I'm just so tired

I'm just so tired. I'm tired of the rigmarole. I'm tired of the monotony. I'm tired of the shit. I'm tired of being tired.

Ever feel this way? Bored by life? I wanted more than this for my life. But here I sit hoping for a break hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel that is my life.

Dreams, we all have them. As children they typically consist of fairytales and a life that is worthy of a Disney movie. When I was a teenager the only thing I knew I wanted was to be a mother. I wanted to be the perfect mom though. Not the kind that yelled at their crying toddlers and smacked their faces in front of people at Walmart. The kind that had an ever shining light above their head, perfectly dressed, talking in a relaxed tone, who's children minded everything she said. Motherhood sat me down and had a come to Jesus meeting with me about those expectations! But that part comes later in this story.

I almost had it all. I almost wasn't tired and bored with life. It was in my grasp. I was staring at it face to face. I married the man of my dreams, he had the most beautiful bright blue eyes, he was kind, considerate and ambitious. When he was twenty-one, he opened his own gutter company and it didn't take long before he was wildly successful. Our daughter was born after just a year and half of us vowing our lives to each other. The night we brought her home from the hospital my husband left to go out of town for a big job. Ahh yes, the dream of business ownership. The prestige of saying we owned our own company, had boiled down to me home alone, two days post partum, with a baby whom I didn't have the energy nor the wisdom to calm. That night smacked me in the face like the moms at Walmart with their crying children. I didn't know that a tiny human could cry so much until that particular October night. I also wasn't aware that breastfeeding an infant didn't come naturally to every mom. Oh the things I was learning were vast and frequent lessons, and none of them fit for a fairytale.

Within three years our business had grown to a million dollar company. That is to say we ran a million dollars through the bank in a year. We landed our biggest contract, one that paid us over twenty thousand dollars a month, every month. That builder was a track house builder and was growing rapidly in the Charlotte area of North Carolina. Track houses are the neighborhoods where every third house looks exactly the same. The houses are built hundreds at a time and built fast. We had made it. We were big time now! With our second baby due any day now, I was living my best life. Or so I thought. All of my dreams had come true, sure my husband was gone all the time, yes, of course I was lonely, yeah, he was too tired to have conversations with me, and never had an opinion on anything other than business decisions,.... I was a stay at home mom!! I had an allowance, a rather large allowance (which sounds absurd now). I was able to go to the beach, toddler in tow, for weeks at a time during the summer if I wanted. This is what dreams are made of, this was the best my life was going to get... Right! How could I complain when my husband was working so hard to keep me happy?

2008, the economic crash of the 21st century was happening. Builders quit building houses, home owners were holding very tightly to any money they had left and we lost 107 of our 131 contractors. My husband was a proud man, he'd always said "never worry about money until I worry about money". When he told me I would have to return to work in 2009, I knew it was bad, I just didn't know how bad yet.

I was working part-time, when my husband showed up at my office to collect my paycheck from me. I made about $1000 a month getting paid only at the end of every month. While I worked very hard for that money, it simply wasn't enough, nor did it last long. It was around that time that I'd learned my husband was addicted to pain pills. OxyContin to be exact. He'd come to collect my paycheck because he was out of pills and his doctor was cutting him off. The next six years would lead to some very dark days for me and for him. Fighting my own battle not let the kids see their daddy going through withdrawals, keeping the house quiet for him while he slept for days at a time. His addiction led him to taking everything and anything he could find to chew or crush. Mostly just pills, pain pills, Adderall, and Xanax were his drugs of choice. Angry outbursts were the norm now and the kids grew afraid of him. We lost our possessions one at a time. Until we ultimately had to move in with his parents.

I still blame myself for not seeing the signs of addiction, and not knowing sooner that something was wrong. As a nurse, I have seen it before, why couldn't I see it now, and to the man I was supposed to be the closest to? How did I miss this?

~

The truth is my best days were really not good days at all. Lonely, a married but basically single mom, wishing I had a husband that would just talk to me, listen to my worries or stories, hoping he would play with his kids, or change a damn diaper for once! No, the man I thought I was getting was not at all who I ended up with.

We divorced after sixteen years of marriage. He told me that being with me made him want to commit suicide, so told him I would leave. I would never want to make anyone feel like they should die. And, I was already doing everything by myself anyway so it couldn't be that hard.

I'm four and a half years divorced now and I'm tired. I have struggled for so long, I don't want to struggle anymore? I'm so tired of the struggle. I'm so tired of the boring, monotony of life. I have two kids that need me though so I continue to struggle, continue to go to the boring job that just pays the bills, and continue to get home and do dishes, cook dinner, sweep the floors. I continue to go to bed and get up to it all over again. Because, I have two teenagers with the most beautiful bright blue eyes counting on me to do my very best, for myself and for them.

I may never have a million dollar company or an allowance ever again. But I get to be bored, I get a life full of monotony with no light at the end of the tunnel that is my life. But really, what else could I have hoped for?