Dropping Out.

  My life is like a grueling endurance marathon race, with all the endless non-stop, constant, back-to-back years of traumas, abuse, and struggles, and it feels like a neverneding race that has no finish, no end, that I can never complete. I will run out of steam before I can ever finish, and I was right. I feel like I have given up and dropped out of the race before the finish. I just got so overwhelmed and I haven't got what it takes to make it to the very end even though I tried and it feels like it was all for nothing.

  All that hard work, all those struggles, all those years,and all for nothing. For what? Where did it get me? I worked hard in school, I raised all the kids and homeschooled them, for the most part when they were younger all on my own home alone while my mother and hubby worked when we lived in Ottawa, it was like I was Supermom or something and at one time I even remember having 5 or 6 of them at once all in diapers. It wasn't easy,11 kids, and I was always either prego or nursing a newborn, plus all the regular responsibilities of a large family; cooking, cleaning, childcare, homeschooling... plus with my own struggles with mental illness, trauma, brokenness, emotional scars, abuse, anxiety, etc. it just all got to be too much and as each new trauma came it broke me just a bit more and it all started to add up, plus lack of support from my family along with their constant shutting me out, belittling,excluding,and bullying of me just made it so much worse and compounded the damage and caused me to break down and withdraw even more, isolating me even further and as time went on more and more of me was slowly being stripped away and lost until eventually there was nothing left but an empty shell.

  Now here I am, 30 years into motherhood and there's nothing left of me anymore. They broke me. My life has ruined me. I was unable to finish the race. I dropped out. I gave up. I wasn't able to continue on anymore. I just didn't have it in me anymore, I just didn't have anything left. I had nothing left to give, to contribute, to offer; I was just spent; all used up, all my resources depleted, all gone. I always used to be resilient and bounce back, to face a new trial, misfortune and tragedy(and there have been many, way more than my fair share) but after the 15 YR old's battle with depression, anorexia and suicide attempt that just broke me completely and finished me off. That was it. The turning point. The last straw. That just completely shattered me and brought me to my knees like nothing else. After that I just couldn't go on any more. We used to be so close once and when this happened to her it was the one last thing that brought me down.