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Posts Tagged ‘emotional’

And so it begins again. 😮‍💨

15 Feb

My least favorite time has begun again – the time that my son goes to visit his father. 😮‍💨 I know that this isn’t the first entry I have written about this struggle, but I have definitely been struggling with it a lot lately. I know that part of it is because I got to have my son full time for a little while near the end of last year and despite the fact that I tried not to get used to it I did and since he started visiting his father again I am still getting used to it again.

Like I said, missing my son is only part of why I am struggling right now. It’s the major reason (especially today), but not the whole reason. In addition to the struggle of my son being gone I am also struggling with work. Not in the sense that I don’t like my job or my coworkers, but in the sense that it is getting harder and harder for me to deal with people – in an involuntary setting – lately. Getting together with a friend? Sure. Leave the house to run errands? That’s ok too. Going to work? Fine, but only because I have to. (Stupid rent and bills and things. 😠)

I have been trying to find another job for the past year or so and ideally would like to find something that would allow me to work from home. Something that I could more easily do full time while still being available to be with my son and even keep my current job, but on even more of a part time basis than I currently am. Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, I have not had any luck so far and I am starting to lose hope. (I have NEVER had such a hard time getting an interview, let alone getting a job, but here I am, repeatedly beating my head against a brick wall.)

I have also been looking for a new apartment. My son and I have lived in the same apartment since my husband and I separated and while I like the apartment well enough, there are a few things that I wouldn’t mind changing and the property has had 5 or more companies (including the current one) who have owned/managed it in the years that we have lived here. Most of them have been terrible. The newest company is an unknown, they only took ownership/control last month and I have not had an opportunity, or reason, to interact with the new company yet. I don’t hold out much hope for them though.

I had honestly hoped that this year would be more calm and stable than last year, especially the end of last year, but if the first month and a half of 2025 is anything to go by this year definitely will NOT be the calm and stable year. What makes it even harder is that I have absolutely no idea how to try and work through or deal with any of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m stubborn as all get outs and so I will continue to keep putting one foot in front of the other, but that is just getting through, it isn’t actually working on or dealing with anything and it certainly doesn’t make things easier. Until I can figure something out, something changes or… … …something else that I can’t think of at the moment happens getting through is the only choice that I have, so that is what I will continue to do. I am so not ready for this. 😮‍💨😔

 
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Happy New Year?

18 Jan

I don’t know about y’all, but the last few years have been difficult and the end of 2024 was definitely touch and go there for a few months. Despite how difficult things got my one ray of light was the fact that for a short while my son was at home with me full time. I usually have to share my son with my ex, but for the last little part of 2024 my ex was not taking my son for his usual scheduled time. I knew that this was a temporary situation and that my ex would eventually start taking my son again at some point, I just didn’t know when that would be. Needless to say I have not been looking forward to that and sadly the time has come. <sigh> 😮‍💨

I recently received a text message from my ex saying that he is going to resume taking my son for his regularly scheduled time starting this weekend (AKA tomorrow). While I appreciate the fact that he didn’t wait until the night before to let me know this I am struggling with the fact that I am going to have get used to being without my son on a regular basis again.

Being without my son has always been a struggle for me, even over the years when it was happening regularly. Some of the times that my son visits his father have been easier for me to get through than others, but even those “easy” times are difficult for me. I do my best to keep myself occupied so that the time can pass as pleasantly and as quickly as possible – hanging out with friends, engaging in my various hobbies, binge watching movies/TV shows and so on – these distractions have varying levels of success, but even when they are at their most successful I am still dealing with a feeling of being hollow and incomplete. That feeling decreases my ability to truly enjoy my attempt at distractions and is my constant companion until my son gets home. I tried not to get used to having my son full time, but the truth is that there was no way to prevent that from happening and now that I know our uninterrupted time is coming to an end I can’t help but to dread the return of the void caused by his absence.

