Ending it

I came closer this Sunday just gone, to ending my life, than I have done for a long time. Being a parent is hard. It's not just hard, it's tiring, exhausting, humiliating and many other emotions that feel amplified when you are in the Mum role.

Parenting a child with additional needs is challenging. It can be rewarding and exciting, but at the moment it is mostly devastating. To all those that say ADHD is a made up label to excuse bad behaviour - come and live in my house for a week. It is a very real, and extremely distressing condition - not just for the sufferer, but for the sufferer's family. Couple it with autism and you have a little chap who can't stop moving, but can't tell you why. You have a child so delightfully loving and yet so horrendously violent & vicious. You never know who you are going to wake up to.

His siblings are fiercely protective of him, but loathe him in equal measure. His behaviour towards them can be of a devoted disciple or a hitting, biting, pinching demon. They are not old enough to understand why he does these things, and are coming to hate the little boy they really want to love as their brother. It is so difficult as a parent - I am accused of "making excuses" for his behaviour, I am told that I am soft on him. But, being angry / upset / annoyed with him has no effect - he doesn't care. He really genuinely doesn't care - because at the moment he doesn't have that capacity. He is locked in this autistic state, where he is the centre of the universe, and it all revolves around him and his needs. Other peoples needs or emotions do not feature in his world.

I am feeling particularly inadequate at the moment. As a wife, mother, as a human really. It feels that things are slipping out of my control and I am clinging on to life with the tips of my fingers. I go through the daily motions, packed lunches, clean clothes, clean children, healthy diets for them, but deep down inside I am numb, dead almost. I have a headache that just won't shift and I wonder if today will be the day that I fall asleep and don't wake up. Released from the weight of life, allowed to be free.

I often wonder what it feels like to be happy. I can't really remember ever feeling really happy - really carefree. I think back to the frightened little girl hiding in the wardrobe in the dark, desperate to be invisible, and realise that those feelings are all still there, that actually I still want to be invisible, not noticed, unseen. If no one could see me then maybe I wouldn't exist, maybe this oppressive feeling of depression would lift.

I have to stay in this world for my children, I could not leave them wondering why their mummy left them, worrying it was something that they had done or not done. I brought them into the world, I have to be here for them.

But sometimes it would be nice to be free. To be happy. To be a real person.