Evelyn D

I’m feeling suspended - with everything going on around us being so challenging, I’m really struggling to regulate my own life.

I read the ‘self-help’ blurb that is all over our socials, and I listen to the advice of professionals hoping that someone might just hold my hand for a bit.

I am tired, skint, challenged every day by my lovely but difficult son. I’m in the menopause and as a former smoker I’m worried sick about my health. I do have a health condition which puts me at great risk of strokes and heart failure, but I don’t think I realised until now just how serious it is. It’s a lifelong genetic condition which meant that I had to have treatment as a child, and I take medication every day to counteract the nasty side of the disease.

All of the things I face daily have finally impacted me so much, that I feel suspended. I feel that I can’t move forward, and of course I can’t go back. What can I do to change this?

When we aren’t able to take basic care of ourselves, it means that things we have to do and people who rely on us, suffer too. However much I might want to take my disengaged teen out to try to embed a good memory, I can’t. I haven’t the energy or resilience any longer to think up anything that might appeal to him, and even if I did have, I haven’t got the budget.

It’s a horror circle. I can’t work full time in a job that might pay well because my son’s needs seem to be escalating as he is in his mid teens. The specialist school we finally secured for him has put him on a significantly reduced timetable. That hugely impacts what I can do to earn some extra money, and it causes him to have elevated anxiety levels which then impact his treatment of me and our home. And of course, it means we remain in a welfare trap with a low income that cannot support a good life.

This is not what I dreamed of as I worked hard in my career when I was younger. This in fact, bears no resemblance to anything I imagined.

We are lucky, we have a home, I’m mobile, but ultimately the home needs a lot of work which I can’t afford. And no matter how hard I try, I don’t have the skills to complete it. I’ll have a go, but in my 50’s, feeling ill and exhausted, it’s often not possible to do more than I already am.

I feel proud of myself for getting through the day right now, but that is tinged with melancholy and thoughts of what my life should have been if it were true that hard work gets you places. It doesn’t, not always.

I laid a laminate floor though, and I replaced floorboards recently, so I guess I’m not done yet!