Anyone else just want to weep?

[CrapBucket]

I don't have time or energy for anything, am I the only one?

Home is a disaster- I have lost control of the basics like meals (although I'm always at bloody lidl or aldi or asda), laundry, walking the dog....

Behind on everything at work, need to delegate stuff and don't have time to explain anything properly to anyone

Teens are being really meh about everything and need me to set the tone of the family - I just don't have the mental energy

My friends need me and I'm flaking on them left right and centre

Parents want to know what kids want for Christmas.

Can someone please pause the world? Just want to crawl under duvet but then tomorrow will be even further behind.

Obviously I need to stop wasting time on mums net too.

Waaaaaaahhhhh

It is a bloody slog.
I couldn't sleep for the stress of worrying what I have overlooked/forgotten.
Today I have just called in sick. I am going to have a bath, lie in bed, make a list and get my life together. I am going to sink if I don't stop.

Can you book a cleaner to get on top of the housework, they can tidy as well?

I would message your friends and tell them the truth, 'I do care about you, I am sorry I am haven't been able to meet up but I am overwhelmed, new year catch up? So they know whats happening and you can forget about that.

Take a day off and ease the pressure?

It feels harder than previous years as we haven't had to 'do' a proper Christmas for ages, and I had forgotten just how exhausting and tiring they really are.

I have teens too, give them jobs! I have given up trying to recreate a magical Christmas and now moved on to working out strategies to survive! I have bought some baking sets, we are going iceskating and that is it!

You are not alone op. Look after yourself.

I am also aware that I have not delegated nearly enough.

Maybe we should all form a commune style environment with a big hut in the middle for all of us - no others allowed - giant cushions, duvet, soft lighting and the option for primal screaming?

Yes please! I did actually have a proper scream in the car on the way to work the other morning. Not crying, just a great big scream. Never done that before but highly recommend it.

I have had a horrid cold, cough, virus type thing for almost two weeks now and just can't shake it, I feel exhausted. Both kids have caught it so no rest for me. DD is on day 5 of illness and thought she'd turned a corner yesterday but is now saying it hurts when she wees so back to the GP we go, if I can get an appointment (as I type this I've been on hold for 20 minutes). DS (4) has been sleeping worse than when he was a baby due to coughing and now he's better I think he's just in the habit of waking at 5am! Trying to juggle work and poorly kids has been a nightmare, DH does his share but when they're ill they just want their mum and I feel like I'm always pulled in five different directions. A much valued member of my team at work, who I really depend on is leaving at Christmas and I'm supposed to be interviewing for his replacement next week but every application I've recieved has been utter shit. There is no one to take on the extra work, it will all fall to me and I'm already on my knees. It's DD's birthday at the weekend so assuming she's well enough we've got her friends coming over for a sleepover, I need to do a food shop and plan stuff for them to do and get presents wrapped. I feel guilty for finding it all a slog, I know I should want to do these things but I'm fucking knackered. I also need to find a dress for DH's work Christmas do, but I can't face the thought of going shopping and trying things on knowing everything will probably look awful. It's a formal black tie thing and its a new job so I won't know anyone at all apart from DH, I'm dreading it to be honest. All very much first world problems so I don't feel I can complain to anyone IRL. I am also waiting for major surgery for a long term condition (not life threatening but causes chronic pain) and was told probably January, but now being told probably closer to Easter and I have no faith in anything they tell me anymore.

People keep telling me I "look tired"...yes, I know!! Fuck off!!

I don't even do Christmas- not Christian- and I am still feeling tired, so I can only imagine how the rest of you feel. Today I am buying readymeals for the family.

I could have written this post. Everything feels like an ordeal. My teenagers say they don't want anything but I'm sure they do. Just buying small presents for extended family is a huge strain on my finances. My bf has lost his job. Just. All. Hard. Work.

