Thursday Stream of Consciousness

My throat hurts. My throat hurts, and I can’t breathe through my nose, and my uterus hates me, and I am so ready for winter to be over with.

Preparing For My Mom’s Visit

Hello, friends. I’m currently stressing out. So hard.

Little Brother

My family is… complex, to say the least. I have a handful of step-siblings, and a handful of half-siblings, some of which I’m not even related to, by blood or by marriage. It’s just easier to give them the title, rather than explain how exactly they are a part of my life.

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Gym Blog | Day 11

I didn’t actually go to the gym today. Oops.

To Gym, Or Not to Gym?

Recently, I stepped on the scale, and was actually appalled at the number that stared back at me.

Alone

I’ll never understand just how single parents do it. They are honestly superheroes. I’m not even a single mother, but I feel like I am more often than not. Since day one, I have changed every poopy diaper (yes, every poopy diaper), and most of the wet ones. I have cooked and fed every meal. I have executed every bath, and read every story. Given every dose of medicine. I have put him down for every nap, and every bed time. I have woken up with him night after night, and rocked him back to sleep. I am the one who wakes up with him every morning. Just last night, he woke up at 1:30, and would not go back to sleep, not matter what I did. We spent hours rocking, and got nowhere. My back was on fire from the crappy, old rocking chair, and I was so exhausted that I was fighting the urge to throw up all over his sweet face. I ended up lying down uncomfortably on the couch in the living room around 3:00 in the morning, and he fell asleep on top of me from 5:00-7:30. All I could do was try to cry silently, like I’ve been doing most nights lately, and try not to wake him up. I got no sleep. None.

His separation anxiety is so extreme this time. It has never been this bad. He screams and screams and screams when I try to put him in his crib, if I even lean over it. He wakes up the second I put him in there, even if I’ve been rocking him for an hour, and he was passed out. He open his eyes, stand up, and scream.

This morning, he refused to nap, just like every day for the last week. This sleep regression/cold/ear infection/teething/separation anxiety has hit him like a ton of bricks, and it is wearing me thin. He has been so fussy during the day, and it has been so hard to get anything done, whether at home or in town, because he is just so clingy and upset. I tried to leave him with his father today, so I could try and get a few moments of sleep, but honestly, I don’t trust him with him. I know he would probably never hurt him, but he has a very short fuse, and a very bad temper, and often raises his voice at him, or cusses at him, and it makes me so angry. Sure, I get angry sometimes, and I’ve raised my voice more often than I’d like to admit in just the last week, but he just gets ridiculous. Nevermind the fact that our son is barely over a year old, and doesn’t even understand what is going on, but what reason does HE have to be upset? He doesn’t DO anything. He has never spent a night, getting zero sleep, rocking in a creaky rocking chair for 3 hours. He got 10 hours of sleep last night! So, I do everything. I sacrifice sleep to make sure his diaper is always clean, or that he gets his meals on time, because Kyle always seems to “forget” or “lose track of time” when I leave him alone with him, even for an hour, so I can sleep, even though he is just sitting on his ass playing a game, or watching TV. I hate it.

I made a comment out loud to my son today, a bit passive aggressively, about how I was too exhausted to make lunch, but that I had to, because no one else would, and Kyle stormed off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him, to play his Gameboy (yep, talking about a grown man here). He gets so upset when I voice my frustration about doing 90% of the work when it comes to our son and our household, yet he throws these tantrums, and shuts himself in the bedroom for hours, leaving me even more alone. Proving my point. I’ve been asking him to get out to the laundromat for the last three days to do some laundry, since we are completely out of clean clothes, and he just keeps forgetting. A few days ago, I asked him if he would help me with the dishes, not DO the dishes, just help me, since I had already done nearly half of them, and our son was clinging to me, whining to be picked up. He just ignored me.

Last night was trash night, one of the only chores he will partake in, if I don’t do it, and he always waits until we are going to bed to do it. I was already under the covers, with the lights off, and with my glasses on the end table, when he came in and asked me to get the kitchen garbage out, and empty Liam’s diaper bin for him, which is something I always seem to end up doing for him. I stood my ground, and told him to just do it. He made sure to make as much noise as possible, sighing and gagging dramatically, cussing at the garbage bin when he dropped it and made noise. Then he came to bed, in a huff, and rolled over angrily. Absolutely unnecessary. And I get bitchy, and I get passive aggressive, and he brings out the worst in me. I don’t mean to, but I just get so upset. He doesn’t fight, we never fight. And that is a problem. He doesn’t talk back, because he doesn’t talk at all. He just shuts off, often storming off to the bedroom. And nothing gets done. I am so tired of it.

