I am the kind of person that you would think from the outside has "the perfect life", always smiling. I am the person that always listens to the problems of others, and had one friend imparticular that used me as an "Agony Aunt." The support never went the other way, I was used when her life wasn't going well.
I am a person to come see with problems, but a backup plan for anything else. I supported my parents, no support went the other way as unfortunately they had their reasons, and dh's family are estranged.
I left work after maternity leave for my youngest child which wasn't the original plan. I became unwell, and had no outside support, and this coupled with a developmentally delayed baby, which we now know is ND, was the best thing all around. I had to be there for my baby, and was just so tired beyond words, exhausted.
I plodded on trying to be "Supermum," placing my own needs on the back burner. I did everything for my child, my husband being the sole earner did everything he could as well. I wasn't sleeping (more than a sleep deprived Mum of a bad sleeping baby). I now know this was because I was having seizures in my sleep, and post ictal and prodrome symptoms/mini seizures through the day. It turned out when I was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2022 after collapsing unconscious in the bathroom in the middle of the night, that I had been having focal seizures, which had progressed to tonic clonic. Dh called an ambulance, because he thought I had died at one point. Apparently I have had this all of my adult life, and so much makes sense now.
Since then I have been on different strong medications, feeling a bit like a guinea pig, and still they aren't fully under control. My youngest child (who I had, because I thought "the panic attacks" that I now know were seizures had gone) has now gone to school.
My df died last year in distressing circumstances, was too young to die, and had suffered from generalised anxiety for most of his life, getting worse as he got older. I watched him go to nothing, from a strong man to emaciated. I love him so much, but it couldn't save him in the end. I never asked a thing of him, yet still he was to die, he was a bloody good person.
My parents were divorced. My dm I have had to parent as she has needed a lot of emotional support, we have never had the typical close mother daughter relationship. I could could never talk to her.
Now here I am, "one of those women whose children are both in school and have no job." I want a job, I bloody do, I had such ambition, felt driven, and a hunger/fire to succeed growing up, went to uni, wanted to make something of my life. I always worked hard, up until my first baby.
This condition has made me utterly miserable. I just want it fully under control. I am now feeling depressed, and like an anxious wreck. I have never been a depressed person, and really do not recognise myself. I still get ready, but make up on, and smile when I take my children to school, but I am dying inside. I dread the question from other Mums "what do you do now your youngest is in school?" Thankfully, nobody has asked this "yet." I probably look like I work when I do the school run. I feel like a fraud. Dh did not sign up for this shit.
I don't know what I even want from this post. I am no kind of role model for my dcs. It is all such a mess. It isn't okay for me to not to be okay ,because people have far worse to cope with. The advice I give to other I can't accept myself. I just want to work, and I don't want to be this pathetic person anymore.