Everything seems to be going wrong recently. Life’s all up in the air for me. I have a terrible cold. My kids have it too. Everyone feels crappy. I don’t know what’s going on with my relationship. My plans that id been working towards are changing. I don’t know what they are.
I hate when I don’t have a goal. I need some stability and security in life. I need to have a reason, something to work towards. Right now, I don’t know what that is. I have two kids and a partner, who isn’t their dad. We’ve been together 7 months and I’ve always tried to make sure we’re a family. He’s a parent. Blood and dna don’t make a family – love does. But that’s a lot harder when the other partner/parent doesn’t live in the same house.
I’ve been feeling really down for a while. It took a long time to realise it. I didn’t even realise it. He did. It was affecting our relationship and the way he felt about me. That’s when I realised. All the things that he said were the problems with our relationship were because of this.
For years I’d been saying that I beat postnatal depression, that I was ‘normal’ again and happy. That i had got over it. Obviously that’s not true anymore. I don’t even know how to get this down in a coherent way. I have a lot of random thoughts filling my mind right now but none of them are fitting together in any sort of order to create a readable blog post. I’d given up smoking in October, with support from my partner. I did it for him. I had wanted to give up but he was the motivation I needed, so I finally did it again in October. Then I started again a couple of weeks ago when we had the discussion about our relationship, my happiness or otherwise.
This relationship, this family is all I’ve ever wanted. And yet I feel so lost and lonely. So unloved and desperately sad. My heart/soul/whatever feels so heavy. Like there’s some parasite in my soul that says ‘oh you’re fighting are you? I guess I’ll have to pull harder to get you down further’. The harder I fight, the harder it pulls, the heavier it feels. Sometimes I feel numb. I feel numb now. But it’s just a cover. It’s just a protection from what’s really in my heart or my soul or wherever feelings are kept and you can physically feel them. I can’t afford to let the parasite out and feel what’s really there. I’ve got a family to take care of. But sometimes it comes out by accident. That’s where the conversation started from. Me taking my stress and sadness out on him and the kids in the way I talk.
I don’t know how to change that. It means more fighting the parasite but that in turn means more being pulled down. It’s exhausting. I’ve been ignoring it for a long time. I broke down the night we talked about it. I realised I was back under its spell. And all I could do was lay there and cry. I didn’t wanna move. And I’m back there again. Only this time I let it out a bit too much and a lot of it was directed at him.
Part of me regrets it. Part of me thinks he should have known better. He left today to go home. He always goes home on Sundays. But he left at lunchtime instead of after dinner. I was upset. As far as I’m concerned we had an agreement that this was our family now. That we are both parents. So why does he get to go home when we’re ill. I don’t. I have to do everything by myself now. How are we gonna be a family when we live together if he’s gonna run away when things are hard or when he feels shitty?
The part he should have known better about is the behaviour when he left. I cried when he said he was going home at lunchtime. I cried because I wanted us all to snuggle on the sofa. I wanted him there. Last night the kids kept waking up with bad dreams. I was anxious. Super anxious. It makes me nervous. It makes me shaky. But he was laying next to me and I could stay calm. So I wanted him here today too. At least until the normal time. I wanted to feel supported. I wanted to be a team. A partnership.
Now I’m alone. And lonely. And he’s doing whatever he wants. He stood at the door, and told me he was going home because he can’t guarantee he won’t say something he regrets because he’s ill and won’t hold his tongue as much as usual. He wanted to go home to not upset me? Standing at the door watching me desperately hold back tears (unsuccessfully) and telling me going home was to avoid upsetting me?! I’ve heard a lot of shitty excuses. I’ve heard so many people at my front door telling me reasons they’re leaving for my own good. I never thought he’d be one of them.
It’s not true. It’s bullshit. It’s hurtful. I have so many times in my life stood at front doors and begged people not to leave. I won’t do it anymore because I’m not that person anymore. So instead I pretend my heart isn’t breaking. I pretend it doesn’t make me remember all those times. I pretend it doesn’t make me wonder if I’ll ever even hear from him again.
He says he loves me but I can’t even be sure of that anymore. He’s the only person who’s ever said that and shown that it’s true. But lately … it doesn’t feel true. It isn’t obvious in his actions. It isn’t even obvious in the way he says the words. He says them and sounds resigned. He sounds tired. He sounds fed up. He used to look at me with real life heart eyes. I felt special. I felt loved. I felt precious. He doesn’t do that anymore. He thinks things and doesn’t tell me. He leaves unexpectedly. He goes home earlier than usual. He spends a lot of our time together playing silly games on his phone. I hate it. Does he need to avoid me that much?? Playing games is fine, doing things you enjoy is fine, but to the detriment of our time together? It just feels like he’s trying to spend less and less time with me.
Life is difficult. Relationships are difficult. Family life is difficult. Depression is difficult. Suspected borderline personality disorder is difficult. Trying to get better is difficult. I can’t even find it in me to make a doctors appointment even though I think the time has come and I really need to.
