I feel like giving up today

I’m writing this coming off what I’m beginning to think has been the toughest 4 weeks of my life to date, more so the last 48 hours of suffering extreme photophobia (thanks to my friend retinal dystrophy) – yeah so not exactly from a happy place.

I feel like giving up.

Giving up on trying to help my youngest who has quite severe ADHD. The more I help and give and accommodate, the more he doesn’t realise what I’m trying to help him achieve and the more he simply continues with things the way he is used to which in turn leaves me feeling utterly frustrated, hopeless and unsupported because I feel like I’m the only one fighting the good fight.
Giving up on my job, which despite me actually enjoying, the people I work with really are making my time there unbearable. I have two children (and a husband) at home who all require constant supervision and refereeing, I stupidly thought being in a professional environment with a bunch of adults would typically result in a mature, civilised working environment – boy was I wrong. The bickering here is worse than my two kids at home and the amount of stress this is resulting in is far more than I’m realistically willing to put up with. The only reason I stick around is well because we need the money and also because work is only 15 minutes from home, which is convenient.


Giving up on my marriage – despite being absolutely and completely in adoration and hopeless love with this man who is my soul mate, being married is just so damn hard – it’s not him per se that I feel like giving up on, it’s the concept of marriage really that has me exhausted – it’s just so damn one sided and I’m exhausted from the effort.  Men are easy to figure out – you know what they like and what buttons to push and they work. Women – not so much. What is annoying me however is that men seem less interested in finding out what works for women, what buttons need to be pushed to make us just go – OR, perhaps I am just married to a ‘lazy marriage man’ which then means I am thinking of giving up on ‘him’ and this leaves me feeling utterly devastated and heartsore which brings this full cycle to my love for this man far outweighing the effort of trying to get over him which means I’ll probably spend the next 50 years of my life just living with and accepting the mediocrity of our marriage and life knowing that it could be better but I’ve chosen to settle for it as  is.

And finally, giving up on myself.
I’m tired – all the time. Not just physically, but mostly emotionally and mentally and having this long list of letter combinations that I’m not even sure what to do about, following my every thought and action around – well that’s just OTT on the overload of OCD in my life.
My brain – despite numerous attempts to advise it otherwise, seems to think it needs to solve ALL of the world’s problems, yesterday! When ordered thought becomes so chaotic the lines begin to blur, common sense would normally kick in and tell one to STOP – not my brain.
No, my brain seems to ‘think’ it excels the more it takes on, so I would just like to send out a memo, a reminder, a notification to my brain…. “You are NOT superhuman, you can burnout and break and without you I fear I may be reduced to a crumpled mess of me, which quite frankly, wouldn’t be pretty, nor would it be fair on the people in my life.

Problem is, you and I both know my brain has ignored this plea and will continue to wake me at stupid hour to discuss concepts of work-life balance, home schooling, ADHD, challenging work relationships, the gigantic matter of my stress highlights needing to be seen to, why are the cats running around the house at stupid hour, was that a car door I just heard close, why is my husband snoring and more importantly, why is he insisting on sleeping on top of me like a human heater, not to mention thoughts about money, grocery shopping lists, making appointments for my kids for the dentist, making sure I pick up the boys’ meds – I have a list as long as my 164cm frame of things my brain feels it needs to think about and solve at stupid hour.

So when you ask how I’m feeling and I reply with “tired” please just nod in understanding that you are aware that “tired” means so much more than only having 4 hours of sleep at night. Better yet, stop asking me how I am if you’re not REALLY interested in hearing my whole story because I do need someone to talk to but I can’t bring myself to do so because I know that despite saying you’re not, I’m being judged and as much as I value your friendship, I don’t value your condescending ‘suggestions’ on how I could improve my life if I just did things the way YOU think it should be done because this is simply 10 minutes of my life writing down some very simple thoughts which let’s face it, was exhausting just reading.

I’m not saying my life is harder than yours, I’m just saying I have different struggles to you and even though some of our struggles may ‘seem’ the same, my puzzle pieces will never fit together the same way yours do.

So let me just ‘be’.

Let me wade through this emotionally drained existence I’m dealing with – I think I’m entitled to that after all.

I will be fine. I am a fighter and I am strong – at this very moment though, I ‘want’ to not be.