My Daughter vs the Dragon that is School

Ok.  If middle school doesn't start off great next year, I am pulling Kaylen out and will home school her through someplace like Connection Academy online school.

I can not, and will not, go through another year where all hell breaks loose every afternoon because she has had a bad day at school and hates school and school is the worst thing EVER, and the anger at the world, etc.

I never, ever thought I would say this but her sensory issues from age 2 years until....well.....last year for a lot of things and still going on for others were way easier to deal with than her pure hatred of school this year.  It is putting me through the ringer and I have had it.  Four more weeks to go.

For all that is good and holy; let this school year be over.

There has not been a single day when she has come home and said she has had a good day.  Her teachers and beyond shocked by what I tell them goes on from pick up time until....well...usually 5 or 6.  All they see is a very happy child, excited about learning, always willing to help, etc.

I see a girl who works so hard to keep it together at school that she implodes upon getting into the car.

So. Much. Fun.   NOT!  I'm whipped.  I'm beat.  I can't take it any more.  I seriously think I am going to have a nervous breakdown.

Crafts usually calm her down but not today.  Today she is melting down all over the place over the smallest thing not going right.  💔

Random

Have you ever th get about just taking off the rings?  I wonder if she would notice.  Or care.  She takes hers off all the time.  The slightest perceived anything and off go the rings (thigh often explained away by "I took them off because I was doing XYZ".  I'm beyond caring.  They are off more than they are on.

I think about taking mine off.  After all, I'm not even sure what they mean anymore,  

They used to make me so happy.  They don't lately.

My Mind is Whirling

Yeah.  Welcome to my cluttered mind.  I have so much swirling around that I can't even capture a clear shot.  It's just been one of those days where you "feel" something in the air but you can't define it.  You can't see it.  It's just "there".  And it doesn't feel good.  Just the opposite, in fact.

As Kaylen would say on a day like this "I'm really sad and I feel like I am going to cry but I just don't know why."  I've got that one beat.  I've already cried today and I'm pretty sure I will do it again.

I've started listening to old CDs that are in my car: Taylor Swift, P!nk, Rascle Flatts, Lady Antebellum, etc.  Songs I used to blast back in the early days of being left.  There is beauty, strength, and oh so much pain in the words, in the music.  One nice thing is I can blast them now and Kaylen, who was four at the time, can still sing every single word.  Proud parenting moment?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  You be the judge.

In the past 11 years I have lost SO much and to be fair, what I may have gained doesn't even come close to balancing the scale.  The truth is, the scale is so completely unbalanced I don't even know how I'm still standing.  But then....AM I still standing?  Maybe it is all an illusion.

I remember when I was little and I would wonder if life was really just one long dream that someone else was having,  was any of it real?  Kind of a real Horton Hears a Who quandary.  Well....if this is all just a dream, I'd like whoever the dreamer is to wake up and set me free.  Sure, sure...there have been some pretty amazing and spectacular times in my live, overall.  My kids, to be sure, and I would never wish them away.  I'm just saying.....if it's a dream, it wouldn't be real anyway, right?

Mother's Day is coming up.  This is terrible, but I dread Mothers Day.  This year the kids won't be with me which makes me sad.  I love Kelton and Kaylen's attempts to make it super special.  Mother's Day is coupled with my dad's birthday and my mom's passing.  Nine years ago I spent my 6th Mother's Day clearing out my mother's belongings from the adult home where my parents had been staying and moving my dad into his new apartment in a retirement community.  Good time all around.

I'm at Kaypens gymnastics class right now and my head is being filled with little voices and coaches corrections.  I guess this is a good place to stop and maybe tomorrow things will make more sense.

I do have another post I can easily write but I am still processing.  And there is a LOT to process.

Life goes on.  Some how...life keeps going on.

The Last

I attended my very last elementary school conference.  How can this be?  How could the years from Kelton entering kindergarten to Kaylen ending her 5th grade year gone *this* fast?  So much, oh so much has happened in those years.  Not all good, not all bad.  But what I would give to go back to the day I left a five year old teary Kelton in his kindergarten room.  That day that I went home and cried for the three hours he was away from me.  Yes.  Let's go back to that day and start over.  It's just gone by so fast.

Movie Day!

