Days like today

I hate it when you have one of those days where nothing is shining and bright. Everything is dull. Everyone around you appears to have a sparkling time, appears to be coping wonderfully with their life, whilst you struggle to get the kettle on.

On days like these, which run into evening and then nights, I end up thinking. Doing that horrible, tortuous thinking that I'd rather not do.

I've been thinking a lot lately. Mostly about dying. Not in the planned, studious way of when I made failed suicide attempts in the past, but the fact that eventually I will die. And when I die, I will leave two people, hopefully adults by that stage, who are autistic. Who will look after them?

I don't know the future and, like lot of others who are parents of special children, I try not think about it too much, for fear of the damage that it does to both my head and my heart.

It just seems that these thoughts - along with the "did I do something wrong?", "am I doing the best that I can for them?", "what can I do to help them?" thoughts are crowding in and vying for attention at the moment, and despite my attempts to stop them, they just won't abate.

So I spend a lot of nights, after I've finally got both of them to sleep, cogitating over and over as to what I can do, and what I must do, to make things right by them before I die.

Part of the problem is, I suppose, that I have, over the course of the last decade or so, gradually severed most of the ties and friendships that I did have. I have ensured that I develop friendships with very busy people, who will have little time for me. If they can live an inconvenient travelling distance away, so much the better. I can ensure that I don't answer the phone "because of the children". That I have children makes seeing people difficult anyway, as I don't have reliable childcare, and who wants to spend a boring evening at my house, waiting for my kids to go to sleep?

I don't ask for help because I see it as somehow betraying my children. It's not their fault that I'm not up to scratch, not their fault that I'm not good enough for them. I wouldn't want to admit that, on days like today, when Midget 2 has done nothing but scream and bite me, when Midget 1 has cried all the way to school whilst hitting me, when I have had to explain to yet another idiot that actually my daughter is disabled and that is why she acts like that, I feel like I am drowning and all I really want, all I really need, is for a big cuddle that lets me sob and be bloody angry, and furious, and scared. Even typing that feels like a betrayal.

But then - tomorrow, maybe in a few days time - it will be a shining day, and I will wonder why I ever put this to paper. On days like today though, when all the worries are crowding in, and I can't see the present only the future, and I can't remember the brilliant times only the sad times - on days like today, I feel vulnerable, worthless and weak, and I wish for the shining times even more so than usual.