Ok, so all of that may sound a bit overly dramatic and maybe it is, but that doesn’t make it any less true, especially considering that I am trying to put practically indescribable feelings into very weak and inadequate words. I make no secret of the fact that I do not like it when my son visits his father, but that does not mean that I sit at home and wallow in my loneliness, or at least I try hard not to. I am a bit worried about how hard this upcoming separation may end up being for me, but I also worry about my son and how this is going to affect him after we have gotten into a 24/7 routine down pretty pat now.

Years ago when my son was younger and his visits with his father were still new I basically lived in my bedroom the whole time that my son was gone. I would leave my room to go to work and do anything else that I needed to do, but when I wasn’t doing something specific I stayed in my room. It honestly didn’t feel like there was any reason to be in the living room when I was home alone. Gradually I started spending more time outside my room and eventually I stopped hiding in my room when I was home alone. How it happened and how long it took to happen I have no idea, but knowing that I am going to be spending this weekend without my son I am already wanting to hide in my room from the world. I do have an appointment this weekend and other things that will require that I leave the house and in preparation for (as well as early stages of) reorganizing the living room I have some cleaning that I would like to do over the weekend, so hopefully I will be able to focus on those To Dos to help pass the time (and keep me from hiding in my room for the weekend).

I have no idea how this first weekend without my son is going to go and I am not looking forward to finding out, but since I don’t have a choice I will just take it one day, one hour, one minute or one breath at a time. Whatever I have to do to get through the time that we are apart because there is no way that I am going to let this weekend completely defeat me. It may win the battle, but I will win the war. I’ll see you all on the battlefield.

 
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Long, rough road to travel

16 Mar

I had absolutely no idea how long it had been since I posted here last and I have to admit I am more than a little shocked by how much time has passed. I started this blog in a rather desperate hope and attempt to deal with everything that was going on in my life. I was completely lost and generally felt completely isolated. I have absolutely no family in my area and while I do have friends they all have their own lives, with their own problems and I didn’t want to ask them to deal with my problems in addition to theirs.

My son was quite young when everything happened and I had been a full time stay at home mother his whole life. While I had worked full time prior to his birth his father and I had decided that not only did we not want him to essentially be raised by a daycare, but that financially speaking daycare wasn’t worth is since it would take more money than anything I could bring in for him to be in daycare 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It is a decision that means more to me now than I had ever thought it would. It has been a very long and generally difficult road to get to where I am today. I have struggled through more bad days than good, but I have made it through. The journey continues, one day at a time, although to be honest there are days where I honestly feel like I need to take it one minute at a time in order to get through.

Here is a bit of what has been going on since I last posted.

