I don't know if I can post here any more. I want to, but I can't get my head straight any more. I don't think I have the energy.

Something I've learned in the last few months is how important it is to have a support structure in your life. I've always been one to support other people and rely on myself, but lately the burdens of life have been so great that it has become a chore for me just to care for my basic needs. I can't support myself any more, and I feel like I have no one to turn to any more.

It got really bad last week when I met with city officials over an addition project I am proposing for my house. People with nothing better to do than whine and get in the way managed to derail the meeting, and the city denied me permission to construct the addition. It is a fucking box that is attached to the side of my house, how hard does this have to be? Anyway, I went home and fumed for a while, the stress overwhelming me. I decided to take it out on my lawn. As I was outside pushing the lawn mower across the rows of weeds and grass, ready to hurl the lawn mower at some undeserving inanimate object, I looked up and my neighbor was standing there.

He asked me how the meeting went, and he doesn't know it but his words snapped me back to sanity. He was seriously interested in how it went, and after I told him how bad it was he was sympathetic. It turns out he had gone through a similar bureaucratic mess a few years earlier. He offered me some documentation to help my cause, and later his wife offered to attend meetings in support of my case if it would help. I told them how thankful I was just that they were supportive, because up to that point everyone I had worked with had put obstacles in my path.

It is amazing, but just as I was ready to give up and sell everything and move to a cave somewhere, someone talked me back to reality. And they were just being their kind selves. And thanks to them I started formulating my next move instead of giving up on myself.