I wanna spend my life with him. I was going to move away to somewhere he wanted. To a house with a garden. I would’ve been sacrificing all my back up plans regarding childcare in holidays and during illnesses. I would have been risking ending up with nothing, because if he left then, I wouldn’t be able to pay the rent and I haven’t got anyone to stay with now I have kids. Nobody has enough room for us to stay with them. He can leave and stay with any of his friends. I’d be stuck. I’d be risking me and the kids lives having the potential to end up skint and homeless. But I was sure. I want him forever. I’d marry him tomorrow in a cheap registry office without an expensive dress. Because I’m ready to promise to share my whole life with him. He isn’t. And I don’t know why. If the roles were reversed I’d support him. It would be difficult I know, and I know it is difficult now. But he seems to think it’s only difficult for him. My depression or whatever is only difficult for him.
Well luckily for him he can run away. He can escape. He doesn’t have to deal with it day in day out. In the middle of the night. In the middle of a beautiful happy moment. I’ve been resisting urges for too long. And I’m not strong enough anymore. I gave in and started smoking again. Today I ran out and I was gonna quit again. But then he left. He left me in that state. So I bought more. And I hurt myself. And I’m ashamed of that. I haven’t done that in years. Another man I cared about stopped me from doing that. He said he’d rather I smoked than self harmed so I stopped self harming and used smoking to deal with shitty feelings instead. He was a man I really cared about at the time. He was my strength. He did it in the wrong way admittedly. And that messed a lot of things up. But it worked. He left too. Is it any wonder I have problems with abandonment when it always seems to happen?!
And now I’m weak again. It has overcome me. The parasite is winning. And I don’t think I can do it on my own. I have a man who is my partner. Yet it doesn’t feel like a partnership. It doesn’t feel like a joint fight. It feels like he’s constantly telling me I’m doing a shit job because I’m making him unhappy. Every day I look at his face and he looks like he’s trapped. He wants to leave. He’s done. And it’s yet another reminder of my failures! Every day my kids tell me they hate me. Frequently say they wish they lived with someone else, that they wished I was dead. That one I find really hard to deal with. I’ve wished that for myself. They can’t ever know how hurtful that is. They were the reason I never went through with it before. But it’s harder to fight the parasite when my reason for not doing it, says that they wish it too.
I need support more than ever. I can’t reach out. The parasite stops me. I was talking about relationship problems with my best friend over text. Then I told her what the problem was. Admitted I was struggling again. That was hard. It took me ages to write that message. And I only could because she’s shared hers with me before. I can be honest with him. He’s my partner. He’s supposed to be the one who’ll always stay. He’s supposed to love me anyway despite my flaws. Like everyone always said. ‘You’ll find someone who’ll see your flaws and still love you. That’s what you deserve. That’s real love’. And yet here I am fighting a losing battle alone.
I need help. But it needs to start closer to home before I can bring myself to go up a step on the ladder. I need the support of the people closest to me to bring me up to the level where I feel strong enough to go to the doctors. And I don’t feel like I’m getting it. I feel like he’s running away. Maybe part of me is pushing him away. Maybe that’s just what this parasite does. Fights against everything that will make it die, because it wants to take me over and make me die instead. Maybe he should realise he’s my main support and help me. The more he helps the quicker I can feel strong enough to do the next step. The quicker the path to recovery. Does he really wanna run away before I get a chance to get better? Before we get to find out if we can be happy? Before I find a way (whether therapy, medication, whatever) to kill this bastard parasite inside my soul?
I offered him time away when we talked about this before. I said maybe we need a break. It’s hard to see patterns from the inside. All you see is little snapshots. He didn’t want that. I wanted some time alone. But then I wanted to talk. I wanted to find out what was wrong. So we had the discussion and we figured out what was wrong. And for three days after that … I FELT HAPPY. Like truly happy. I felt cheerful. I felt positive. I felt HOPEFUL. I felt like I was part of a team and we were gonna do this together. I felt invincible. The parasite was hidden, I couldn’t feel it’s effects at all. Usually it’s just covered by other feelings but I can still hear it. But not those three days. I felt progress. Of course I can get better because I have him. He loves me. He’s gonna help me. And now, already, it’s only been a couple of weeks. And this is my worst day in years. I’m ashamed that I’ve given in to some of the worst urges. Im ashamed to show weakness. My kids won’t know. My partner will only know if he reads this blog. Who knows if he will. I think he’s pissed off with me. I think he’s regretting not having that break. I think he’d rather leave than stay and fight for my recovery, our relationship and our future.
Part of me hopes he doesn’t read it. I’m ashamed. Part of me hopes he does. So he can understand. So he can see how much I need him to be my strength right now. Temporarily. He’s shaken up my world and he should be around to stabilise it again afterwards.
I love him
I love my kids
But I’m not strong enough right now
I can’t do it alone yet
Little~Girl~Land 