  • My son has recently, officially, become a teenager. Something that neither of us were really prepared for to be honest. While I have tried dating since my unwanted divorce and was even in a relationship for a period of time it is still just my son and I against the world. He remains the center of my entire universe and my reason for everything. I have shared custody, but because he spends more than 50% of his time with me I have majority custody and primary placement. My son doesn’t seem to enjoy visiting his father, but he still goes. Over these past years being without my son has become both easier and more difficult. I no longer spend the time that I am at home without him hiding in my bedroom (something that I used to do while my son was gone, leaving only to go to work, make something to eat, use the bathroom and so on – it was something that made the time he was gone a bit easier to deal with), but I definitely do not feel as social when he is gone. I will occasionally get together with a friend while he is gone, but for the most part I tend to keep to myself when not at work.
  • As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, I have tried dating off and on since the divorce and was in a relationship for a while, but it didn’t last and all the other attempts to find someone have been failures. It’s extremely frustrating that every time I have tried dating that the same thing happens. I state upfront that I am a single mom and that my son comes first, especially considering that I do not have any family in the area to help me with anything. I state that I am looking for a serious, committed relationship and have no interest in playing games. That I want to find and build a deep, emotional connection with someone and that I do not want to rush into a relationship. Every time I find someone who says they are looking for the same thing and that they understand they will start making things sexual long before I am ready for it. (At the fastest this has happened within 30 minutes of us chatting and at longest within 2 days of starting to chat.) When I tell them that I am not ready for that they get upset, often insulting and stop communicating. At this point I have pretty much given up on trying to date for the foreseeable future. I don’t discount the possibility that I will find someone, but I’m not going to be making a concerted effort again any time soon.
  • My ex has stopped paying me alimony and so I have lost quite a bit of income that I used to be able to rely on for paying rent, bills and so on. He still pays child support, but that is all that he is paying and as a result money is always about ten times tighter than it was and it was already really tight. With my work schedule being built around when my son is in school I am not able to work full time and with not making much more than minimum wage, despite being with my employer for about ten years, most months there is serious concern about whether or not I am going to be able to pay my rent. I have tried repeatedly to get rental assistance and have never been able to because they say that I make too much money and/or they don’t have the funding. I honestly don’t know how much longer I am going to be able to do this without having to find a second job. I am more than willing to work two jobs, it is something that I did for years prior to Covid, but I can’t go back to the work schedule that I had when I was working two jobs. I would work twelve consecutive days, have two days off, my Saturday and Sunday with my son, and then start the next twelve days of work. That kind of schedule would be very difficult to be able to maintain and honestly should not, in my opinion, be necessary, but of course only time will tell what will have to happen on the work front. I have been trying to find another job for almost eight months now, with no success. I honestly have never had so much trouble finding a job, let alone getting an interview before and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I also don’t know what I am going to do if I can’t find another job soon.
  • I have been struggling with some mild depression and a fair amount of anxiety, specifically social anxiety. As a result I have not kept up on some of the things that I used to regularly do, including chores around the apartment. I have recently been able to make some serious strides in being able to get things back on track, but I still have a long way to go and with the potential for various family and friends visiting this Spring and Summer I am fast running out of time to get back on top of things. I have thought about starting to take Sertraline again as it has been helpful to me in the past, but I don’t have health insurance right now and have no idea how I would be able to afford that medication on top of everything else. As it is I have been struggling to be able to afford the migraine medicine that I absolutely have to have to be able to deal with a migraine attack when I get them.

As I said, it has been a long and difficult road, but somehow I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Each day is filled with learning something new about being a parent, how to deal with my ex, how to keep moving forward and/or how to find something, even something small, to make the day just a little better. It’s not a perfect world and so many of the things that I would like to be able to wish for will never happen, but I do my best to make the best of what each day presents me with. Before I am ready for it I’ll find out what tomorrow holds, but I will deal with that when I get there.

 
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Posted in General, Wonders & Ramblings

 

Today – 1st day of Kindergarten : Tomorrow – High School Graduation

03 Sep

Like many parents this week my son’s summer vacation came to an end and he had his first day of the new school year. Again, like many of the parents it was my only/oldest child’s (in my case only child’s) first day of Kindergarten. So, not only was it a big first day for my son it was a big first day for me too. It was something that I had been both looking forward to as well as dreading, sometimes for the same reason!

It was both a good morning and a difficult morning for me, the difficult part being a result of the fact that my ex was — well, he was himself. A slightly more subtle version of himself, but himself none-the-less.

(Now I’m going to be honest and say that at this point in my writing I am feeling somewhat compelled to instinctively go on the automatic defense of myself by saying things like “I knew that my ex would want to be there for my son’s first day of school. I knew that my ex would most likely bring his girlfriend with him and I would never have done anything to stand in the way of that.” All of those statements, and many more that I could make, are true, but it is frustrating and exhausting to always feel like I should have to try and preempt people’s potentially negative judgements of me, so I am going to try and convince myself that I don’t need to do that and try to continue writing.)

