Hurt

I am so hurt and confused and stressed right now, I just want to curl up somewhere and never come out. I have put over two years into a degree, so that, maybe, someday, we won’t live paycheck to paycheck, and completely flip out when something goes wrong. Of course, no one told me that when they made me switch degree programs (they ended the one I started out with) that I would have to do an externship at the end. Had I known, I probably would have quit then, and saved a few thousand dollars that I don’t have. When I started it, I had a “developmentally delayed” preschooler. Now I have an Autistic second grader, with Duchene muscular dystrophy that I have virtual schooled the last two years, due to bullying. We are already picky about who is around our kids, and haven’t had a date night since we left Florida, pretty much, over five years ago. As it is, I found out about two thirds of the way in, and am in the last term of my degree plan. I found a neighbor I kind of trust enough, for a few hours, to keep my son, while I put my hours in. I knew she wasn’t totally into it, but I had watched her kid for her, so she wanted to help out. I found out today that my kids have acted like heathens over there, like I never feed them, getting into things, begging for stuff, fighting over everything, things they never do at home. Then she said she was gonna get a neighbor to watch her daughter when she started work next week, and I offered to help her back, when I wasn’t doing my hours, and that’s when she told me. Her husband doesn’t want their daughter back down here because my daughter told them I “locked her in a room” when I was babysitting. God only knows what all she said, but I put her in my son’s room for a few minutes because she was screaming at the dinner table, I even told them when they picked her up that we had had an issue, and I put her in time out, and it was fine. She was testing boundaries. Apparently, even time out for a screaming toddler is abuse now. They’re willing to watch my son this week, but she let me know her husband wasn’t happy, and had been struggling because my Autistic son says things that he’s heard (on Youtube videos about Minecraft) sometimes that are, granted, inappropriate, and we talk to him about it, but, yeah, apparently we look like awful child abusers who lock kids in rooms, and starve kids, and let them run amok. I am so tired of trying. I am very antisocial, and make friends so rarely, and, when I do, they are for life, like family, but the ones I’ve made here in South Carolina have been awful. The people here are not like back home. They’re acquaintances, never the family/friends I grew up with, and just assumed all friends were like. I’m trying to get him into a regular school, one that has a special ed department, and can deal with his behaviors, and learning issues, whatever they are, because Developmental Peds is dragging their feet getting him in to figure it all out. The school zone we’re in doesn’t have anyone in a special needs capacity on their contact list, and I don’t know what it’ll take to get him into the one school we’ve been told is equipped and capable of meeting his needs, so I may be quitting my school now, in the middle of the last term, because I have no one I can trust with my baby, and don’t know when I might have an answer for that. I am so tired of  trying, and having every damn thing fall apart. I want my mom, someone to talk to, but have no one, and I am so fucking tired of hurting, and feeling like I’m not good enough. What the hell is so wrong with me? Why is it so easy for people to use me, then hurt me? What do I keep doing wrong? I’m so sick of platitudes. It’ll all work out. God’s got this. We’ll make it through. Why the hell do people think that makes it better? Should I be grateful to know that someday it’ll all be easy, or make sense? Or be pacified that God has this? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer, but to brush all my pain away, because He’s here, why does He keep putting so much on me? Why hasn’t He given some sign that He really is here, some small miracle to let me know I’m not alone? I have my husband, but he’s in the fight, too, and we can’t keep leaning just on each other – what happens when we both are too weak to lift the other up? What happens when we’ve both been pushed to the limits of our everything? Who’s here to help us then? We always make it through. I know this, and I know we’ll make it through this, but some day, I just want to know that we conquered the mountains, not just survived the climb. I want to look back, and see where we bulldozed it, not dragged each other along. I just want to know that we’re not in this alone. Is that really so much to ask?

Sorry for the huge, whatever this was. I’ll maybe come back and edit it later, but, for now, it is what it is, take it or leave it, but I have to leave it here, and go feed my kids, or not, since I’m such a horrible person. I just had to let it out, and hope that someone, somewhere, will see it, and understand. If that’s you, please leave a kind word. I could really use a friend right now. Obviously.