With my daughter’s anxiety at its worst lately, I’ve come to think about the life I live. It isn’t easy, even though it may look like that to a lot of people. Nobody understands how tough it is.
My marriage ended over five years ago. For those of you who haven’t read this blog before, I’m originally from Canada and living in Australia. I have twins who are just about to turn thirteen. My parents, two brothers, sister-in-law, two nephews, and my niece all live halfway across the world. Not only that, there is a large extended family that all live over there. All of the wonderful friends I grew up with aren’t here either. I miss them all so much every day. There are so many other things I miss too, like the culture and certain foods.
I have lived in Australia for over twenty years now, which means that’s the amount of time I’ve missed out on being with them all. It isn’t cheap to fly there, but I try to get there at least every couple years. That also means I use most of my annual leave and savings to make these trips. My parents aren’t well off and struggle with the long flights, so they haven’t been here for about ten years. And my brothers haven’t been able to get here for about fifteen years. Luckily a couple of my friends have been out once each, but that’s been a while too.
So for the past five years, I’ve had no support system whatsoever. No one to look after me when I’m sick, no one to watch the kids if something comes up. It also means I can’t have the kids with me as much as I’d like because I work full time. I’d love to say that might change soon as they are getting older. But nobody understands how that may not happen.
My daughter’s anxiety has been around for many years now. When I first moved out, she struggled to stay at my place and be away from her mother. There’s been a lot of ups and downs over the years since, including times where she would go back to her mother’s to sleep on my weekends. It also means that she doesn’t want to go away on holidays without her mum. I’ve only been able to take the kids on two trips in all this time, both only two nights. And she had a bit of a panic attack on the second night of the last trip.
She really struggled to get to school for the last few weeks of last term as she was too worried about having panic attacks at school without her mother to help her. It’s so tough watching her go through this and not being there for her all the time. I got her into a dance class last year with someone I knew and that’s been our thing since then. But even with that, she has wanted her mum to take her the last few times.
It’s hard to see a time when my daughter will stay home alone, which means I still won’t be able to have the kids much. If I look through my photos, there’s hardly any memorable ones with me and the kids. We don’t get to go anywhere and make memories together. They haven’t seen their grandparents in person for so long.
All of this makes it difficult for me to plan anything for myself too. I was cast in the latest local musical and have regular rehearsals. My daughter won’t even come with me to that, so it’s been really tough to get to ones when I’ve got the kids. I can’t make plans for anything if it’s my weekend with them, because there’s no one to help me out and look after them.
If this post wasn’t getting too long, I could keep going. I might talk about how my IBS symptoms affect everything in my life. Or maybe how hard it is to meet someone in a small town. It’s so hard to keep fighting through all of this, but somehow I keep going. Nobody understands though. No one has put themselves in my shoes and thought about how tough it is. I finally have some good friends, but they really don’t know me yet. Maybe that person I’m waiting to meet will finally be the one that understands…