As you might imagine the good portions of my morning were seeing my son who was nervous and excited be nervous and excited to start school. I was pleased that he was excited for me to make him a lunch (so that he could use his new lunchbox that matched his backpack), and that he gave me many many many hugs and kisses and told me that he loved me many times before he headed into his classroom. While I had expected to be at least a little emotional and maybe even cry a little bit when dropping him off for his first day of full-day school (Kindergarten in our area is full-day) I did not experience that and that was a little sad for me. That was one of the lesser things that made the morning difficult. As strange as it may sound, particularly to a non-parent, to be a little disappointed by the fact that I was NOT emotional, but I was.

I have little doubt that the only, yes only, reason that I was not emotional was the presence of my ex and his girlfriend. I truly believe that if I had been there alone or if my ex and I had still been together that I would have been at least a little emotional and even shedding a few tears when dropping the center of my universe off at his first day of big boy school. Sadly, nor not sadly as the case may be, I was too on edge because of some of the comments that my ex had made when all of us met up before my son’s school day began as well as his general attitude toward and treatment of me.

Despite the fact that there was some tension and stress when dropping off and saying goodbye at the door of my son’s Kindergarten classroom the encounter with my ex was relatively civil. This fact is almost as shocking as the fact that my son is old enough to already be in Kindergarten. How is that even possible?!?!?!? How could so much time have passed and with everything that I have gone through over the past 3 years how can it feel like that time has gone by so quickly? While I try not to think too far ahead regarding my son’s growing up I can’t help but feel like this week was his first day of Kindergarten and next week will be his High School graduation.

 
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Posted in Wonders & Ramblings

 

Frustrations and Irritations galore!

16 May

I have been wanting to write many times since my 1 year anniversary entry and have found it difficult to do so. Partly because each time I think about writing my mind freezes and I have no idea what to write about. That’s not to say that I don’t have things going on that I would like to write about (this past month has been difficult and I foresee the next several months being even more stressful), but I think it is because there is just so much going on that when I have thought about and even tried to sit down and write I find myself struggling to do so. As you might imagine this is particularly frustrating for me for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that I really do feel like this blog has been beneficial in processing everything that has been going on in my life and I want to be able to continue to use this resource regularly. I also get frustrated with myself for feeling so overwhelmed that I don’t know where to begin doing anything, let alone emotionally dealing with and processing everything that I am going through. Most of the time I just want to ignore it. To convince myself that I will wake up tomorrow and find that this has all been some horrible nightmare, but I am too much of a realist to be able to do that. It doesn’t help that I have very few friends and no family (with the exception of my son) in the area to help me out. I know that they want to help me as much as they can, but they all have their own lives and stuff going on that I do not expect them to be available to me much of the time. I know that they will help me as much and in any way that they can, but because I know that they have their own stuff that they are dealing with I usually feel bad about asking for their help and time.

Night time is always bad, but the times/nights without my son are the worst. I have very little that can truly distract me from the separation from my child and it is during those times when I would like distraction the most. Oh I have my knitting and movies. Fairly often I even have a friend that will help me to pass some of the time in the evenings (getting together for dinner or a movie or the like), but at the end of the day (regardless of what time of day that actually is) I am still alone. It’s like I said to one of the people that I have met recently from my online support group: “Being able to chat with someone is nice, but at the end of the day you are still left with yourself and all you want is for someone who really cares for you to hold you close, tell you that everything is going to be ok and stay there until you drift off to sleep.” While these words pale in comparison to the actual feeling this is something that I may never experience again and right now is when I need and want it the most.

As painful and alone as that desire makes me feel I know that there is nothing that I can do about it. That knowledge just makes it worse. There is nothing I can do. I am in limbo with no way out. All I can do now is wait and see what happens. I am not depressed (although I have a right to be with everything that is going on). I am not being negative. I am not discounting future possibilities. I am simply being realistic about the emotional place that I am in at the present moment. I hate that I feel like I have to defend the way that I feel and the emotional place that I am in. I hate that so many people (particularly those who do not know actually know me) either automatically presume to repeat the same old, worn out platitudes or tell me that I am being too negative and that I need to start taking anti-depressants to get past that.