We had a special outing today.  A very sweet friend of mine gifted us with a trip to the movies a little while ago and I have been waiting to use it.  Today, we went to see the movie Zootopia.  We had so much fun!  I haven't been to a movie in years (yes....you read that right.  Years.) so it was a little bit like walking into fantasy land.  It was the theater by our old house which brought back a lot of good memories.

And then....as if that wasn't enough fun, as we were walking in I heard "Casey! Casey!"  Another one of my sweet friend (Erin) was there with her girls.  There is nothing like a hug from a good friend.  :). We stood and talked until we were forced to take our seats for the previews.  So much fun!!!!  

After the movie, we stopped by 7-11 because they are running a promotion this weekend where if you bring in a container (no bigger than 10 inches in diameter) you can fill it up with a slurpee for $1.50.  Before we left the house, the kids scrambled to find containers big enough (and of course they couldn't finish their slurpees but whatever - they had a blast!).

All in all, it was a really good day. Minus the sensory meltdown Kaylen had at the beginning of the movie.  She started flipping out and I couldn't figure out why.  She curled up against me and cried, begging to go home. I finally remembered her sensory issues when it comes to a place with a lot of loud noise, a lot of people and too much stimulus.  I reminded her what was probably going on and that seemed to calm her down a lot.  It took almost all the preview time for her to settle down but then she was good.  It's odd when sensory issue things pop up when I had all but forgotten that a particular thing was ever an issue.  We really have made progress over the years.  :)

(I want to give a HUGE hug and thank you to my friend who was kind enough to send us to a movie.  Thank you thank you thank you!!  It will make an awesome memory for us.  ❤️)

What a great day.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

The eternal question these days.  I wish so many things.....that I had never left my well paying job in Seattle after Kelton was born (but then again....being able to be with my babies full time was a gift I would NEVER wish away.  I was fortunate to be able to be there for them.  I don't take it for granted as it was amazing to watch them grow, I was able to be there for their firsts and being a stay at home mom was what I had dreamed of since I was a little girl.  I know how lucky I was.  I had a partner who supported that....until I didn't.  Until my dream of being a mom wasn't a big enough goal for someone else.

But now......(well...even then) I have a medical condition that makes working a full time job impossible so I have ended up being dependent on someone.  In my relationship with D, I didn't feel dependent.  I felt we were a team, a unit, a family.  Today, in this world I find myself in?  I'm nothing more than a convenience at best and an inconvenience at worst.  Days and weeks go by when I wonder what I am doing.  Why do I stay?

The kids.  Right.

They don't want to move, or change schools.  Well..to be fair, I think the moving would be ok but the changing schools, especially for Kelton, is a no go.

And where would I go?  I've given tight to going to the DSHS office to see what options are available.  Is there (and I can't believe I'm saying this) section 8 housing available out here in this school district?

And here is where I stumble:  this is NOT the life I promised those helpless babies when I held them in my arms.  I promised them a family, stability, having their needs met, having their wants as life allowed. Having their two parents, who dreamed them into existence, be with them, together, until they were ready to be on their own.

I have failed so much.  I am a great mom to them but I know I have let them down in ways they won't understand until they are older.

If I could have anything I wanted I'd ask for a permanent home for just the three of us, in the school district they are in, money to pay the bills and food in the cabinets.  I don't want for much....just the freedom to be me with the two of them.

Not worrying if today is the day I will say, or do something that will bring about mean words, cruel silence for days.  Emotional abuse.

Oh and right....the debt I allowed to be accumulated in my name?  I want that gone, too.  I was so stupid.  So, so stupid.

So I sit here, paralyzed by fear.  By the unknown.  I used to be strong and sure of myself.  I'm not anymore and I hate it.  I feel weak, lost, unlovable.  I don't have any fight left.

I just want to go home.

But I have no home to go.

I'm still here. Lost but deep in thought at the same time.  I just wish answers were clear as to what I need to do.  Well.......the answer to what needs to happen is clear but the path...I can't even begin to visualize.

Emotional abuse.

Mental abuse.

Financial abuse.

Narcissistic personality.

I can see them now and I am better at deflecting it but this is no way to keep living.

My kids are my primary concern.  They seem ok.  She is nice to them and doesn't dismiss them the way she does with me,

And still.  Oh and still.