I've been feeling like this almost all year, and I live alone and have a non-stressful job, so I can't imagine how everyone else feels!I think I may have turned a bit of a corner over the weekend, though I'll have to wait and see if it lasts. I wrote down all of the small jobs I want to do around the house as well as general admin tasks and there were about 60 😳so it's really not surprising that it all felt overwhelming. But individually they were almost all things that would take about 10 minutes at most, and once they were on paper it was quite easy to pick out the stuff that I actually need to do to make my life easier (keep the kitchen tidy so cooking isn't an enormous faff) vs stuff that can be shelved for now (is anyone actually going to give a shit if I've dusted my mirrors?!) Once I'd managed to prioritise I realised it was a lot more manageable than I'd thought.I also agree with everyone who says it's connected with the pandemic and the general state of the country and the world. When the future feels bleak it's very hard to care enough to keep on top of the little things that make you feel better day to day, and then it becomes a vicious cycle, where you feel worse for not doing them and that in turn means you have even less motivation. I am finding it works a bit the other way round as well though, and that feeling proud of having accomplished something I'd been putting off - even if it's tiny - does a lot to reduce my anxiety about the things I can't control.

Sorry, there were paragraphs in that when I typed it

I always feel like this in December.

Work is busy. Invited to various social things and inevitably I flake on half of them because I’m exhausted. Money is on my mind because of Christmas. Everyone is tired and ill on and off at home and at work. Life seems to take on a hectic, chasing-your-tail quality.

I don’t know what the answer is, really, except stop trying to do everything and please everyone and spend a bit more time making yourself happy?

I went for a long walk on Sunday rather than doing housework. I’m going to have a massage at the weekend. I’m not going overboard with Christmas shopping (the shops last week sent my blood pressure crazy! So busy and stressful and full of miserable looking people spending and spending!).

Can I join and share my misery. Eldest DS has bi-polar and supporting him for past five years has drained me. I loathe my job. I had a hysterectomy four weeks ago and now developed a golf ball size lump in my vulva. I'm terrified I've given myself a prolapse because I've been overdoing it...it's impossible not to when you're a single parent with kids, dogs and house to look after My house is a shit tip. My DS has just broken up with her long term boyfriend who was part of the family so I'm gutted and my Boyfriend has just dumped me. The worst is that my youngest DS has to have two major surgeries for scoliosis next month...just dreading seeing him in pain and having to miss two months school. I feel utterly miserable and Christmas can just fuck off!! Solidarity to everyone else who is miserable xx

Sometimes I think we need to know when to say no! I am not doing anything today. I am lying in bed, having a bath and watching netflix in a big duvet and then I am going to make myself something to eat that takes 1 minute to produce. We can not keep going - we are not robots!

@queenofthedryshampoo
Oh you poor thing, that’s just too much. Sending you all the
I hope everything works out for you.

@ThatshallotBaby thank you so much

I'm feeling very like this at the moment too. I have fibromyalgia and I'm just so sore and tired all the time. My back is playing up so I can't just go for a walk as It's making my legs totally give way at times. I'm sleeping like shit which isn't helping anything, and when I am sleeping I'm having nightmares that I don't remember but which make me yell or scream out loud so DH wakes me up.

DD (18) has been walking the dogs but everything else we ask her to help with around the house to help me out right now is either forgotten about or is done half-arsed so I end up having to redo things myself anyway.

This is driving DH up the wall, as well as some of DD's behaviour, so I constantly have him moaning at me about that which just adds to everything.

Younger DC has ASD and anxiety and trying to get them to go to school is almost a full time job in itself. They have an arrangement where certain classes that are causing the worst anxiety are skipped to make sure they go to the ones they're more likely to be doing the exams for next year. But the school have a new policy of texting the parent every time a child misses a class so I'm constantly having to message them back to explain yet again where DC has gone, having to remind them when they're not in because of therapy appointments and so on.

On top of all this I'm meant to be doing an OU degree. I only have two courses left and I'm so close to finishing after originally starting it in 2008 but between everything else my studies are coming last and I'm so behind I'm constantly having to ask for extensions on the assignments. DH is also doing an OU course but he's on level 1 when I'm on level 3 and he keeps interrupting me to ask me my opinion on what he's doing despite it being a totally different subject.

I just need a holiday so much but I can't see it happening at all next year. Our good friends are getting married in the summer. DH is getting to go away for the stag do but the hen do (which I'm planning) will be in our home town as they have a baby. We can't afford much else next year because I'll have my dress and shoes to buy, DH's suit, outfits for both DC, the cost of staying at the hotel for two nights, as well as the crazy prices at the bar there (a previous wedding in the same venue many years ago cost us hundreds just on the bar costs). We will need someone to look after the dogs when we're there too which won't be cheap with 3 dogs, two of them elderly and the other one not getting on with them especially when there's food around.

