Overloaded

Author: Katie

Warning! This blog is rated BD (borderline depressing)

I just had to write my thoughts. I need to vent or something I don't know. Life as a single (or divorced as Sue would call me) mom is really taking its toll these days. I feel pulled in a hundred different directions all day every day. Every thing seems so out of control and there's just too much going on for one person to handle. Just the basic chores of homemaking that I used to enjoy have come to be another dreaded thing on my to do list. I finally have classes that I can cope with at school and my life at home goes haywire! Child support is gone so I have to feel guilty for going to school now. I feel guilt all the time...for everything. I don't know how to get my priorities in order. God first family second everything else last.....blah blah blah. Sounds simple but is it really? HECK NO!

There's more involved to being a single (divorced) parent than just running a house and having a job......especially when the parent is also a student. The worst thing is that because I DON'T have a job, I feel like I should not be continuing in my education. However, this semester is paid for so, I'm going to finish it. My pre-teens are acting like full blown teenagers (at least my 10 year old is). I am not prepared for this! I just started reading books about teens and I get frightened when I read them. Problem is, I should have read them at least 2 years ago!

I think I'm doing the right things and they turn out to be wrong. I try to help and I hurt. I try to fix things and make a mess out of everything.

My daughter says that the world treats her so bad and she no longer wants me in school because I have too much homework. The weird thing is that I rarely do it when she is around. I wait until after the kids go to bed and before they get home from school. I do the house work and take care of meeting their needs when they're home. Sometimes I do get irritated and I act irrationally toward them because I sometimes do have to do homework when they are home. It's virtually impossible to finish it all when they aren't here. So, I keep looking for opportunities to sit down and begin my homework and as soon as I do it's "Mooooooooooom! " so, I get irritated because I JUST WANT TIME TO DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE! One of those needs are finding time to myself to just unwind. So, I finally get to bed, I finally close my eyes and I am awakened by nausea and headaches. Then I go to school and I take medicine to help my head and I can't stay awake because of the drugs and the lack of sleep at night.

I go to the Doctor and they just put me on anti depressants to control the migraines and it does slow them down a bit. However, there are these side effects.....................

Things like severe heartburn and stomach pain, digestive malfunctioning, lack of motivation to do anything because of heavy feelings of drowsiness, dry mouth, chapped lips, weight gain......and that's just one pill! FORGET THAT!

So, my Dr. is not happy with me and won't call in anymore pain relievers (which are only used in absolute emergency and rarely) until I get back on the drugs that were making me even more miserable than the headaches. I wasn't depressed before I took the anti-depressants. I didn't start feeling depressed until after I was on them. I'm depressed from the side effects.

I'm trying to figure out how to discipline my children effectively (please don't give me any ideas, I've heard them all!) and meet their emotional needs. Everytime something goes wrong in their life, it is because of something I've done wrong (that's the message I am getting).

My daughter seems to think she will have more of me if I quit school and go to work from 9-5. I think I'll do that over the summer so she can see just how much more she has of my time now than she would if I were working all day every day. I'll probalby have to continue to work anyhow if things don't get straightened out in the child support arena.

I just have too many balls to juggle and I'm not a good juggler anyhow. There is so much more to this than what I'm writing. I could write a book but not today. I guess I just need a few saints to life me up in prayer. Soon, I will be blogging about how things have changed!