DS13 has just unleashed a monologue about how useless I am as a mother and human in general. I’ve had to walk away as I’m so upset. He has pointed out I haven’t worked for months and have failed in my career (true, I’m struggling with perimenopause and my job being taken by AI and need a plan); that the house is a tip (it is messy; I have ADHD and no meds and DC literally leave everything where they use it. We can no longer afford a cleaner so it has gotten worse. I can honestly spend an hour cleaning the kitchen and it looks like I’ve spent ten minutes on it) and that I’ve generally failed at life. He has pointed out I didn’t even manage to get my DD into the absolute top private school although I’ve had lots of time off to try to motivate her. This is true but she is a very highly strung, explosive child. Smart but probably on the spectrum and still managed to get a generous scholarship at a lesser school, which she preferred.
The annoying thing is everything he said is true yet I need him to actually do a few basic things like compete his homework and revision.
I was once a go-getter. Had a career in a very competitive industry. Was never top of that ladder but to even survive for as long as I did from my background was something of an achievement and one that I managed to leverage in my next career. Things have been up and down for me since COVID workwise. I’m trapped in a sort of life decision paralysis.
Am late 40s and have only just got over some crippling peri symptoms by loading up on vitamins. Am very over weight and everything about me is hateful and wrong. And DC are clearly picking up on it.
I am unfavourably compared by DC to nearly every other friend or mother. I’m not jealous of any of them - it’s just shocking my own DC have such a low opinion of me.
I challenge DS about homework and revision as he is mid exams and he throws everything back in my face. I feel
like I’m being spoken to by an abusive husband rather than a pubescent child.
Something has gone very wrong with me exerting any authority. I do get angry - I don’t hide away. But nothing I say or do is respected.
My whole family is angry at me as I’m not earning my usual high ish salary. DH earns a very large salary on paper but it is chopped in half after tax and it doesn’t stretch to any luxuries beyond private school…
I absolutely excelled at school and uni. I was an ace at exams and school was my safe place away from a highly educated but abusive family. My DP also became unemployed and had a massive fall in status.
I wake up from anxiety dreams about never working again or starting at the bottom with lots of youngsters as an ancient person.
Despite my failure as a human, along with DH I’ve managed to put my DC through several years of highly selective and expensive private schooling.
I am enraged that they don’t make the most of it. Looking back at my career, the ones who leapfrogged me were not more talented - but all of them without fail were more confident and most had been to private school.
How to I get my authority back quickly? I have spent the last year trying but failing to achieve anything. I haven’t given up. I just haven’t achieved anything. I do sometimes wonder if I’m such a terrible role model for my DC that I should quietly disappear.