Ok, so this entry has been a little — unfocused, which is yet another source of frustration for me as I really wanted to be able to try and address some of the MANY things that have been building up. I suppose that I should take solace in the fact that I have (at long last) been able to sit down and get something written, but honestly I am not really at a place, emotionally, where I can really acknowledge the positives, let alone actually appreciate and celebrate them. Anyone who not only read this, but actually made it to the end, Thank you for taking the time to not only read my blog, but also for making it through all the unfocused writing in today’s entry. It is appreciated. I hope that there are not very many entries like this one, but if there are I hope that you will understand that occasionally, as frustrating as they are, I need them to process and purge the build up of overwhelming, jumbled, nonsensical mess that makes up my thought and feelings right now. I don’t know about anyone else, but I would kind of like a hard reboot right about now.

 
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Posted in Wonders & Ramblings

 

Emotional vs Logical

10 Nov

I am undecided as to whether or not this is the best time to be writing. By that I mean that I am REALLY struggling and emotional right now. Half of my brain is saying that writing will help to get it out, help me to sort through everything that I am feeling and be able to handle it better. The other half is saying that my being extremely emotional right now is exactly the reason why I should NOT be writing. Whatever I write is less likely to make sense, there are other things that I should be focused on and let’s be honest I am far more likely to write something that I will regret later, even if I really do mean it. I do not know which one I agree with and despite my best efforts and my wishes neither side will shut up a leave me alone. All of that being said I would like to apologize in advance to anyone reading this entry. You are most likely in for a long, confusing, profanity filled read that will leave you wondering what the fuck you just read and whether or not reading it again will help it all make sense or only confuse you more. I am especially sorry about all of that if reading this entry is your first foray into my blog. Regardless I hope that the following entry doesn’t scare you off. I don’t know what else to say, so I guess — deep breath — here goes nothing.

Emotional brain
I’m alone. I’m lonely and to restate my status from my blog’s FB page “Really struggling right now, made worse by the fact that I have to pretend to be ok because I am at work. Don’t know how to express where I am emotionally and doubt anyone could TRULY understand even if the words existed. Add to all of that the fact that I don’t want to socialize with anyone right now, but I really don’t want to be alone. Where does that leave me? In desperate need of the kind of hug that only someone who truly loves you can give with no one to give it to me. :'( “

Logical brain
I am not alone. I have friends and family who care about me and will help me in any way that they can. I am not the first and most certainly will not be the last to go through any of this and if I was better at math I might actually be able to figure out exactly how many men and women in the world are going through the exact same (not just similar, but the exact same) situation as me.

EB
I can’t stop caring. I can’t stop caring about him, what he thinks about me, how he is going to react to something that I say/do/write/etc. How do I stop it?!?!? He obviously doesn’t care about how the things he says or does affect me. I hate the fact that I care and he doesn’t. I want to hate him and I hate the fact that I can’t.

LB
It’s completely natural after all these years that I still love him and still care about what he thinks. In a normal person (if there is such a thing) those feelings aren’t just shut off like flipping a switch. Hating him isn’t going to help anything, it’ll actually make things worse. As much as I would like to change things from being what they are I can’t and hating him won’t make it any easier. After all I still have to deal with him when this is all over and fighting any more than necessary is only going to prolong the emotional pain that I have to work through.

EB
I am sick and fucking tired of always being the bigger and better person! I absolutely hate myself for not being more of the vindictive bitch that he tells everyone that he talks to I am. “You could have handled things differently” he says. You’re right! I could have. I could have had your ass arrested and charged back in January and I should have! I had the police on the fucking phone, but I was too scared about the fact that he still had keys to the apartment and was too scared of what would happen after this whole fucking nightmare was over because I had been told that getting sole custody was never going to happen so would have to find a way to be able to “work” with him no matter what. I should have just done it. At least then there would have been more of a chance of limiting visitation and laying the ground work for sole custody.

