Sometimes I Can't See the Woods for the Trees

I feel as if I have reached a pinnacle in this single parenting experience where it surely can't get any harder than this.  Please dear Universe, don't prove me wrong.  It's just too hard.  Please don't make it any harder.  It's tough enough to get through some of the days as it is.

Yesterday was one of those days.  I would prefer not to have a repetition of one of those days for a while.  A day where I just felt so tired, so drained, so lonely, so lacking in optimism and hope and gratitude that the thought of enduring another day like it just couldn't be borne.

Single parenting is a tough road to take.  I had no real idea until I ventured down it.  It is not a path I would ever recommend unless in the most extreme of circumstances.  I am not a village.  I am doing most of this alone and I am finding it really bloody hard.  And I look at my performance with the boys (or the sheer lack of it at times) and I feel as if I am doing them the greatest injustice.  They deserve so much better.  They deserve the mum that I am in my head - the mum that I fully intend to be when I am not with them, but which doesn't bear much relation to the mum that I actually am in their presence.

I don't want to be a single parent any more.  I really don't.  I am done.  I want this job to be shared....but more than that, I want to share this job with someone.  I want another adult in this family to love, to balance the equilibrium a little.  Not to share the workload with, but purely to share the experience with.  Oh My God, the potential luxury of having someone to hold and be held.  Someone to care for and to be cared for in return.  This most simplest and human of situations now seems like a panacea to me.  I can't imagine my current state of being, this terminal loneliness, is ever going to change.  Is it possible that I am going to be single-handedly raising these children, forever?

I went through the motions yesterday, took the boys out, coordinated meeting up with other parents so the boys could run off some steam with friends, made cheery conversation.

I felt numb, as if I was dying inside.

I couldn't muster up a single molecule of joy as I watched my beautiful children gambol about, shrieking and laughing and karate chopping each other.

I was hollow.  Empty.  Devoid of any form of emotion except for the never-ending longing to cry and to never stop.

I got through the day, put the boys to bed early, then read them an extra long story as a penance for being on the outside looking in all day.  They deserve better.  They deserve so much better.  And so, for the love of God, do I.

I watched Long Lost Family, a weekly excuse to shed the tears I am harbouring inside and, instead of feeling better, lighter, feel even more depleted.  How is this possible?  When you are running on empty - how is it possible to be even more empty?  I berated myself internally for feeling this way.  I have so much to be incredibly, ecstatically grateful for!  I am such a lucky, lucky woman!  Jesus Christ, to be this miserable when I have so much love in my life - when I have the privilege of raising these wonderful children in relative luxury, compared to many parts of the world, is so incredibly self-centred and indulgent and, quite frankly, disgusting.  My feelings of self pity and loneliness disgust me.  Which obviously cheers me up no bloody end.

I go to bed early and stand stroking the boys gently on their backs as they sleep, huge sobs wracking my body.  My eyes smart with the saltiness of my tears.  I feel too exhausted to sleep, the thought of having to face another day fills me with a sense of foreboding. I can't do this for another second, another minute, another hour, another day.

I wake this morning and the cloud has lifted.  I hear the boys chatting to each other downstairs, being kind to one another, playing well together and I smile.  I feel rested.  I feel capable.  It will all be okay.  This too will pass.