I used to think that I was a patient, fair, level-headed, long-suffering type of person.  When others would rant and rave, I almost prided myself on my ability to be objective instead of emotive, to be calm and collected amidst chaos.

I’m not so sure anymore.  Nowadays I seem to often be on the brink of frustration, on the verge of anger.  I think the coping/energy reservoir may be running dry.

I know I get like this when I am tired, exhausted, beyond coping.  It’s teatime, and I’ve had a hectic day.  At 5.30 my two-year old is demanding attention while I throw dinner together.  By 7 she is in bed, but far from sleep.  She cries and grizzles until around 8.  Meanwhile, my son (13) isn’t upset, but quite the opposite, is over-the-top hyped.  He is loud, giggly, dribbling, grabbing anything he can get his hands on and spinning.  Shoes, cups full of water, TV controls, whatever.  I just want to relax, to have some quiet, to rest.  But I can’t. 

By 8.45 we try to put him to bed – actually (I’ll be honest here) my husband puts him to bed – I left the lounge around 8.15 because I knew I was getting myself too worked up, I was exhausted and couldn’t cope with the noise.  Being in bed seems to hype him up even more.  Loud (and I mean loud) excited squeals and shrieks constantly come from his room.  My husband goes into his room to tell him off, to tell him it’s time for sleep, to no avail.  At 9.15 I get him up again (I’ve had time to calm down and have a rest) – give him some more food, then put him back to bed.  By 9.30 finally all is quiet.

Doesn’t sound like much really – in fact, when I read it over, it sounds pretty pathetic.  I know so many people could blog about the dozen or so times they have to get up in the night every night – or of their colicky child who cries almost non-stop.  And sometimes you surprise yourself with what you can cope with (I know I have in the past).  But I don’t seem to have the energy or the patience for it at the moment.  I am so tired that I find myself responding in anger – an emotion that I’m not that used to and am not sure how to deal with.

By the time 9.30 comes, the evening is destroyed.  It is too late to try to enjoy what is left – afterall, ideally you should be in bed by around 10 to cope with the day ahead.  You know that a respite weekend is coming up, which will make the evenings a lot easier.  Perhaps you should plan to do something exciting in the weekend to have something to look forward to?  But you don’t have the energy to be bothered planning anything.  You just want to blob.

I’m not sure why I find this all so tiring at the moment, and why it leads to anger.  Talking about this with someone the other day, I wondered whether it was because it was all more of the same, and perhaps you can only cope for so long.  When I think about it, we have been looking after the equivilent of babies/toddlers for around 15 years now because our two special needs children never intellectually grew beyond this age bracket.  So they have been dependent on us totally for this length of time.  Now we have a third child ( which is fantastic!) but she is also at this dependent, tiring sort of stage.  That’s one theory anyway.

Maybe more recent years have been particularly tiring – the death of our daughter, the death of my father-in-law, the prem birth of my third child… these are all stressful things and maybe they took a lot from our reservoir.  How do you refuel?  How do you rest?

I’m not sure.  Hopefully my next blog will be a lot more positive!!!  I don’t want to sound depressing and negative, but I am keen for this blog to be real and authentic, so thought I needed to include it.