Feels like life is a joke

Firstly, I cannot end it, no matter how much I’d like to – I have 2 kids who adore me, and it is entirely for them that I continue to breathe.

I just feel like my life from start to finish has been one endless joke, and I thought that maybe if I considered this statement more fully, I may begin to revise it. But no.

I look back on my childhood with little happiness – I was the gawky kid that everyone made fun of – I had severe acne, didn’t know how to make friends and didn’t do terribly well academically. Boys were not interested in me – in fact, they used to point at me in the school hallway and ask why I didn’t know how to put on makeup properly (hello, I had severe acne and was at school – who could?). Funny how 10 years later, these things really, really, really don’t matter at all anyway.

My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was 8, so from then onwards anyway I was shunted from relative to relative while my mother accompanied him to hospital appointments, up until he died shortly before I turned 12. And then, as though that didn’t impact on my life badly enough, my mother moved me away from my home (where my very, very few “friends” lived), and began putting a string of men before her kids. She took up smoking, drinking, even smoking drugs while we were upstairs in the house. At 14, she threw a bottle of whisky and pack of cigarettes at me, and told me I was too boring.

When I finally did meet someone, I moved out at 21 and settled for a couple of years, although financial worries plagued us constantly. Then at 24 I fell pregnant, and although initially happy, the baby was born at 29 weeks and we weren’t sure she’d make it. Although she did, and is 7 now, has a string of health problems, and we’ve never been close and I feel like whenever I tell anyone I don’t feel that I make a good mother, they tell me to shut up  – this even applies to my husband.

My second baby arrived 4 years ago, and she is nothing short of my saviour – I love her so much and feel like she gives me a reason for being.

Once again though, things seem to have turned to shit. I take the pills that the doctor tells me should make me not feel like this, but really, we have like no money. None at all. I can’t even afford tampons anymore, and I eat nothing for 2 weeks out of the month because the money runs out. Rice and cereal keep me going. I spend around 16 hours a day split between working and doing household chores and helping the kids with homework. I’ve worried all month because all we have is a few pennies in the bank, and then my husband goes and announces that his pay is going to be down by several hundred this month due to an additional tax bill. Oh, and he wants to buy himself an air compressor, which he can’t wait another month or two for, because he’s been waiting “since Christmas already”. Then after making me cry with the stress of worry, he goes downstairs, announces that the cat has been sick all over the kitchen floor, and he’s not cleaning it up, because the house is a shithole already and settles down to watch Family Guy while laughing loudly on the couch. Warning me that if I argue with him about the air compressor, state of the house or anything else I “will lose”.

I feel so trapped, like I’m sinking. I can’t live like this – I worry about everything and feel treated like shit, but have nowhere to go. Can’t even go back to Mum’s since she’s moved now and has no spare room. Can’t leave him either – I have no money and work part-time so am not entitled to much in terms of government support.

So I can’t live anymore, and can’t die either because the kids need me. I don’t have the guts to kill myself anyway. Just so tired and fed up of this endless blackness that seems to hover.