Sometimes I feel like I only fail

I have a supermom complex. 

But when I say that, it’s probably not at all what you’re picturing in your mind. You see, I have this husband that is an absolute miracle to our family. He drives me absolutely batty, but he walked into my life when I was going through the wringer with a special needs son, before anyone knew he was special needs (well, I knew. But no one else did.) and he didn’t ever walk back out. The divorce rate for parents of special needs children is 80%, and he chose to stick around. He takes on all the things, and works tirelessly to make everyone happy. 

To be honest, we fight about it constantly. He thinks I don’t hear him, or that I just want to add more to him. But what he doesn’t know is that I hear him more than he will ever know. And in my head, while he is ranting, I’m planning all these great ways that I’ll save the day. I mean, I was instrumental in starting his business. SURELY, I can grow another the same way, right? Only this one....this one won’t need him to run it. This one will give him the ability to step back and relax. 

You see, my husband has a hurt elbow from a middle school baseball coach that made him throw heat with every pitch. His joints hurt from all the beatings he took doing rodeo. And he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis several years ago. He’s in CONSTANT pain. I want nothing more in life than to give him some relief. 

So I make this plan. And I take on all the things. And I keep them going well for a while. And then weeks like last week happen, and I start to feel defeated, and I fall behind. I’ve been needing to update our business pay information for 3 months now. And the longer I wait, the more I don’t want to do it. Something always seems to take the fall. If you missed my Facebook post, my week last week started off Monday morning with me forgetting my wallet at home. That’s always a great start to a Monday, right? The kids were all 3 late to school since I had to turn around. Frazzled, I went on with my day and headed to clean my mom’s house. Kevin went to work, and ended up having to cancel jobs since I wasn’t there to help. About halfway through cleaning, I got a call from our biggest job of the week. He had to reschedule. Not a big deal- it’s not a complete cancel, just moved a couple weeks away.  At this point, I’m still not really stressing. I am confident I can fill the day still with more appointments. I usually fight hard to keep the positive outlook. So, I finish cleaning and head towards the kids school. Because I was late that morning, I was also late going home, which meant traffic from the local Air Force base. While stuck in this traffic, I get a call that my daughter had fallen at school and was hysterically crying saying she felt like she was going to vomit from the pain. My heart sank. This is a girl that can get thrown off her horse and not cry. In my gut, I KNEW that meant her arm was broken. And here I am stuck in traffic. At this point, the negative thoughts started to seep in.  I finally got to her 30 minute later, and off to urgent care we went. Fortunately, after Tyler’s accident last summer, I had arnica in my purse. (If you missed that ordeal, read about it here: https://www.deepsouthcrunchymom.com/home/tyler-s-hospitals-stay-2018 ) One dose and a couple of minutes and she was not hurting anymore. When we arrived at urgent care, an x-ray  confirmed what I already knew- it was fractured. We headed home for some rest and tlc.

The next morning we had to reschedule most of the day again to go to her primary care and get a referral to orthopedics. Normally, Kevin would have just worked without me, but he awakened that morning to his eye being swollen almost shut from an infection from his contacts.  So at this point, we’ve barely worked, and Wednesday (the next day) was the day that rescheduled. Yay.  We spent the morning in doctor appointments, and she went back to school for us to get a little work done.  Wednesday we woke up and went to work as normal. Kevin’s eye was quite a bit better, and we had put most of Tuesday’s appointments on Wednesday. We head out, get through the first job fine, only the pressure washer is doing a fluid dump....the pump is going out. If you know anything about pressure washers, it’s cheaper to buy new than repair a pump. We weren’t terribly surprised, it was 3 years old and heavily used. But this week was not the week for added expenses. We said a little prayer that it would last through our last job that day.  We got to the last job, and the generator began to sputter. While that’s not completely uncommon as it’s a fickle beast, it had a different sound this time. Kevin went to restart it, and the pull cord ripped in half in his hand. It slowly sputtered to life from that last pull, and we said another prayer that it would stay on until done with the job.  We managed to finish that day, but Kevin spent the afternoon working on the generator, and assembling a new pressure washer. The governor on the generator didn’t want to work after he ran a new pull cord, and the piping from the water tank didn’t match up to the new pressure washer. An afternoon turned into working until 10pm and still not getting done. So now Thursday had to be rescheduled too. At this point I am stressing...we had made enough to pay the bills that were due, but we had no money to get through until Monday. I kept telling myself we had a couple jobs on Friday, so take a breath.  That afternoon, both my parents contacted me to tell me that one of our families’ lifelong friends whom I had always called uncle, had a stroke the day before, and was facing open heart surgery for vegetative growth on his heart. Not gonna lie, that hit me hard. My parents’ ages are starting to get to me anyway, so for one of their close friends to have issues, it melts me.  Friday ended up being cold and drizzly, and we can’t work in the rain. Our jobs both cancelled late Thursday evening, so the day was filled by only taking Ashlynn to get her cast. My anxiety was through the roof at this point and I felt utterly defeated- to the point that I didn’t think I could accomplish anything. 

That night, Ashlynn and Tyler both ended up in bed with me because of bad dreams, which meant I kept getting a cast in the face and feet in the kidneys. After two hours getting beat up, I left them with daddy and moved to the couch. I was volunteering for an event put on by our church at the local zoo the next morning, and desperately needed some sleep. The next morning I awakened with a pounding headache and nausea. I had only had one drink the night before, but somehow I felt like I had a hangover. I swear, the devil was attacking me y’all.  I made it through, and obviously we all survived. But I was definitely more worn from the battle. Each event singly really wasn’t much of an ordeal, but all together it felt like a spiritual attack. Moments like that make my supermom complex drop quickly, and I end up hiding from life, which just makes everything mount more, and us fight more. It’s a horribly endless cycle. In the end, I always get my drive to succeed  back, and kick it back into high gear. But man those moments from life just really make me struggle, and in those moments, I feel like a complete and utter failure. I once again place more on my husband instead of helping him. I feel like I let my kids down too. And then I struggle to get out of my own head.  In those moments, I honestly thank God once again for my husband. He always seems to be my biggest fan, even when he’s mad at me. And he always seems to come through with the right words at the right time, even though sometimes those words are tough love. I guess in the end, he’s really the one saving me.