Getting Better

After the kids, after I went back to work with both of them, I think I got really sick.
My shrink keeps talking about Post-Natal Depression and I get my back up because he doesn't seem to understand that the kids were the one thing that shone a little light in my life.
They were the thing that kept me going, and gave me smiles, and provided me with the affection I needed.
Although, yes, occasionally I wanted to run screaming a million miles away from them just to be able to breathe without little hands on me.

I remember trying to explain to The Man that I'd lost all ability to prioritise.
Everything had become a job, just one more voice demanding something from me, one more job I might fail at because there wasn't enough time in the day.
So while he was falling apart because the woman he loved didn't spend any time with him, didn't want to be with him- the truth is I couldn't manage anything.
Every person, every friend, every event, every job, was just one more loud buzz in my head screaming 'hurry up, look at me, do this NOW'.
I isolated myself, I gave up all sport and the gym, eventually the singing collapsed and the work kept getting bigger and I never went away for a weekend in case the world collapsed while I was sitting on a beach somewhere.

So it's not just The Man's fault that my life fell apart.
And it's hard to say, but I was sick, really sick, and no one could fix it for me - and that killed him too. And me.
So now I'm getting better, and I don't want to work that hard again, ever, I don't want things to get on top of me, I don't want to cry about going to work and stay up nights because I took three hours out of my day to be with my kids before bedtime and now I have to catch up on something else.
I don't want to be looking at a computer screen, crying, because I'm so tired I can't spell and there's no one else to do that job for me.
I want to take my kids to ballet or cricket and just sit, and enjoy them, not try and squeeze two jobs in while they're running around.

In the rest of my life, for the rest of my life, there will be holidays and swimming, dancing and sport, weekends for 'catching up', time to do dishes and go to the movies - not one or the other.
I never want to feel that sick again.
And it's always going to be there, isn't it? It's always going to be in me. So I'm going to have to draw my boundaries every day of my life, for the rest of my life - my new, happier life.