Right now, I’m living through one of the most difficult chapters of my life. Everything feels heavy - like I’m carrying the weight of endings and beginnings all at the same time. Separating from my husband, raising two beautiful boys who need me, trying to rebuild a new life when I barely recognise myself some days - it’s all tangled together in this messy, exhausting knot.
I often feel like I’m standing in the middle of a storm that no one else can see. On the outside, I might look capable, functioning, holding it together. But on the inside, I’m juggling a thousand invisible things - not just tasks, but emotions, worries, responsibilities, fears - all swirling at once. It feels like I’m carrying more than I know how to hold.
Imagine waking up each morning with a hundred tabs open in your brain, but none of them will load properly. The day is already ahead of me, loud with responsibilities. I’m moving through life like I’m wearing invisible weights - smiling when I’m meant to, nodding when people talk, going through the motions - but underneath it, there’s this quiet ache, this constant wondering if I can really keep doing this.
I want to be there... for my loves, my friends, my family... but my two beautiful boys need me the most - their energy is endless, their love fierce, but their needs constant. And I want to be everything for them. I try to be everything for them. But I’m also fighting my own brain at the same time.
It’s not that I don’t have love in my life - I do. I love my children with everything in me. I do feel blessed for the people around me. And I’m in a new relationship with someone who is very loving, who sees the good in me even when I can’t. I love him and I try to give him my all, in ways that are real and fierce and sometimes complicated, because I don’t want to drag all of this chaos into something so beautiful. I don’t want to be a weight that someone else has to carry, and yet I know I am, at times. And that hurts deeply. I want to give everything, all that I possibly can, yet I constantly feel I am not enough.
There’s been grief on top of grief. Recently, I had to bury my little companion — who’d been with me through so much — die in a violent way. It was traumatic. I still see it in flashes. I still carry the weight of that helplessness. The only thing that got me through that moment was having my partner by my side. He held me through it, helped me breathe through something I never imagined I’d have to endure. And I love him for that. I love him for all of it.
I also see how hard this is for him too. Loving someone who’s falling apart in places cannot be easy. I know that. I see him having to hold me up while I’m barely managing to hold myself together. Right now, this is the truth of where I’m at. I’m learning how to carry love and grief at the same time - and I don’t always get it right. What I can't understand is how he can't understand how I am... He lashes back with anger and feeling like he is misunderstood and mean words because I have said the wrong things... I then apologise. But then I feel like I deserve better... But do I? When I have put him through so much?
And then I have to show up for work. Someone cuts me off and flips his middle finger because I had zoned out at the traffic light, then I feel anger, then guilt, then the cycle goes over again through my mind, my emotions, then I’m at work. Another place where I often feel unseen, misunderstood. I keep disappointing, making mistakes. Again I feel like I’m letting someone down. My partner, my kids, my family, my work, my friends, myself, the furniture delivery people, the doctor, the driver that flipped me off... every single person i have ever met or known. I couldn't even take out the right bins this week...
I replay conversations, second-guess decisions, and lie awake at night wondering why I can’t seem to get it “right.” I never mean to hurt anyone, but sometimes my words come out wrong or my actions don’t match my intentions. It’s not because I don’t care - it’s the opposite. I care so deeply, maybe too deeply, and I often don’t know where to put all that feeling. Have I shown enough? Have I loved enough? Do I need to show more? Am I too much? Should I ask for more? Don’t I deserve to be cared for the same? Who am I to ask? Then I just feel invisible or misunderstood.
I feel like I’m in a loop of breaking things - relationships, trust, moments that should have been safe and soft - simply because I’m trying to hold everything in at once. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be difficult or hard to love. But right now, I’m struggling just to breathe through each day without feeling like I’m slowly disappearing under the surface of it all. No matter how hard I try, I keep ending up hurting people or letting them down. Not because I want to, but because I’m carrying so much all at once that I start to overflow in the wrong places - in my words, in my reactions, in shutting down or pulling away when I should lean in, or leaning in when I should pull away. Then that brings guilt, and then I spiral into more doubt and shame. It’s like a quiet storm that never lets up.
Life has been pulling me in every direction. The exhaustion, the emotional weight, the constant push and pull of wanting to connect but not wanting to burden anyone - it messes with my head. I overthink, I misread things, I get stuck in my own stories about how others might see me. And it feeds this feeling of being separate, even when I’m surrounded by love.
I know everyone else has their own battles too. That’s what makes it even harder to reach out sometimes. I don’t want to be another weight in someone’s already heavy life. So I pull back, even when I’m desperate for connection. And then I overthink, I misread people, I regret things I’ve said or done, and I get stuck in my head - spinning stories that I’m too much, or not enough, or somehow both.
I don’t blame anyone who has stepped back from me - I know I’ve been hard to be around. Not because I don’t love the people in my life... I love them fiercely, but because I’ve been drowning in my own thoughts, my own self-doubt, my own constant fear of disappointing everyone around me. It’s not that I don’t care - it’s that I care so much that it hurts, and sometimes that pain comes out in the wrong ways. And then I sit with guilt, and the whole cycle starts again.
This is the hardest part - how easily I get caught in my own head. I replay conversations, I doubt my worth, I convince myself I’m too much, or not enough, or both at the same time. I don’t want to be difficult. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just don’t always know how to manage everything I’m carrying.
I’m not here asking for pity. I’m just trying to explain why I might not always come across the way I mean to. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to lose anyone else. I just want to find my way back to the version of me that could breathe easily again. I love fiercely. I care deeply. And I’m still here, even on the days when I don’t know how I’m holding it together.
And yet I keep turning up, because that’s what you do. But inside, I’m tired of feeling like I have to explain myself over and over again, only to still feel like I’m speaking a different language.
I’m trying to break this cycle... the guilt, the overwhelm, the overthinking - so I can find more of the person I used to be, or maybe even build something better from here. I’m not perfect. I’m not always easy. But I’m still here. Still trying. Still hoping. Even when it’s hard.
All I wish for is for those around me to understand that what you see on the surface is only a fraction of the storm I’m carrying underneath. I'm still here. Still trying. Still loving. Even when it’s hard. I just need patience... and love. Even I'm hard to love. I'm so tired. I just want to be loved... When can I feel free? Or is this how the world is and I am the one delusional, asking for too much.
Now I feel like its me me me... sigh. I'm sorry...
