Number 23 - In Which I Have The Worst Week Ever.

I think the title says it all really.

This week I have learned that:

My mother has had a nervous breakdown and is heavily medicated and off work (from the job that broke her) indefinitely.

My father is also on the verge of a breakdown. He is an only child, and his elderly mother is in the throes of dementia and lymphoma. He cannot cope with caring for her alone and is leaving her for three weeks to go to Thailand. How she will manage during this time is unknown. I have offered to go and stay with her. This was rebuffed by him. He is hoping Social Services will get involved, but when they visited her last week, she told them, she was fine and refused all help offered. My dad cried on the phone that night. Something I haven't seen or heard him do since he was dumped at Christmas about 6 years ago by a slag of a girlfriend he insisted was in it for the long haul. We still don't talk about her.

My other Gran is also terminally ill, but she does so with a quiet dignity and grace that belies the viciousness of the cancer attacking her whole body.

Husband is also close to a breakdown after the stress of his job has him yelling, pacing, fuming and drinking more than he has ever done before. Every day he comes in and I listen to the same diatribe daily. He is caught in an impossible situation; he has an incompetent boss who repeatedly breaks employment laws, with a board of Directors who turn a blind eye and don't give a fuck. I am worried that Husband will crack.

My daughter is struggling at school, something she hasn't experienced so far in her education. This is making her frightened and incredibly tense as she comes to terms with the fact that school is hard, for the first time in her life, as GCSEs loom.

My business is also struggling; it seems that while the rest of the country may be slowly recovering from the recession, this hasn't spread to the desolate North. People still are not spending and as a result, my company is feeling the pinch. Invoices are being paid later and later, and customers are fewer.

But in the midst of all this utter shit, I learned through the grapevine yesterday that Giant proposed to his long-term partner. This is delightful, and a long time coming for them, but I hate that I felt a pang of resentment as I was told the news. He's not mine, he never has been, and yet I felt a flash of jealousy! I am now disgusted with myself, but oddly, when I try to conjure up the normal fantasy from my Wank Bank, it sort of fails and I don't get as excited. It's time for a new fantasy.