. We graciously accepted. The transition to their house went really smooth. We lived about three blocks from my parents, so my kids were at their house all the time but had actually never spent the night there. When my mom would babysit late, she’d take them home to sleep in their own beds. I was so worried about them not sleeping well in a new environment, but they’re rocking it.
This year was supposed to be the year of so many changes for us. All of these changes were exciting and new. In some ways, this has definitely been a year of changes, but it’s also the year it all stayed the same.
Jo is a Mess 