My life has brought about many changes over the last several years. I’ve hesitated on continuing my journey on here, because the thing that defined me before is not where I’m at now. So many things have occurred I’m not even sure where to begin. I guess I should start with the admission that I’m not a homemaker anymore. I mean, I have a home, and I’m still a wife and mom, but as for that being my sole occupation… …well, somehow it’s moved over to being one of the things I juggle in a different way.
I started a part-time job in 2018. It was just a way to bring in some extra money but led to so many other opportunities. I enjoyed the time away from home, getting to explore the working me and the new way of interacting with the world. The same month I started work, I enrolled in college. For the first year, I worked part-time, went to school full-time and tried to maintain my family relationships. It wasn’t always easy, but I felt like I could take on the world and I was learning so much about myself. Over the next year, I progressed to a point at work where I was offered a full-time leadership position and also earned scholarships in school. For a time I did full-time at both work and school. We moved out of our home to a new city half an hour away, and while it was challenging, somehow I seemed to be doing it.
I promoted up to another leadership position within a few months, and while it was harder to keep up in school with those hours, I continued to make it work. My family was so supportive, but I did start to see some struggles in adjusting to this new life, not only with my changes in roles, but also in where they fit in this new place we moved to. I questioned whether or not I should keep going but they assured me I should continue and while I felt guilty picking to do something for myself for the first time in my life, I also felt empowered and thrived on the new knowledge I gained with each new course I took at school and role I moved into at work.
I was again promoted at work, but this new role meant more hours each week, and I found that I had to make a choice in letting something go. My children were not doing well with the isolation that came with COVID-19, and my family, despite all its shared space together was becoming more distant emotionally from each other. My younger kids once thrived in our old neighborhood and spent most their days outdoors playing. Here they can’t seem to settle in—and have dealt with bullying and social isolation. My older teens have pretty much followed the stereotypical stuff I knew would present some challenges, but added in so much more I definitely wasn’t equipped for in this social media/digital age.
I cut school to half-time for a year, then accepted another promotion at work—work has become an outlet for me and has kept me from losing my mind through all these failures at home. In an effort to spend more time with my family though, I opted to let school go entirely and didn’t sign up this year. I made this choice right before things became even more difficult in my family.
The isolation and disconnectedness from the community through all of this wasn’t something I was prepared for. Depression has claimed my whole household. My support system isn’t next door anymore—and keeping up on my work and school loads and keeping everyone connected proved to be too much.
My adult children struggled to find healthy relationships and settled into ones that were abusive and degrading. My teens struggled with major depression and started making the choices I’d tried so hard to steer them away from. Our vacation fund went to hospital/doctors/therapy. This is life now. The mental toll these things have had on our family—as we tried to be there for each other, love one another through the pain of all that’s tearing us apart—is one that we still can’t pay. It’s not one thing after another. It’s all things at once.
This year started with me having to run across the country to rescue a child from an escalating abusive situation, only to have things get worse before we got home for a struggling teenager at home that resulted in a hospital stay, then more bad decisions from the child rescued, the pulling back of the oldest teen and deterioration of what was once a close and loving relationship, —I’ve continued to pray, to advise, to love unconditionally and to attempt to guide—but none of it seems to make a difference. I feel like I’ve failed in my most important duty.
I don’t know what to do from here. I’ve given up school. I’ve cut back from many of the extra hours I was doing at work. But nothing is getting better. It’s so overwhelming and I’m so powerless. Mentally, I’m lower than I’ve ever been in my life. At work, I can fix the problems put in front of me. It’s a challenge, but one that isn’t impossible. There I feel like I make a difference. At home, all I can do is watch as everything falls apart because children seem hellbent on learning everything in the most painful ways possible. So many ways things are going wrong, and I have no ideas on how to fix them without completely losing my identity by once again becoming what everyone seems to need from me.
Life is hard. No matter what I say, what I do, where I am, it doesn’t seem to make a difference. But I keep trying. I’m unsure how to figure this one out…
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