Tuesday

I look at myself and I don’t know what has happened to me.

Functioning normally, pretending that everything is okay, is so exhausting.

What is wrong with me, that ordinary life feels so hard?

Work, the school run, keeping the house clean, thinking of what to cook, bathing the kids, playground smalltalk.

Hardly rocket science.

So why does it all leave me wanting to curl up in a ball?

It’s not right to be in bed before my son.

Or to work myself up into a panic about trying to find a party venue that I haven’t been to before.

Or to be dreading my own birthday.

It’s almost three weeks now since I was in hospital. The expectation is that I should be feeling better.

The fact that I don’t makes me feel like such a failure.

A failure and a burden who shouldn’t be here.

I wanted to go to bed and not wake up.

I’m finding it hard to be happy that I did.