Struggling with life’s hurdles at the moment. I have just turned 30, my job is at risk of redundancy and my younger sister has been diagnosed with cancer. My head is spinning and my family are so stressed. This comes at a time when all of my friends are the happiest they’ve ever been getting married and having babies. I am so happy for them and wish I could be that happy for myself.
My long term partner has hinted at engagement over the last year, something I wanted before having a baby of our own. But now I feel so guilty for trying to focus on my life when my sisters life is upside down. How could I plan my future when hers is so uncertain and my family need to focus on her? Her prognosis is good, but she is in her early twenties and it’s going to be a long recovery in which she will get sicker before she gets better.
I wanted to get engaged and start a family for so long but now I feel the timing is so poor, I would feel guilty celebrating, but I feel like postponing those things until things are better is pointless because nothing ever seems to get better and nor am I getting any younger.
I’ve never had much luck with jobs either, it’s the third time I could be made redundant and I even took a career move to ensure a more stable job this time around which has not panned out. I have an interview at my current company for a new role on Friday but I’m so all over the place with stress I don’t want it to be a disaster. I didn’t want the stress of job hunting again when I feel like it’s all I ever do when I work so hard and everyone else is so settled around me. I also do not want to try for a baby amongst my job worries, getting a new job and being in a probation period is not sensible nor financially viable if I don’t qualify for maternity pay.
Last year we lost our new born niece, a hard blow to my partners family, alongside his grandfather being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My grandmother died the end of the year before after a long battle with Parkinson’s, so this whole period has been draining, and within that I have already been made redundant once and so had my partner. He has a great and stable career which is positive and quickly bounced back, but I was hoping things overall would pick up, but we keep being delivered with awful news.
My mom was very sick over Christmas and bedridden with a viral infection which brought on crippling anxiety. She was so ill she was unable to celebrate my 30th Birthday and her father’s 90th. We joked on New Year’s Eve that hopefully 2025 will be better, which was wishful thinking.
I’m struggling to keep my head above water, at a time when I feel like I should be the happiest. I’m also concerned that amongst these weddings and baby showers I am a misery, I try so hard to not talk about myself as I have nothing positive to say and I don’t want to dampen everyone else’s happiness with my bad news. I dread them asking ‘so how are things with you?’ and will immediately change the subject. Most of them know but I still avoid talking about me and my life. I will always show up and support my friends, I am pleased to celebrate their joys as they are the only joys I have.
I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely happy or stress free. I know everyone has things to stress about in life but I can’t remember the last time I had any positive news to share and it’s becoming exhausting. Since Covid as a family we have had one thing after another. I don’t want peoples sympathy and I hate talking about it, I’d rather forget it’s all happening but it’s easier said than done. But I just need some reassurance that everything will be ok for once.