Surviving Life's Storm

I've never been close to my mom.  I'm not sure when it happened or when I noticed but I've always felt like she resented my existence, despite continuous exclamations about how I was the daughter she always wanted, and I can't help but feel it was my personality.  I'm an introvert and she couldn't just let me be.  I first felt suicidal at the age of 12.  I felt unwanted and like I wasn't good enough.  I was always too chicken to really do anything about it, even make a plan, but when I get stressed enough, my thoughts always go to wishing I could just disappear.  Things got worse as I got a bit older.  At the age of 16, I broke down at a bible study meeting about how I felt unloved.  Their friendship filled a void in my heart and I learned to keep my friends close.  My parents separated when I was 20, but for years before that, whenever they fought, my mom would take it out on me.  I got the impression that she was jealous that my ...

Sometimes I think the only thing keeping me sane in life is my babysitter.  Because of her, I am able to take a couple nights off a week so I can keep dancing and keep in contact with my life outside of my kids.  As an added bonus, she tidies up the toys the kids leave out, which honestly means so much to me.  It can mean the difference between feeling overwhelmed and stressed...or not. I work from home and currently have my 4-year-old at home with me, so I often have to overlook/ignore his messy antics so I can focus on my job and make money to continue to support myself.  I still feel every social pressure out there to have an immaculate house (because I work from home) and often find it difficult to justify taking the time to clean when I could be using that time to work (and make money to pay off my every increasing debt) instead. So when the mess accumulates and I feel stressed, all I want to do is hide and cry because I can't seem to find the work/life bala...