To be feeling miserable? Yes , I know I am....

[Notcontent]

Feeling really low at the moment and need you all to tell me to get a grip.

I am ok financially but everyone I know has a lot more money.
I live in a tiny house that makes me feel poor (even though it was expensive - that's London...)
I am so, so tired of being a lone parent and never having anyone do anything nice for me.
I don't have many friends (do have some...)
Ten years ago I never thought my life would be like this.

Sometimes I feel like if I died only my parents would miss me, and maybe my dd for a little while, but then she would just get used to living with her father.

ditto... except I live in a flat that is not in london and wasn't that expensive but is taking too long to do up because the children or I am always poorly with whatever is going round school.

shaall I go and get the chocolate?

Yes, chocolate sounds good... So sorry you feel like that too.
Objectively I know things could be worse and I have tried so hard to be happy, but I am not. What makes it even worse is that my exh has a great life.

I know that feeling, have moved since, but I remember it well. So...a small house is cozy, easier to clean and family can't run from each other, so tend to be more close knit and not build up and harbour resentments, iyswim. Another thing about not having a load of money is you can't buy your children's affection. It will pan out in the long run.

Collect moments not things.

Oh and...You live in a house in London? You must be loaded! Move and come and live in a mansion in the sticks!

Now you've been told.

Thank you HP!
Just cleaning the kitchen. Keeping busy always makes me feel better. Not so great when I sit down and think.

Put some cheerful music on, or a bit of comedy. We can all feel a bit down sometimes. A bit of tinsel and some fairy lights goes a lot further in a small place, too.

I am so, so tired of being a lone parent and never having anyone do anything nice for me.

Yeah I hear ya sistah. It hits me also when I'm ill and there's no fecker at all to even do the slightest little thing for me, DS will give an obligatory "aw poor mummy" but really, I'm alone. I get irrationally jealous at FB status updates such as "feeling ill but DP has been a honey and brought me some lemsip/chocolates/hug" yada yada!

With you, OP.

Also stuck in small, rented (at bloody stupid cost) house in SE London where I will probably have to stay for the next 10 years while loony ex H dictates the terms of the 'divorce' he can't be bothered to give me yet.

He pays quite high maintenance as is wealthy, so I have a plan. I am saving up, and when those 10 years are up I am getting out of this overcrowded nasty place and going to live in Yorkshire near my parents.

I so empathise with what you said about only yoru parents really caring for you :/ I've been suicidal a lot in the past years and they were always the only ones I could talk to about it apart from the Samaritans. I'm so grateful to them although we had hard times in the past, they are a rock now.

Ds2 will be 16 then and hopefully will feel able either to make the decision to come with me or to stay in London with his dad, who will never leave. I know that sounds selfish on my part but the life I have had to live in order to be with them (and that only 3 nights a week as I work out of London) has nearly killed me and I have, simply have, to be able to see an end to it. It is non negotiable.

People tell me I cannot just wish away my life for 10 years but I already lost my dream job (outside London) to this divorce and I basically live a half life here with no friends (friends all over UK and indeed world.. but not here).

Today my treat was to go to Lewisham shopping centre to buy Xmas stuff. I get so lonely I start talking to strangers and theylook at me with pity like the sad old woman I have become :D

Yes I never believed life could be like this. Divorce and lone parenthood are the pits.

But I am determined that one day i will have a new life, before I am too old to enjoy it.

btw though you're wrong that dd wouldn't care if you died. It would devastate her.

What has stopped me killing myself since the divorce is that I know the boys would always feel the pain of being abandoned and wonder why.

Better a shit mother- even if I end up not living with them as can't stand this life any more (I've considered just leaving London and letting H have them full time, which would piss him off as I am a convenient 'babysitter' for him atm)- than a dead one.

Oh gosh, domestic goddess, sounds like are feeling just as low as me. Sending you a big hug. Yes, divorce is horrible and when there are children involved it can feel like an eternal punishment. It sounds like we are both slightly trapped in lives we really don't like.

fuck yeah. And we're not alone. Was on the phone to another friend trapped in same sort of hell and the poor soul is also in and out of court.

It was her who said to me that I couldn't spend 10 years waiting for my life to start. I had to disagree with her, I am living a ghost of a life here and I have tried hard to change it but no go.

I have no secure place to live, a job 2 hours away which I have to commute to, and spend half the week entirely on my own. And I mean entirely. I often don't see another soul. People tell me to get out and about but I often end up just sleeping and watching films cos I guess I am depressed (although believe me it's been worse and I am not suicidal atm.)

My friend and I are planning to write a semi-fictional book about women trapped in dysfunctional post-divorce lives, which might be cathartic! She reckons it will sell :D

I genuinely run mylife entirely around the kids now. Entirely. And sometimes I get very resentful and fantasise leaving them even though they are lovely kids. But a month or so ago ds2 told me he preferred daddy and I totally cracked. I wondered what the hell I sacrificed everything for, why didn't I just move away near my job and start again, get on with whatever life I have left and stop haunting London where I have nothing except the remaining half of a family life.

It's just such a sad existence that reminds you constantly how you fucked up and what you lost. I don't miss xH at all but I do miss the sense that my life was going somewhere, there was a plan and not just a great big restriction, a full stop on life. My job is unlikely to bring me to London but my kids will never leave here now, nor would they want to as this is their established life and I would be dragging them away from it; and I will never even be able to move them to another part of London as he made sure to get them settled in a top private school. I can't afford to live near there so am also isolated from other parents etc.

So I am resigned that when my children both become teenagers I will just not see them very much, as they are not likely to want to come with me up North. I guess it's a choice a lot of dads have to make. I'm just continually stunned that I ended up in this stupid sad position.

my daughter is 30 now. i was a single parent from her being four. although parts of it are horrible (i can identify with all the things you say, the money, no support, no-one to do things with - parents evenings and new year always got to me) it is also the best and most wonderful time of life when you can focus on your children. you may not feel it but you're storing up beautiful memories. don't leave your children, no matter how low you get, because what they need and want most in life is you.