LB
Being the bigger person is a good thing. In the long run being the bigger and better person is a good thing. It proves that I am not the kind of person that he says that I am. It proves that I am stronger than he is. It proves that despite having my really bad and emotional days that I am more emotionally and mentally mature than he is. And most importantly it shows my son the kind of person that I want him to grow up to be. Not filing a police report doesn’t change what happened. I may not have filed a police report, but there are people, who can be called upon if necessary, who are aware of the details of the specific event and who have also witnessed his behavior toward and treatment of me in the past. I many not have reported it immediately, but that does not mean that it didn’t happen, that it isn’t potentially relevant and that it can’t be reported as part of another incident in the future.

EB
I hate feeling (as I do right now) — well to quote a line from the movie Titanic — “I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one even looks up.” I don’t want useless, emotionless platitudes, those only make me feel worse. I want what no one right now can give me. I want to feel connected. Connected to someone who knows me, someone who truly understands me, someone who loves me so deeply that they can not imagine their lives without me in it and would fight like hell to keep me in it. What’s more I don’t want to have to tell someone “I’m really hurting right now and I need you.” I want someone to notice my silent struggle and to make a gesture instead of waiting until I come to them.

LB
Everybody else has their own lives. They have things that they are dealing with, good and bad and because they are all dealing with their own lives they don’t always realize or aren’t always available. Also, those who do actually care about me probably don’t want to keep asking how I am doing because they don’t want to upset me. They are trying to be considerate and thinking, hoping, believing that if I need them for support that I’ll ask them. I am sure that they do not realize just how much pain I am in and how difficult it is to express everything.

EB
I hate the fact that there are SO many questions that I want to ask and things that I want to say to him.

LB
I’ll never get to say or ask them and even if I did I would never get an answer and he wouldn’t care about anything that you have to say.

EB
I hate the fact that he tries to treat this and has even gone so far as to say that this isn’t personal. Of course it’s fucking personal!! This is our lives, our family! There is nothing more personal than that!! Stop trying to turn this into a business transaction, especially since you seem to get offended when you think you are being asked to “sell out your son”.

LB
I know what he is like. When things get too tough for him he prefers to give up and walk away. That’s what he is trying to do now. He doesn’t want to feel guilty for what he has done.

This entry has taken several days to write this entry. Being emotional, trying to work and suffering from migraines (damn stress and changes in the weather) have made it difficult to be able to focus as well as find the best words to express everything. Whether or not this entry has been beneficial remains to be seen. (I do believe it is my longest entry to date though.) I’ll just keep taking one breath after another, keep trying to focus on one task at a time and just make it until my son is home and in my arms. — Breathe in. Breathe Out.

 

 
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Posted in Letters to Self

 

Far From Over

26 Sep

Me, Myself and I,

This has been one of the most emotional and difficult week for me. I have struggled and am still struggling with all of it. So much, too much going on to process and I don’t have the foggiest where to even begin with trying to figure it out.

I got and started a new job this week. I have gotten a job as a food preparer at a daycare center. The position only requires that I work 4 days a week and most of the time I will only be working for 3 to 3 1/2 hours a day. My son will be able to go with me on the days that I work and I will be able to pay a discounted rate for the time that he is at the daycare. It is as close to ideal as I could possibly get, at least for the time being, but I still can’t help but have unbelievably mixed feelings over it. I do worry about whether or not my cooking skills (which are good, but nowhere near professional), but if I’m being honest my biggest adjustment to the job is that it will be taking away from my already rapidly diminishing time with my son. I also have to say that the ONLY reason I applied for and accepted the job was because I am essentially being forced (by circumstances) to accept it.

