So Fucking Tired

I am so tired of being a grownup.

I am tired of going to a therapist every week and working on my shit while my mother gets to smugly sit in her chair watching tv content in her truth that she has it all figured out. I'm tired of setting boundaries with her to keep me from absorbing her stuff. I amtired of working so hard to make sure the boundaries are firm but not vindictive, healthy but solid. I'm tired of being told by her that no one likes their mothers and let the past be the past. I know lots of people who like their mothers and the past isn't some vague, hazy time for me since I wasn't bombed out of my mind most of the time. My past is concrete and real and full of images I can still conjure like they are right in front of my face, things that still scare me as much as when I was a child. My past affects how I relate to people NOW, how I handle anxiety and uncertainty NOW, how I feel about myself when I make a mistake NOW, how I have to work so hard on believing I am worthy of the love my husband, children and friends give me NOW. I am tired of the hundreds of wrong messages that have been sowed in my head that I have to go through, one by one and yank and pull and fight until I can pull them out and plant new ones. Then I have to nurture those new ones and do the work so that they'll grow, that I'll believe them and that the weeds won't get a foothold. It is exhausting.

I am tired of giving my eleven year old pep talks and incentive charts and points and pats on the back to do what he should have figured out already. I am tired of my husband and I going back and forth trying to figure out how to help him figure himself out. I am tired my son fighting me on every single fucking thing, every fucking time. Yes, he figures it out eventually, but by the time he does, I am so fucking tired and not completely sure I still like him. I am tired of telling him the same thing, over and over again. I am worn out on worry, that we won't give him the strength and tools to handle and enjoy his adult life. I am tired of looking at it and trying to find the lesson and trying to conjure up the patience and affection I know he needs.

I am tired of being grownup and having to do grownup things like schedule my cat's euthanasia. I am tired of holding my kids while they cry over this cat that was so old they hardly saw him but nonentheless, they feel his absense and the weight of my choice to end his life and they feel a sliver of their own mortality. I'm tired of holding my seven year old as she sobs and crys out, "I don't want him to die mom" over and over again and I rack my brain for the right thing to say so she knows I hear her, that she feels supported and safe and that she can process her feelings when all I want to do is keen right along with her. I'm tired of making sure they see me cry, so they know it's natural and good to cry, for a cat, for anything but I'm tired of making sure I don't cry too much that it scares them or that they realize I am still grieving the loss of the mother I never had and some days it all gets wrapped together and I feel like I am drowning in the muck of sorrow and the weight of having to pull myself from it.

I am tired of having to explain to my angry mother in law why our kids can't come over anymore without us there while her brother continues to basically squat in her house. I am tired of explaining why we don't think it's good for our kids to be around someone who collects social security, sits in a room and gambles online all day and allows my children to watch. I am tired of trying to convince my son that gambling is not a job and that his uncle has spent more time sleeping under an underpass than being comped hotel rooms in Vegas. I am tired of trying to explain his uncle's behavior without completely throwing him under the bus. I am tired of all the fucking teachable moments asshole. I am tired of worrying about the kids over there because he's telling off color "jokes" to my seven year old daughter. I am tired of worrying about the kids being there because of the hundred different ways that he is proven that he is at worst, grooming my daughter to molest her and at best, completely unaware of how to appropriately behave around children. I am tired of defending my and my husband's concern. I am tired of her trying to substitute her judgement for our own. I am tired of her waving away our concern. I am tired of being the fucking heavy when it was her that brought her broken brother into the house becuase she is codependant and needs someone to take care of.

I am tired of being a grownup but I am a grownup and I know it will get better, because so much of it already has.