How are you?

I get a couple of texts a week from some very dear friends who tell me how they are thinking of me and the family, and asking how I am.

I always respond either 'I'm fine,' or 'I'm okay, thanks'.

It's a bloody lie. But people don't want to hear what's really going through my head, and that I am exhausted, both physically and mentally. I don't often sleep more than 4 hours a night; and I am playing parent to my kids and parents.

The girls are going through a phase of constant arguing, to the point where they are so nasty and horrid to each other, I stand there wondering who they are - but maybe because I have become an utterly useless parent who no longer has the energy to referee their petty disagreements they insist turning into mountains, and instead of listening and mediating their dramas I just send them to their rooms.

And then both my parents seem to have devolved into young children themselves.

My father - still in hospital - feels ignored and disliked by the nurses, whilst trying to cope with his new levels of disability, and so panics at the slightest things resulting emotional dramas where he demands to know what the point of 'going on' is, and his desire for a gun so he can kill himself.

My mother - in her attempt to stay sane- sees her friends several times a week, which is a good thing I know, but it's for HOURS at a time, without any thought to the fact Christmas is in 9 days and I have 4 kids and a house to try and organize and giving up every single day to sitting with my father is becoming too much for me. She will then phone me in complete hysterics because the sun is shining in her eyes and she can't see the cursor on her laptop and she needs to send an email.

The extremes of nonsense going on around me is sending me into a black hole.

And I can't tell any of them.

With my father I have to be this endlessly understanding and optimistic person, assuring him things will get better (thank god he doesn't he doesn't ask me when, because I'm not sure I believe myself anyway).

With the kids I know I am not being fair on them, for instance S was ill at school the other day, but when the school phoned me to say she needed collecting I had to tell them 'too bad, she needs to stay at school' - because I was wheeling my father to yet another department for more tests that scared him. The school and I eventually agreed poor S would walk home by herself whilst she felt sick. Of course with S, there's always a chance she's 'faking' it as she hardly loves school, and claims to be too ill to go at the slightest thing, but even thinking that about makes me question why I don't try to resolve her issues with her, but the truth is, I don't have any more energy to give them, they are not babies any more and they just keep taking and taking and they don't care how tired I am.

And my poor mom. Well the whole thing is crappy on her, and definitely not about to improve and the hospital have said there's nothing more they can do for my father and so want rid of him in January. So home he will go, with 2 nurses coming in 4 times a day for an hour, to help care for him. And however hard I find each day, I will only be there for some 6/7 hours, she will have to cover the other 14+ hours in a day as he can never be left alone.

Life is a bloody nightmare, and I am not okay. I just want it all to stop. And then I realize what that means, and start crying because that's not what I want and I am a horrible person.

Oh shit. Sorry this was not meant to be a pity post. Anyway, typing this hasn't made me feel better (like I was hoping it might) and I don't have the time to sit here contemplating my navel.  Onward. Kick up the ass needed I guess.