What am I doing here?

I first started this website because I was trying to find myself. 6 years deep into early years parenting and I have been clawing my way back to myself ever so slowly over the past year. There has been so many setbacks. It has taken SO much longer than I thought it would (should!). But the supportive people I have around me, insist that the change that has happened over this past year has been massive. The progress I’ve made is obvious (apparently) even though I still feel incredibly stagnant and frustrated.

You see, my mind has SO many ideas. ALL the time. And some of them are seriously awesome and fill me with so much passion. But making any of them a reality requires WAAAAY more than the occasional 30 spare minutes every few days or so. Nevermind the fact that by the time I get back to another spare moment, I’ve had several new ideas that take priority.

There is this overwhelming sense of feeling ‘trapped’ that has persisted since we were in lockdown. Except I’m not trapped now. Not really. My kids are even going to school now and I have the odd day with no one to consider apart from myself. And yet - the frustration and trapped feeling continues. Why?

So many reasons I suppose. 1) I’m inherently a perfectionist, so big ideas mean big commitment and I don’t have immediate capacity to do that so therefore, I do nothing -illogical, I know. 2) My kids aren’t ACTUALLY at school all week and the days they go, I work and can’t just follow my passion projects. 3) My kids don’t go to school happily - so I’m generally overwhelmed with emotion at the very start of the “me” part of my day which, (thanks to my recently identified cPTSD) causes me to numb out and shutdown. 4) My house is looked after mainly by me so lots of BORING and mundane daily living tasks are my responsibility which is way harder for me than it should be. I think because of 5) Pretty sure I have some form of Neurodivergence (other than just the PTSD?!), and feel an insane need for autonomy (hello, PDA profile -don’t tell me that I HAVE to clean!), NEED novelty and literally abhor mundane tasks as if it physically hurts me to face them (ADHD), plus being near-constantly overwhelmed by most normal daily stimuli like noise, visual clutter, my internal body signals, and my ever-racing, chaotic and distracting thoughts (Autism?).

I’m not really clear how to address what feels like an overwhelming amount of difficulties facing daily life in a way that genuinely suits me, my brain and my body. I get caught in being angry at myself for being so useless and procrastinating so much. In the moment I find it so hard to remember the things I’m trying to acheive if they are not in the forefront of my mind. I never did have a “good work ethic”, and I think it’s because its so hard for something to remain important enough to stay in my conscious awareness. Out of sight out of mind. Plus the constant battle to feel calm (and therefore safe), which means I need to do close to NOTHING with my body and nothing emotionally challenging, or else my heart and breathing rate makes me feel like something is majorly wrong and I have to run away or numb out again.

Before kids, I could manage to work the equivalent of about 4 days (over the span of 6 days). With kids at home, I couldn’t even fathom the thought of work, and completely forgot my professional identity. Now, with kids at school, I am completely maxxed out doing a very flexible 2 days a week job. I have huge desires to set up my own business, knowing as I now do, that I NEED passion to drive me. But I have nothing left in the tank to make it happen. And so - frustration. Huge amounts of frustration. I have all the self-compassion in the world for this (very first-world) problem, but honestly - that’s just not helping me actually BE any different or DO anything different. So here I am, writing it all down, just for the sake of making A start on something.

However - to do this, I am simultaneously fighting mum-guilt hard. The kids have spent the entire week on screens (not joking - 10hrs per day) because we were sick and all had to isolate due to COVID. And for this week, I have just let it happen. TV for everyone. No housework for me. Just mind-mapping, website designing, blog writing, doom-scrolling, psychological reading and deep-diving into whatever topic takes my fancy at any given moment. And I love it and it SHOULD feel like a form of self-care…I mean, it has literally been 6 years since I allowed myself to go inside my head as much as I did pre-kids, but, still I feel tense and frustrated. FRUSTRATED. Frustrated and STAGNANT and TRAPPED. The words that seem to have defined my last 3 years. Which is AWFUL!! I have 2 beautiful boys and I have spent an insane amount of time with them in my most favourite of all ages. And yet - the overwhelmingly stand-out feeling I get from all that time is ‘frustrated’. Hence the mum-guilt. Not just about screnes, but about not enjoying them enough, not enjoying it all enough, not ‘making the most of it’ despite knowing each and every day that I want to. SO BADLY. But I’m so overwhelmed all of the time that I just can’t. It’s pure survival mode. Well, it was. Here I am, writing this while my 2 kids genuinely keep themselves occupied (with screens), and that is a brand new development. Hence why I am finally able to mind-map, read, research and write.

But it just doesn’t feel good. Possibly because I keep getting interrupted to make “some food” but any option I suggest or offer incites my 3yo’s anger. But maybe this isn’t what I needed after all? But what the hell do I need? I have no idea.

I have been avoiding friends the past few months. A very UN-me thing to do. But it has felt too hard. My focus is too inward at the moment. Too emotional, too confused, too lost. I don’t want to talk about other people, their work, politics, anything really. I don’t want to talk about anything. I want to solve my issue and it’s taking up my entire brain power to try to problem solve it and I’ve gained some huge insights. But - it still FEELS the same. Too hard, too overwhelming, too much, too exhausting. Not happy or joyful. Not free and easy. Not the life I want. Just nothing like what I actually want. Helpless. I just feel so helpless. There is no way out and everything I try doesn’t work. And my god have I tried a lot of things.

Tomorrow we are back to normal non-covid life. Back to work, back to the awfully emotional school drop off. Back to having no time. And I still haven’t solved this. Still have no idea HOW to even start trying to solve this. The only thing I haven’t tried so far is medication. It’s feeling like that’s the next step. Worth a try right? Maybe my brain is genuinely deficient in Serotonin (even though that theory has been disproved?!). But regardless, maybe having more of it will genuinely make me feel better. It’s supposed to, right? That would be nice. What an easy fix that would be. No doubt I’ll be profoundly pissed if it does give me a magical solution. Why the fuck didn’t I do that 15 years ago I’ll ask myself. But. Better now that in 15 more years? And hey, more than likely it will be as useful as every other thing I have tried, despite my extensive training in exactly this. Zero percent useful. Let’s see.