Struggling...cont.

I HATE that there is such a taboo out there about hating being a parent. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have kids when I met John. At first, we both decided we didn't want kids. Both of us struggled with less than ideal childhoods (John's in some ways was even more messed up than mine; he wasn't even raised by his bio parents but by his half sister from his dad's first marriage). Eventually that changed after we married and I started trying to figure out my life purpose. Looking back, sometimes I think I should have just not have had kids. It's not that I don't like my kids because I do and I love them and they're the best part about being a parent, it's not the kids thing at all. It's the isolation, the constant mommy wars that divide mothers and makes it next to impossible to have ANY friends. It's the LONELINESS. It's the feeling like a failure when you can't do everything possible for your kids because there's only one income but feeling guilty too for even thinking of going back to work and not being with your kids all day. It's the damned if you do, damned if you don't feeling that constantly follows you around and that feeling that no matter what you do, you're going to completely and totally screw up your kids. It's the feeling that what you do is NEVER enough. I hate it. I hate feeling that way. I hate feeling like a complete and total failure. I hate spending most of my time alone even with two kids and a husband at home. I'm a dishrag, a sponge, or a mop. I'm used when needed and used all the time but not always asked how I'm doing or how I'm feeling or how my day was.

No doubt, people will read this and say I need to stop playing the victim, get up and get out there and do something. It's amazing how people who know little to nothing about me at all will take something I say in a post and just think they can give me simplistic advice to follow and that following their advice will solve all of my problems. And if I don't follow their advice, well then again, I'm just playing the victim.

There are times I honestly do not know what to do. I don't have a mother I can call and talk to for advice. I don't have a family that is supportive that I can go to when I'm having a hard time. I'm basically faking it, trying to do it all with little support and a TON of conflicting advice. And seriously, there are days when drinking myself to oblivion starts to look real darn good.

I had my older daughter which was a clusterpuck and a half (cesarean birth that totally traumatized me and triggered the post traumatic stress issues I already had). My marriage dang near disintegrated when my husband decided to go all cult-follower on me. I moved in with my sister. We patched things up. We found our own place in another city. Two years after that, my husband goes to Korea, we follow him four months later, and less than a year after we get there, I'm pregnant again. I return to the US, have the baby (which thank goodness was the empowering VBAC I needed), my husband and daughter return three months later, and again, I'm dealing with power struggles between us as my husband goes all zealous on me. This time, I don't know if I can take it anymore. I don't know how much more I can give. Add to that family issues that just keep getting worse and worse, and I just want to run away and go hide in a cave.

It's not just I feel I'm failing at being a parent. I feel I'm failing at life. I'm not getting anything out of it and I really wonder if this is it, if this is as good as it's going to get which really isn't all that good. I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of even being alive. And that's been a struggle in and of itself for the last eight years having severe survivor's guilt from my brother-in-law's murder. I still sometimes feel I never should have survived that day and because of that, I feel stuck, I feel that no matter what I do I'm stuck because really, I never should have been here. And that feeling gets worse all the time and nothing helps. I see everything falling into place for other people and I wonder if it will ever be that way for me or if there will always be this sense of failing that I constantly carry. I don't know. I just don't know anymore. I don't know what to do. I don't know who to trust or what to believe or what higher power to look up to. I feel stuck and not able to grow up, yet growing older every day. And I have no control over anything, just dragged along for the ride, completely and totally helpless.