I am fighting the old depression more and more, but each day it stays. It has come to mind lately that I am having a hard time remembering the passage of time. Days simply pass into weeks, and months, and then the year is gone. I think sometimes, why am I not like my old self? But I don't clearly see the old self that I should yearn to be. Time seems shrifted in a cloud.
I berate myself for being a bad mother. There was a time, I think, when I thought I would know all the missteps, would know where my own upbringing had done me wrong, but it has not served me well. I find little happiness with my children, feeling too much that I have done them no good service. I try to instruct and am frustrated when it does not stick. I am too impatient for the tedium of repetition. And I have no energy for it. I sometimes feel I should never have had them ... not forsaking them their current existence but crediting that I was no hero in having brought them forth.
My house is a horrible wreck. Everywhere I turn I see piles of stuff, some of it sentimental, some utilitarian, some unnecessary for want of being plucked and tossed. I cannot roust myself to conquer it, mostly for the size of it all. My children suffer from this example of laziness, not only from me but from their father, who, though he is no slacker in his work, spends most of his homebound hours at his laptop, most often tinkering together an undertaking that has so little chance of coming to fruition. We, all of us, suffer from our curtaining off from the world. We have so few friends, locally, and make little effort to find any. I have made my efforts, from time to time, but for many years have been disappointed at my forays to this end. It is not from a lack of want but always seems to be a matter of doors being closed against me ... much like wandering around at a party, where everyone else knows each other and are perfectly content to continue within their own set circles, not interested in letting in a new face. I also realize that much of this may come from my own facade, but I do not know how to change that.
My overarching enemy is my own body. This I tend to trace back to the existence of my children. Though I was certainly overweight before I had them, after the first I had to struggle enormously to get back down to within 10-15 pounds of my previous weight. After the second, it became even harder, and since then I don't believe I've been closer to that aforementioned weight than 40-50 pounds. So now I find myself finally suffering many of the maladies that being so fat brings, and doubly troubling is that I pass my own thoughtless, stupid behavior to my offspring.
I hate to think about how foolish I've been, on so many fronts. Part of me wants to just give up.
