I can’t believe it has been so long since I’ve last visited this thread, and more importantly, wrote to you Anita. I hope you have been doing well. I have thought of you often, I have resisted the forum a few times to read, but have not found much time in the last year to reply. I have very little alone time these days. I know you will likely be so kind to say that I don’t need to, but I do deeply apologize for being away for so long and not replying to your thoughtful posts. Hopefully, you will understand once I update you on how I’ve been.
Firstly, I am now a mother to a beautiful, sweet, intelligent (she’s only 6 months, but I, I’m sure with bias, believe I can tell!) lovely baby girl. She is the light of my life. Interestingly, the moment I had her, I understood my mother and her treatment of me even less. I would do anything for my daughter, to save her any discomfort or pain, and I have tried. Oh, how I’ve tried. Looking back, I think I tried even before she was born. I tried by trying to make the relationship with her father work, despite having obvious concerns which I shared with you. Unfortunately, most of those concerns and worries came to fruition. He lost his job in May of last year, and to say that it has been stressful since is beyond an understatement. He ended up then moving in with me, I became the sole breadwinner as I worried would happen, and unfortunately, that has not changed really since then.
Shortly after this, I unsurprisingly felt extremely unhappy. Having B move in with me, in my small apartment, was not an enjoyable experience. Not to mention the pandemic and quarantine continued on in my country, meaning we were both very isolated from others but around each other all the time. B was quite happy with this, but I was not. I think my resentment towards him, to him not considering my feelings early on in the relationship, to becoming pregnant, to me knowing I was in a relationship with someone I didn’t want to be with yet ended up with anyway, to financially having to support us both, it all became too much. Unfortunately, I believe the stress wore on me, and I developed a serious medical condition in pregnancy called pre-eclampsia. I suffered from headaches, nausea, exaggerated swelling in the limbs, numbness in my arms, etc. To say the pregnancy became uncomfortable is an understatement. To make matters worse, rather than being able to take some time off work and slowly reduce my caseload, I had to continue on, as B did not find employment, as I had worried would be the case. I worked literally until I had to go into surgery to have an emergency c-section once my blood pressure was too high and I was at risk of stroke.
In order to have some income while I was not working after I had my baby, we worked on expanding my practice and I hired several therapists to replace me with my clients. Two of those therapists have ended up working well, but the third did not. I still have very many sad memories of that, as I genuinely liked the therapist, a middle-aged lady with children of her own, but somehow the professional relationship deteriorated with miscommunication (I assume, I am still not sure), and we ended up having to let this therapist go. It was horrible on me, and I am still sad about it now. That being said, I now have 4 therapists working for my practice, and it seems to be going alright. My take-home pay with these therapists is not as high as it was when I was working full-time, but it is enough to get us by each month. I have also continued to work reduced hours myself, to bring extra money in. That being said, it has been very difficult on both me and the baby, as she doesn’t like to be away from me for hours on end and has trouble taking a bottle and cries often while I’m working since she is hungry. I wish she didn’t have to go through that. B assures me he will find a good job again, but I simply don’t know if that will ever happen. To give him credit, he does help out in areas that he can. He cooks and cleans, he does the laundry, cares for the baby while I’m working, he helps my ailing parents often. I believe he tries to make up for his lack of help financially as much as he can. He speaks kindly to me. There’s at least that.
A few months ago, after my parents told me they were worried about me, about how sad I looked, I told them that I was suffering in the small apartment with the new baby and my partner. Yet, with B not able to contribute financially, I had no ability to move either by renting or buying a home while still providing for the now 3 of us. They took pity on me and helped me enormously financially to buy a home. A home that we started moving into yesterday. Sadly, this was not a good day for me. I had no excitement at the idea of moving into a larger space with B. To make matters and my anxiety worse, B was offered a job via email, and he immediately declined it, claiming it wasn’t a fit as his resume demanded higher pay. I was hurt and devastated by this. I couldn’t believe he would turn down any work, let alone without running it past me.
That all being said, I still believe it was the right choice to move as the small apartment and being cooped up with B and the baby was not good for my mental health, but I am so sad that I am not happy there with my “new little family”, as my mother calls it. I am sad that it is not The Garden of Eden, that I wished it could be. I love my daughter with my whole heart, but it is complicated in my mind. It is hard for me to not look back and regret the choices that led me to be with B and being now how my worries were mostly valid. I can’t help but think back on how before dating B, I dated a sweet man in the city I wanted to move to. I think back on how I let B dictate to me that I had to end things with that man to be with him. That I did it, just as he says, that I didn’t follow my heart once more. Looking back, I honestly cannot even remember why I met B in the first place, why I was dating again in my home city, a place I had written to you many times about not wanting to live anymore. I don’t recall fully why I would do this, why I would end a healthy relationship with a kind and generous man in the city I wanted to move to, other than I didn’t 1) feel I deserved such a man, and 2) didn’t feel comfortable with the slower pace of a healthy relationship and instead preferred the lightning speed one.
I feel sorry to think about and write all of this to you, Anita. I desperately wanted to be able to write to you about how happy I was, how I was finally living the life I always wanted to. But instead, I feel this idyllic dream-life I have tried to create with this situation has become a nightmare. I feel like I am now moving into a home that I don’t particularly love, yet B does (although truthfully there weren’t many other options as the housing market in this city is much more a sellers market than buyers), living with a partner that I am not sure I will ever feel that I truly love, that I will be left to pay for the mortgage on this house, that I am now fully rooted in a city that I desperately wanted to leave. The hardest part about all of this is that I feel very alone. I have not told most friends and family how I really feel about B, as I believed maybe it was still possible to create that dream life with him. I tried so, so hard. I tried to help him keep his CEO role, I tried to help him in his job search after he lost that role, but it hasn’t panned out positively. That being said, in the summer while I was still pregnant, he was offered a decent job in the city I wanted to move to. He declined the position as he believed it was lower than what he should be paid. Looking back, it was a good offer (since he has had no formal other salaried offers since), and it would have given us the chance to move to the city I wanted to. That being said, perhaps I wouldn’t have anyway, given having a new baby and being away from family and support. I suppose we will never know.
It’s so sad and hard for me to admit my regrets, yet as you accurately pointed out previously, I know I would regret no matter what. Yet, it is so complicated. Because I cannot fully regret meeting and being with B, as he at the very least, gave me my daughter. She is so, so sweet. I will keep trying to make the best of my situation for her, I will do whatever it takes. Yet on late nights like today, I cannot help but find my mind wandering to what if. What if I continued to slowly date the man I met in the city I wanted to move to right before I met B. What If I was living a comfortable life (that man was financially well off, generous, albeit somewhat emotionally closed off, but I suppose how open should someone be after only 3 months of dating-mostly long distance?) and truly happy? The last year has been the most difficult I have ever been through, and I found myself retreating socially to hide my unhappiness in my relationship. It was my birthday recently, and I noticed very few people reached out to wish me a happy one. I believe this is in direct result of me retreating socially to hid my embarrassment and sadness. I think I did this from this forum, as well. It feels somewhat permanent, that there isn’t really a way of this situation improving, so I felt there was no point in sharing, in being so negative. But today, I find myself wanting support again, wanting to continue to try to be hopeful in some way, I believe I owe that to my daughter.
Once again Anita, even though I have not written frequently, I am so grateful for your continued support. I hope you are doing very well!
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 