With so much on for the wedding weekend it still won't be like a holiday for us so it's going to cost us loads and I don't know how we're going to manage it.

And even while trying to write all this out DH is constantly asking me questions and showing me things about his uni work and I have absolutely no clue what it's about.

Me too. Can’t complain about the long hours bc I like my job and need the work but think 12 hour days all year, no money grumpy teens, illness. I just would like someone to notice me doing 50-60 hour weeks to pay for them and occasionally help out but it doesn’t happen. I need some happy times to balance the hard work

I'm not sure if I feel better for knowing that I'm not the only one drowning at the moment, or if I want to weep more for what some of you are handling. Gosh, some of you have put my woes in perspective.

I'm trying to work out what can be dropped to just focus on the important things.
I have booked my wonderful cleaner to come on Saturday and she and I are going to get the house ready for the decorations to go up. On sunday DH and I will take the kids and get the tree, and put it up. That's our family tradition. And that's it. I am not committing to doing anything else this weekend.

The comment from a PP really resonated with me, about her mum being so burned out by christmas day that she wasn't able to be present to enjoy it. I don't want that to be me. Or my kids experience. So I'm going to start crossing stuff off the to do list, permanently I think. Or at least until after new year.

Same, OP, same. I could have written your post but not as well

Yep
Recovering from long covid - which effectively means if it isn't done by 2pm it won't get done
Looking after elderly parent plus 2 dc
I've stepped down from a volunteer group I started and have stepped back from a charity board I'm on
I'm utterly exhausted all the time and added peri menopausal angst makes life feel a bit grey
Everything dh does males me furious
I'm supposed to be dieting
Everything feels so difficult atm
You're not alone op x

Teenagers here too.
Identify with everything you are saying and have spent a lot of the last few years feeling how you describe.

Sending good wishes and strength.
Agree about teenagers helping but it's soooo hard. Mine only help l when we are going through a better phase. Clawing back a bit of a respite by taking a day off and catching up on a load of stuff can help.

Hope things get better soon

I definitely think that's the case with me.

I feel like I'm just about treading water but getting beaten slightly further back by the waves every day.

Various stresses - disabilities, caring responsibilities, kids having issues at school. And then all the admin of life plus Christmas plus endless calamities in the news. And having a low grade but chronic mental health condition doesn't help any. And also so many people I know and their kids are struggling too.

It all feels very very Too Much sometimes.

Please do your best to go to your appointments xx

Please go to your appointments. Thinking of you xx

Yes, I feel this in my bones. I'm a second year uni student, 2 lovely kids & a husband. Essays and presentations and group work coming out of my ears, portofolios to make and projects to design and complete. I've also had covid pneumonia twice in 15m so my health is seriously bad, I'm exhausted, in pain & breathless all of the time. Thank goodness for my husband because I'm useless right now. Sending love because this is so hard 😢

Can I join under the duvet too??

Everything seems too much at the moment, work is hard and they keep making it harder adding additional pressure. December is always a tough month as it’s short anyway and the businesses we work in are too busy with Christmas to want to see us. Which we get disciplined for when we don’t see them.

DM has just found out she’s having a major op on the 19th, she’ll be in ICU for at least 2 weeks after and has a long recovery time. Throws our Christmas plans completely out of the water and I’m so worried for DF who’s already had a tough 18months dealing with DM’s current health issues. Luckily we’re local so we’ll do Christmas at ours instead of theirs (we usually have it at ours but had decided to be at theirs this year) and DF can come here. I’m also terrified that the op will go wrong.

My children are 16, 7 and almost 3. 16 year old still doesn’t know what he wants for Christmas and I’m constantly being asked by people what they can get him. 7 year old wants everything so he’s easy. Almost 3 year old is fairly easy too.

House is a tip, I was diagnosed with a form of arthritis just over a year ago after years of struggling. As soon as I tidy it’s a mess again, I have to sit on the floor to hoover so it takes twice as long to do. Part of my symptoms are fatigue and brain fog just to add to the mix! I also keep having gallstone attacks which last anything from hours to days and the GP is useless.

We’re all feeling under the weather in the house, DH, me and all 3 children.

I’m just done with it all.

I hear you! I so am there too. Currently under duvet with rotten cold, can't be bothered with Christmas, just want someone else to make it happen, nothing in the fridge, place needs a clean and I've so overdrawn and haven't got all the presents yet. Just want to do a Reggie Perrin!