Feeling overwhelmed

Ella Harris - 8 Nov 16

I feel really sad this morning, the kind of hopeless confusion that comes over me more often than I clean my bathroom and leads my husband to say ” oh you’re feeling sorry for yourself today”

I don’t think I feel sorry for myself, I just have so many thoughts I can’t do anything with and that’s nothing new but where as I usually get agitated and snappy, today I feel like I’ve taken one too many of my meds and now I’m just trying to get through the day from a sedated view point.

My main grievance today is my 18 year old, a series of events yesterday caused me to snap and tell her to move out, I don’t feel that this in itself was unreasonable but it’s the knock on effect of losing it that’s harder to justify.

Freya, 6, was getting ready for rainbows at the same time I was trying to have it out with the older one and was moaning on about whether she would get Olivia doll to take home today, she’s been going about 8 months now I think and her name has yet to be picked to take it home. So my response to this interruption to my argument with her sister? “Freya, I think you should just accept you’re never going to get Olivia doll to bring home, wouldn’t that be better than just setting yourself up for a disappointment every week?” 🙁

She just looked at me with sad little eyes and nodded.

Now of course by the end of rainbows she told me that while she hadn’t got Olivia again today, her name was definitely in the tin and she would get it at some point! So she’s probably not scarred for life but I was left thinking what an awful parent I am and what sort of an example was I giving her for later life in that statement.

The whole day had been fairly stressful, I’d said I’d go into work 7-11am to help out on another section which had meant leaving the children in bed asleep while Mike drove me in. (with Chloe in the house obviously) he was stressing all the way that Lucas, 4,  would wake up and cry for him and Chloe wouldn’t go in and sort him out etc etc so I was feeling guilty for agreeing to go into work.

Work by comparison was the easy 4 hours of the day it turned out.

I had to walk home which I’ve never done before and I was stressed I wouldn’t be back in time for Lucas coming out of nursery at 12, actually I did it in 40mins and was quite pleased with myself thinking that will help knock a bit of fat off my gut! (who am I kidding right?)

On getting to the school Mike turned up just as he was coming out and Lucas went straight to daddy and totally ignored me.

Lucas has been having a bad week since his friend was off school last week and seems to have reverted to his former fear of going to school but that’s another story.

When we got home Chloe was coming out with her “friend” in normal clothes, she was due at work in the next hour. “Oh I’ve phoned in sick” she tells me, “I’ve got a headache and I feel sick, and I’ve got to go and buy some hoppers for my frogs because you wouldn’t take me yesterday”. We didn’t take her because we were going down to Kent later in the day and didn’t fancy a trip to Bedford and back as well, and because she started being really rude.

So, I’m already mad at this point as this is about the 7th time she hasn’t gone into work and she had promised me she wasn’t going to miss anymore but this is what she does when there’s a more interesting offer on the table. I don’t know why they haven’t sacked her already and this just adds to her cockiness that they won’t. I’ve have talked till I’m blue in the face about responsibilities and not letting people down, I have reminded her that she wants to go back to camp America next year and she needs to save for it herself this time and she has already booked herself in for a tattoo next month that she won’t be able to have if she loses her job but none of this seems to be getting her to go into work!

So off she goes with her “friend”

She then texts me later to ask if I’m going to take her to get these hoppers when she gets back?!

Mike is already on his way back from Bedford and hasn’t got them because of course she said she was going out to get them.

When I say no and explain all this she says “well I decided to go to Jump with my friend instead”, this is a trampolining park, what we all do when we’ve got a headache and feel sick! Then she says she’s been into work and booked today and tomorrow off?!

My head is a total mess by this point, you wouldn’t phone in sick and then waltz into work and book some holiday would you? I don’t know what is going on in her head and what’s true and what she’s lying about!

So by the time she got home I’d lost it and told her to find somewhere else to live, she looks at me all confused like why don’t you love me? She doesn’t seem to mind that it will be me who picks up all the pieces when she gets fired and have to pay for her smoking habit and her trips out to see friends. It’s me that will have to deal with her when she hasn’t taken her meds because she can’t afford them and is in the mind set that she doesn’t need them. It’s me that now has to pay to keep this gecko and frogs that I didn’t want in the house in the first place.

I know, my husband would say I’m making it all about me at this point, but I never understand that, I have to look after my own sanity first or I can’t look after anyone else. Am I not allowed a point where enough is enough?

I then get a phone call from the friends mother who now fears she will have to house my daughter and proceeds to tell me how displeased she is that they are seeing each other again due to Chloe’s manipulative personality, said in the nicest way possible of course. She tells me what an awful time her daughter has had over the last few years and how she won’t tolerate Chloe ruining her future.

I want to tell her what happened with my older daughter when I tried to pull her in line and advise her against trying to control her daughters actions and relationships but who am I to give parenting advice!

She tells me she thinks I’m a good parent as Chloe is always polite and helpful when they see her, I know I’m seriously lacking in the emotional support I should be giving and maybe this is why all my kids except one are slightly off the rails. I try to remind myself that there’s nothing I can do to change the past and I must soldier on with bringing the little 2 up better. The horrible statement I made to Freya flashes back into my mind and I can feel myself caving, I make my best effort to not cry on the phone and manage to hold it together until the kids are in bed.

Mike knows me too well and takes himself off to Tesco to get me some vodka to drown my sorrows in. I try to remind myself there was a time when I was drinking every night just to try to blur out the days, I must be doing better these days?

Fortunately we got watching a good programme and I didn’t drink too much but I still feel lost this morning and like things will never get easier.

Mike wants to take me to watch the accountant today as he says it’s like me before my meds (not the shooting people of course, I think he means the obsessive behaviour?!) but even that reminds me that I’m autistic without any talent, people are always saying that autistic people have difficulties but they always have a gift but that just isn’t true 🙁

Maybe I am just feeling sorry for myself after all 🙁

*This post is from my long running blog about being an autistic parent to 6 kids with various diagnoses of problems.

lifewithfreya.blogspot.co.uk

Ella Harris

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