I feel like I'm going completely mad at the moment.
I'm working full time, in a job that I only started in mid-Sept last year. I am HATING it at the moment - even though on paper it should be my dream job, doing something I'm supposedly really interested in for a good company. I work from home 2-3 days a week, but have a 1.5-hour commute each way on the other days. It's a new post and the organisation is structurally very chaotic. I am really struggling to understand what is expected of me. I also can't seem to motivate myself to care about it (hmm, hence posting on Mumsnet when I am supposed to be working...).
I have 3 kids, two primary school age and one nearly 2 and in nursery. I am doing a terrible job of parenting them at the moment. The eldest is being completely poisonous - name-calling, answering back, picking fights with both his siblings (especially the middle one) and being physically extremely vicious with everyone. The middle is behaving no worse than usual - but has always been very difficult to handle as has no powers of concentration whatsoever if not motivated, doesn't eat, doesn't listen and is totally hyperactive. The youngest, previously a complete angel, is gearing up for the terrible twos by getting fussy about her food and particularly about where she eats it, copying her eldest brother's vicious behaviour and biting/hitting her siblings, and waking up screaming in the night (previously a reliably sound sleeper).
Instead of being patient and working with them to try and resolve things, I seem to spend about 95% of my time shrieking at them or smacking the older two (and I am NOT the sort of parent that thinks smacking is the automatic answer or the right thing to do).
DH had serious professional exams in October last year, on the results of which an important job offer was resting. He passed (just), but gearing up to the exam was immensely stressful - and since then, he has been working all hours because he swapped a lot of leave and odd shifts so he had time to revise before the exams. He also has no interest whatsoever in housework, household/financial admin, or the boring bits of childcare (like, reply slips for school, diary organisation, swimming lessons, making sure they go to bed on time.....) so I am doing all of that by myself.
I am totally exhausted. If I try to catch up on my sleep by going to bed early, all the chores don't get done, which either keeps me awake through anxiety, or keeps me awake the following night trying to catch up. If I stay up and do the chores, I end up going to bed really late because I can't go to sleep without taking time to wind down first, which inevitably sees me staggering into bed somewhere around 1am. Before Christmas, I was drinking virtually every night, and way more than is good for me. So far in Jan I have managed to stop during the week and limit myself at weekends (score 1 brownie point for me!).
The house is permanently filthy: I mostly manage to put the hoover over about 75% of it approximately once a week, but the bathroom rarely gets cleaned and I haven't even seen my bedroom floor for about 3 months.
I know what I need to do: I need to cut own my working hours. But I don't know how to go about it. I don't really know how far we can afford for me to cut back as I have lost all confidence in my ability to budget accurately (plus DH has been paid so erratically in the last few months that I have no idea which way is up). I also don't know how to approach work about it as I have only been in the job since September and am really embarrassed about going to them so early on and saying, you know, actually I can't hack this. I can't quit altogether as without my salary we have no money to pay for food (DH's covers fixed outgoings and mine does everything else).
I seem to be spending a large proportion of my waking hours crying and wasting time. I can't concentrate on anything. But I don't think I can face going to the GP and getting signed off as it makes me feel like such a failure, and I hate the way it would look to work. Plus DH is very scathing about "depression" and thinks I should just grit my teeth and get through it. He also thinks I shouldn't give up work, although this is partly due to the fact that his mum didn't work when he was growing up and ended up with serious depression, and he firmly believes that wouldn't have happened if she'd had something to do outside the home. So there are all sorts of marital issues there....
help. I don't know where to start but I can't go on like this.
Sorry about the long post.