I am not quite feeling myself today.  I don’t feel I’ve really been myself for a long time, not on the inside.   Well, not the ‘self’ that I used to be, and want to be again.  ‘Myself’ somehow seems to have  managed to slip away silently without me realising it – the confident self, the level headed, happy self.

The trouble is that everyone still seems to think that I am that person.

To say that we’ve had a rough trot lately is an understatement. 

It is 2 months and 1 day now since my father-in-law passed away, under very tragic and unexpected circumstances.  He was a big personality and he has left a very big hole in our family and in our hearts.  I have being doing the best I can to be the band aid on the wounds of those I care about, to hold it all together and help them through their grief the best way I know how.

But a band aid is no match for wounds like these.

I’m supposed to be the rock at the heart of the family aren’t I?  Maybe the cracks that have started forming don’t show, but I feel them.  I feel them right down to my very core.

I feel sad.  I feel overwhelmed.  I feel sick.  I feel like the more I try to do, the less I am achieving.  I feel that Hubbster is trying to contain his grief in order to protect us.  Unfortunately he does not realise that his invisible wall also keeps us out.

Today, I spent the day child-wrangling alone.  Maybe I was feeling over-sensitive and blowing everything out of proportion but nobody seemed to do a thing they were asked, they were defiant, they were rude.  They were infuriating.

It was coming towards the end of a very challenging day and I am ashamed to say that I lost the plot.  I yelled, I screamed and I most probably frightened them out of their tiny little skins.  I completely lost control.

Peering into their shocked eyes, mouths agape, I immediately regretted my outburst with all my heart.  Self doubts crept like a stealthy army into my mind.  What kind of a mother was I? Certainly not one I was proud of at that moment, and certainly not the mother that I want to be.

I sank to the floor and sobbed like a baby.

What has happened to me?  I want the old me back.