It’s just past 4am. I’ve lost it, sobbing as my pay finally hits my bank account and it’s less than half of what it should be. I can afford rent, yay, but… nothing else.
I angrily message my manager… after all, ‘We’ll give you all the support we can’ and ‘Take all the time you need’ apparently mean, ‘however we won’t honor your annual leave and instead you can take 35% of the income you should be earning’.
Forget that I just made the same institution 5 months target in 3;
Forget the fact that I worked over the Christmas and New Years period by myself
Forget the fact that now, just as I’d made the decision to fly to North Queensland to see my mother in her final days, a decision which took a lot of strength to make, I now have to return to work instead on … well.. on no sleep for… going on 29 hours.
I know I shouldn’t have necessarily lashed out at my boss, but fuck me, it’s not hard to keep your word when you promise an employee you’ll look after them during a period of loss
Particularly when you watch colleagues fuck off to Europe for two months at a time,
Particularly when you’re always the one to help out, to do the extra work, to take on the extra responsibility, to fucking work when no one else wants to
Fuck this we care about your mental health,
Fuck this financial trauma in the middle of divorce, in the middle of losing my mother, in the middle of dealing with the fact that I’m fucking infertile and a worthless piece of shit with no one but a man who foolishly loves me for now, before he realises the tragic fuck up I am
I need something, anything to get me through
I want to cut myself, but then I remember that it’s hard to hide these days and suppose I’m unsuccessful, because I always am…
Like my ex stepmother used to say, ‘just cutting for attention’ and ‘not really suicidal’..
cutting wrists in the middle of your 30’s is the worst way to draw attention to yourself and ensure you don’t get the job done right
Then I go back to where I was in December..
Ready with a rope, standing on a chair before the big magnolia tree in my backyard
the only thing that stopped me was the look on my dogs face and the knowledge that I loved someone too much to cause them this much pain
that I knew this would fuck him over more than he would ever deserve
I think about my ex husband, how this would finally make his problems go away
Because fucking me out of anything we built together in a marriage, in a relationship over 10 years,
Is what he is determined to do,
I’m haunted by his biggest concern when I told him I was leaving,
“You’re going to try to financially ruin me…”
Not, “Where did we go wrong?” No, just that I would be the bad person and try to ruin him
Gaslighting financial abuse right to the end
Fuck, I know I’m losing the only person whose made my life any type of worthwhile in the past twelve months and yet I can’t fucking keep fighting
I try my best to hide it, but I can’t, because I’m a sucker for brutal honesty and crying when I need to
But what am I meant to do ?
I’m not drinking to cope,
I’m not smoking anymore to cope,
I’m not even abusing my sleeping medication to get through the night anymore
I’ve become a fucking insomniac, incapable of rational thought it seems
I thought about going back to the tree tonight, thought and almost acted on it
and I just can’t, and I hate that I’m too weak to do it,
but what the fuck am I meant to do with my life ? How do I just opt out of this without hurting him ? Without hurting my dog?
How do I make sure they are set up and looked after once I’m gone?
How do I put one foot in front of the other, when I can’t even afford to go to the fucking doctors for any kind of help?
When I can’t afford to get the mental health help I need?
I started purging, I thought, hell, why not, I need to lose weight firstly and secondly, no one judges you when you’re skinny
It would be an easy way to hurt myself for all the fucking shit I’ve caused in my life,
For finding myself in this miserable, pathetic situation of wanting to die,
I could hurt myself in secret, no visible downside, and no desperate cry for help
It’d be my little punishment,
Turns out I suck at even that, because apparently everything i put my mind to, I fail… again and again and again and again.. .
so tell me when I can finally fail for the last time, without failing the people I love… because I’m so so so tired of hurting all the time
