never ending parenting

I am cleaning up and publishing all the "draft blogs" in my draft folder. It was either finish and post or delete them before I could start any new ones. This is the last one. It was originally written the year I was on the generic thyroid medication and having those terrible issues. I've cleaned it up some and posting it without adding much, cause all I ended up doing with it was raising more questions. This in one of those cases in my writing where I can't finish it, because I have lost the original thought train of where it was going. Even as an unfinished work, I like where this WAS going, shame I never finished it.

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We are transitioning control over to our 13 year old. Actually his whole life has been a slow process of handing him control of his own life.

Time for a lock for his bedroom door.

I’ve been raising kids and/or helping to raise kids for a long time.

I’m burnt out.

Fried crispy burnt out.

I don’t even have the strength to care that I don’t care.

Fighting my own head and thyroid/health issues is like having two over tired cranky toddlers running amok in my house that I must tend to on top of everything else.

So I took last week off from work and since the kids were in school, I used that time to relax and center myself and try to find the strength to roll into summer without bitterness or resentment of having kids needing my attention 24/7. I didn’t want a repeat of last summer. By August 2012 I just wanted to get into my truck and drive away. I stopped raising my kids and was just watching them, I might as well have just put them in day care for all the attention they got from me.

I am determined not to have that happen again. This summer I am going to try some different things to keep my stress levels down and my attention to parenting higher.

Above all I know that someday they will grow up and move out. That glimmer of a finish line and retirement from parenting is enough to keep me from bolting.

Though it’s not enough to keep me from pulling my hair out while I am in the trenches.

I have resumed playing the “eat right” police in my house and working on my son’s eating again. My batteries are recharged. For the moment.

This just the story of one parent, ½ done with one and 1/3 done with the other. They are fairly normal kids.

Well as normal as my child could be with me as their mother.

I worry about the other parents out there. Single parents, young parents and especially the parents of disabled kids.

For most of us parenting will end. The 24/7 of caring for another human being will end.

What if it never ends? How do you go about transitioning from parent to long term care giver  when child has reach the plateau of where there going to be.

What then? How do you cope with what lies beyond burnt out? How do you keep loving someone you wish would go away. How do you deal with the lack of community support?

How do you cope with the lack of understanding from your fellow man? Fellow humans have no idea of what it is like to stand in your shoes.

When loving them is not enough to curb the underlying current of dark thoughts that surge in your soul, scaring the fucking hell out of you.

***************** it ends here, unfinished. I usually don't spin these out so far unless I plan to follow up my question leads with thoughts, ideas etc. Bringing it back into balance. I wonder if that is why this one stalled and died here.

This was written in response to the mother who tried to kill herself and her autistic daughter a few years back. There are no easy answers to be had. But someone should be trying to find them.