I love him, I really do, and I know he loves me and his son, but this is frustrating, and it is destroying me. I am exhausted, my blood pressure is through the roof, and I have been so, so depressed. I am tired of the bullshit excuses, and the immaturity. I want him to grow up, but he just won’t. I want him to listen to me, and understand how hard this has been for me, and what I am going through. The only reason I keep going is because I know that my son needs me, and no one else will take care of him.

But I’ve been having days lately, where the prospect of simply disappearing, leaving everything behind, seems more and more tempting.

I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t feel this overwhelmed, and this alone, when his father is RIGHT THERE. He doesn’t even work this week. He has been home for days, and will be home for the rest of the week, but… nothing. He won’t help me. It honestly feels like he doesn’t care.

I am at the end of my rope. I just want a break. A nap. Some quiet. I need help, and I have no one. Some days, I feel like it would be better if I actually were alone, then I would only have one toddler to deal with. Only one person’s messes to constantly clean up.

Anyway, thanks for reading, friends. Thank you for letting me vent. I’m off to feed my overly exhausted kiddo a snack, and try to get him to take a nap, even though I know it won’t happen.

Jan

Never Get Your Hopes Up

So close. So fucking close.

I’ll try to make this short, because the longer I let it sit and think about it, the angrier I will get. I’m feeling quite a range of emotions right now, ranging from sad, to frustrated, to absolutely livid. I’m tired of nothing ever working out for us. It honestly feels like every time things seem to start looking up, everything falls apart. I don’t know what we did in our past lives to deserve this shit storm that we are living in, but I am sick of it. So. Fucking. Sick of it.

I’m sure as most of you who follow me on Twitter have seen, we’ve been having car problems for a very, VERY long time. We’ve tried to raise money on several occasions to try and replace our Mustang, but it never worked out. Well, several weeks ago, our Mustang died. Completely, and utterly, died. So we started a GoFundMe page to try and raise some money to get a used car. Despite the fantastic efforts of my friends donating, re-tweeting, and sharing our page, we were only able to raise $305, which is less than 1/8 of our goal that we set.

I don’t currently work, so I don’t leave our apartment ever, but Kyle has been needing to rely on his mom to bring him to work (and she lives 40 minutes away), as well as a few of his co-workers. The problem is, he is the only full-time person in his department, so there really is never anyone working at the same time as him. To top it all off, he just got a second job, where he knows nobody, so the only person who could drive him to that job is his mom, and this job is even further from her than his other one.

But, things were finally starting to look up. After weeks of searching and reaching out to our families, Kyle’s aunt and her wife offered to give us one of their vehicles, as they only had $5600 left to pay on it. It was a nice, newer, family-sized vehicle, and we were so excited. Too excited. And for a moment, we forgot that our lives are shit and that things never work out for us. Over the course of the week, we worked out how much we would be giving them in payments, and then just today, we bought the insurance for it.

But, like everything else in our lives, it had to totally fall apart.

Just a few hours ago, Kyle was in the middle of a conversation with his aunt about bringing the car down to us TOMORROW, when she suddenly stopped responding. After a little while, we got a message from Kyle’s mom, saying that she needed to talk to us about the car. And the alarms went off. We are able to smell disappointment from a thousand miles away. So Kyle called her.

According to Kyle’s mom, while Kyle was talking to his aunt about the car, she was actually in the middle of a heated argument with her wife, about who knows what. They are always fighting about something. Basically, her wife stormed out, shouting that she was leaving, and took the vehicle that was supposed to go to us, instead of her own vehicle, just to spite Kyle’s aunt.

Then Kyle threw his phone and let out a string of profane words.

I seconded everything he said.

Now everyone is fighting and blocking each other, and we are sitting here stunned, upset, depressed, helpless. To top it all off, Kyle’s mom seems to think that despite having zero credit, Kyle should be able to “easily” get approved for a loan on a used car, because of how much he makes. And she keeps arguing with us, and can’t seem to understand why we keep getting denied for loans. It is so fucking infuriating that she doesn’t understand why we aren’t getting approved.

Kyle has two jobs now, but has yet to start at the second, so there is no income from them yet. He also has no line of credit or credit history, as he is only 20 and hasn’t really established any, since everything has always been in my name. And of course, despite having EXCELLENT credit, I can’t cosign for him on anything because I’m not currently working.

Yeah, trust me, we’ve tried at banks, dealerships, and credit unions. Nada.

So now we are searching through the inventory of all of the used car places around us, searching for anything that we can afford without having to give them a huge down payment, since we can’t get a loan or financing.

This. This is my life, folks. A giant fucking snowball of shit that just keeps on rolling.

Thanks for reading, I’ll keep you all posted.

Jan