My son, who is going to be 3 1/2 years old a week from today, and I were not seeing eye to eye on something and he was expressing his frustration by saying that he didn’t need me, or something similar to that and suddenly I had this vision of a similar moment in the future where, in a moment of frustration my son telling me that he was going to leave and move in with his father. I believe that this is an inevitability and that it will at some point happen. I do not want it to and I fear it, but I can’t live in fear and have it affect my ability to be his mother. I generally try not to think too far ahead when it comes to my son right now because I have so much else to process in the here and now, but I can not and will not deny that this is something that has been weighing heavily on my mind for longer than just this past week. There is no way to completely prepare myself for the pain that I will experience if/when my son says such a thing to me will cause, but I have to somehow find a way to prepare as much as possible because I do not want to respond in anger and say something hurtful that I will regret for the rest of my life. I would never forgive myself.

I realized that it was one year ago this past week that my S2BX started sleeping his way out of our marriage and only told me about it because someone else threatened to tell me if he did not do so first. I can not believe that I have been in hell and living in this nightmare for 12 months. How is it that 12 months have already gone by?!? This is no easier now than it was when it all began. As a matter of fact it is getting more difficult in some ways. How am I ever going to recover from this if one year later I am in as much pain as I was at the start?

This week may be ending, but my struggle, pain, fear, heartbreak, anger, etc are far from over. I think it is unlikely that they end anytime soon, if they end at all.

 
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Posted in Letters to Self

 

No faith, little hope

21 Apr

Self,

For the past week I have consistently, if not constantly, been on the verge of tears. While the general underlying cause is obvious and understandable I feel like there is a more specific cause that I have yet to be able to put my finger on. Maybe it’s because it, whatever it is, is something that currently lies on the border of my subconscious and my conscious. Some thought, feeling, fear, etc not yet fully formed or realized about to break through. (Most likely unleashing a whole new level of pain in its wake.) Then again maybe it’s the fact that since all of this started I don’t sleep well and the little sleep I do get is filled with dreams of the less than beautiful kind 95% (or more) of the time. I wouldn’t call them nightmares, but they are extremely unpleasant as they revolve around and are filled with everything that’s going on. That’s right. Even in sleep there is no escape. So maybe this consistent feeling of being ready to cry at the drop of, well anything is simply a result of day in, day out, month after month of building stress with no real coping or processing time.

Last week was particularly hard. I felt so frustrated much of the week and just generally annoyed. I am also starting to feel much more pressure and it’s becoming overwhelming in a way that I don’t know how to explain. I’ve held together because I don’t have a choice. Somehow everyday I have to find a way through because my son needs me and I don’t have the luxury of becoming useless or having a meltdown and somehow, so far I have been able to do that, but I don’t know for how much longer I’ll be able to. I feel the wall coming and don’t know if there is any way past it.

I’ve often stated that I worry that maybe I haven’t been dealing with things in the healthiest way possible. That while I have not denied what I am going through and feeling I have fought to control it rather than to let it control me. I wonder if maybe the best and healthiest thing for me would have been to have had an absolute meltdown at some point early on. To not only allow, but encourage, that purely emotional side of me to rage and carry on and blow itself out so that it could be done and over with. Allowing my more rational and logical side to take over and carry me through to the end. It would have been a completely understandable response, normal even, but I didn’t. It’s true that the main reason for that is because I don’t have a choice. I can not “leave” my son, even emotionally, to indulge in an avalanche of emotion myself. On top of that I’ll be honest and say that I’m concerned that if I were to allow myself to completely let go, even for the shortest amount of time, that I may not be able to put myself back together in such a way that I would be able to regain and then remain in control as well as I have done so far. My ex (or whatever you want to call him) would beg to differ and tell you that I have been far too emotional and that all my decisions about how to handle this situation have been nothing but emotional and as a result they will only serve to come back and bite me in the butt.

I don’t know what to think about all of this any more and this isn’t something that I can just feel my way through. I know that this isn’t something that I’ll just suddenly get over. I know, expect and accept that this is going to take years to work through and even then it is something that I do not believe I will ever fully come to terms with. I have absolutely NO faith that things will be ok and VERY little hope that they will be.

 
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