How long does a mom have to be miserable before it's "okay" to make changes in her life that affect the kids?
My work situation is awful. I hate my job. The position I hold is tentative with all the reorganization and cuts that the district is making. I'm scared that they'll eliminate my job mid-year and I won't be able to find anything else. I'd look now, but I know I'm unlikely to find anything in this area, which means uprooting the kids and screwing up their visitation with their dad. If I lose my job, I'll have no choice - I have no savings at this point - so I'd have to find the best job I could, no matter where I had to go to do it. I guess from the perspective of dealing with my ex, waiting for an inevitable is better, but I hate crisis-management.
I ended the two year "relationship" this morning. I couldn't do the "friends with benefits" thing anymore. It wasn't that I wanted a proposal or to cohabitate or anything like that...but I just wanted to be openly cared about and for, and he can't do that. He wanted to spend more and more time together, he wanted to have great sex, he wanted the friendship, but he couldn't put anything in the well for me, and frankly, my well is damn near dry at this point. There was no future, and given how futureless the rest of my life feels right now, I couldn't be in that state of suspension in the relationship. I know I did the right thing, but I'm so damn sad...will I ever be the right girl at the right time? I don't know if I want to feel lost like this anymore...maybe it's time to give up the dream that there's someone who I'll ultimately share my life with. I'd go ahead and start collecting cats, but both kids are allergic to them.
The decision I made to move my kids to private school in January has had repercussions I never saw coming. I still can't completely reconcile the moral/ethical guilt I feel about having moved them out of public schools, and the fact that our district is on the verge of complete collapse makes that even worse...I'm a traitor, despite the fact that our district was failing to meet their needs and I'd tried every way I knew to make it better. And my older son is only marginally adjusting to being there, so there's another layer of guilt to carry around.
I'm alienated from the circle of parents I used to be linked with in our neighborhood, but I don't fit in with the parents at the new school yet. I never was good at the whole social thing anyway, but it's much worse now. It feels like a minefield out there. I don't know how to make friends. I realized last night that it's been four months since I've been invited to do anything social with anyone other than D, and only one of the women I know outside of work has called to chat since the pool closed last summer.
I'm so stuck, so sad, so disillusioned. And I'm SO lonely. I have no one to talk to about any of this....I really have no close friends at this point period, and certainly none who can relate to the kinds of decisions I'm trying to make. I keep thinking that moving wouldn't be any lonlier than what I feel right now. I'd only alienate my ex...and my kids, by the time he was done bad-mouthing me to them.
I feel like I'm living that Talking Heads song..."And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?"
