if something doesn’t give, I won’t last the year

I have felt so tired these last few weeks. I get out of bed in the mornings, have a shower, come to work and can only think about how nice it would be to go back to bed.

Things at home are not getting much better. I think it’s part of the reason I force myself to come to work. At least here I have a door I can close and get a few minutes to myself. My mother has been drinking a lot lately and I try my best to not get annoyed, but when you drink things you normally wouldn’t just because they’re in the house I think you have a problem. I told her as much and she told me to stop picking on her. It’s so frustrating when it feels as though I am raising my mother as well as my children.

As for M, well he’s just full of piss and vinegar. I’m so tired of his attitude and general shitty behaviour. He’s only 9, but you would think he was an unruly teenager. It’s completely awful and the smallest things set him into an uncontrollable rage. T says it’s not okay and he agrees that a year to wait for services is ridiculous. He thinks that M needs a new psychiatric evaluation.

So, I went to see my family doctor last week.

I won’t last the year. 

Those are the words I said to him as I tried to explain how much worse things have become. He agrees that M’s behaviour is not okay, but he also informed me that the only child psychiatrist we had in our city has left, so there is nobody he can refer M to. Then he told me to go back to the agency (the one I’m waiting a year for in order to start the Intensive Treatment Service) and ask them if they can get another telephsychiatry assessment for him.

I just find the process so incredibly frustrating. You try to get help but you’re pushed back and forth and all over the place and you never seem to get anywhere. It feels like nobody can help you with anything. Everyone apologizes of course, but apologies aren’t what I need right now. If the agency isn’t able to help me, my only other option is to get my family doctor to refer him to someone in Toronto (if he even will) and I’ll drive him the 8 hours to get an assessment done there.

Do you ever get the feeling that you can’t even take care of yourself, because all you do is spend time and energy trying to take care of everyone else? That’s sort of how I feel lately. M needs help, yes, but I also need to make sure my tiny one is okay, since so much of my time is spent dealing with M and his issues. Then there is my mother and her disaster.

Somehow, I’ve also become the liaison for my aunt and uncle who are moving since nobody else who lives here seems to know how to deal with the paperwork and their kids all live out of town. I want nothing to do with that family but the sooner they move the better it will be for me and my mental health. It sounds like they’ll be gone in March, so the time is fast approaching.

Between everything at home and with M, I just don’t have any reserves left over. I spent the morning doodling while I was meant to be working. I couldn’t concentrate on my work anyways, but still. I have things to get done and I’m just not getting them done. The sad part is that I don’t really have a lot of feelings about it. I mean, part of me feels bad that I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing, but part of me doesn’t either. Part of me just doesn’t care. It’s not like my boss even cares, or at least that’s kind of how I’ve been left to feel.

Maybe it’s the winter that has me down. Waking up an hour early so I can remove the snow from my driveway so that I can get to work on time doesn’t help much either. That is what I had to do just this morning. The only benefit was that the stars were still out, so I got to see Orion (my favourite winter constellation) at 6 am.

Today it’s sunny which is nice because we haven’t seen the sun in a few days, but it’s windy and cold (currently it feels like -21 C or -6 F) so I can’t really get out to walk very far. Why do I live where the air hurts my freckly face? 

I do see T today, but I’m not feeling it at all. He told me on Friday that in two weeks he won’t be able to meet on one of our regular days. It’s only one day, so you would think it wouldn’t be a big deal, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I’m angry and pissy and generally bothered by the whole thing.

I think we need to rethink the long notice time he gives me when he is going to be away. Maybe a week or just a few days notice would be better when it’s only one day. Anything longer than that though, and we’ll need lots of time to cry over it. I should be able to handle short notice when it’s just a day. SHOULD is the operative word of course, but maybe it’s something we can work on. Oh shit, who am I kidding. No length of time will be okay. Maybe in the future, but not right now.