do you have a vacancy for a back scrubber?

Yesterday was a day for me to get yelled at.
Okay, the truth of it is that nobody actually yelled at me, but I feel bad for letting people down.

I went to have lunch with my parents, who were in town for a few days. They're looking after my nieces while my sister and brother-in-law are in Mexico.

They got on me about not returning their calls. They called me a couple of times last week, and I never returned the messages or whatever. Maybe they were over-reacting or exaggerating, but they said they were thinking about calling the hospitals and the highway patrol to see if anything drastic had happened to me. Nothing has happened to me. It's just that my mind has been elsewhere. I've neglected them and I've neglected some other people too.

This neglect has cost me my relationship with Karen. She's rightfully feeling unfulfilled with the amount of time and attention that I'd been giving her. I haven't been making the time for her lately. I've been stressed out about my job change and my decreased paycheck. That's certainly not a good excuse for neglecting her, but the stress involved with that has absolutely been a roadblock to my ability to relax and enjoy myself.
That's the paradox. I don't have any work-related weight on my shoulders, so it's a little liberating, but the smaller paychecks are sort of a hindrance to relaxation.

I'm sorry as hell, but until I get my head in a different place (and some of this is purely mental), there's not much I can do to change that.

We've agreed to be friends, and I hope we will be. Maybe some day I'll be able to give her more of me. Unfortunately, I can't right now.

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