This is my first post. I joined daily strength a while ago when my therapist suggest I give an online support group a try. I am struggling today more than I have in a while. I don’t want to get out of bed. I am a stay at home mom but I am starting a new job soon and I have been feeling anxious about it. After my interview I was trying to pin point what was making me so scared to take this new journey in my life. I realized I am nervous about it because I am a failure. I fail at everything and let everyone down. This new job requires me to socialize with people and promote myself. I have no confidence and all I see is my failures. I fear I will fail at this as well. I just want to be successful for once. 

I struggled through out school. I had teachers think I had ADD but my mom didn’t think I did and felt the teachers just wanted to medicate me. Now that I am seeing a therapist she asked me if I ever thought I had an attention problem. While I never put much thought into it because my mom seemed certain I didn’t have an attention issue I have noticed symptoms of it through out the years and had to figure out how to deal with them. It has taken a long time for me to recognize some of these things and try different things to try to deal with it. I believe this is why I struggled so much in school. I was always in trouble for school issues. I repeated first grade and struggled on and off in other grades and areas. My junior year I did so bad I had to take a summer school class. I over heard my mom complaining about me to my dad and how I “can’t even graduate high school”. She was very irritated and disgusted with me. This is something I think about regularly and it plays into many of my thoughts. I was in cheerleading from 8th grade until 11th grade when we got a new cheerleading coach and she cut me from the team my senior year. This was very hard for me. I once again failed. I felt like the previous coaches had me on the team despite the fact that I sucked just to spare my feelings. I worked hard to get better so I though I was at least ok at cheerleading, apparently not. I started feeling depressed around this time and started gaining weight. Right out of high school I went to cosmetology school. My mom is a hair stylist and I thought this was the best route as my parents would approve and I didn’t think I was smart enough to go to college. Halfway through completing the schooling I realized this wasn’t for me. I was good at coloring hair but cutting it tripped me up because you can’t fix it if you make a mistake or someone doesn’t like it. I also have a bit of an issue with germs and I would often get clients who didn’t wash their hair regularly and it smelled and I had a few people with mystery stuff on their scalp. I just couldn’t. So I worked for a while after I got my license and finally had to admit that this was not for me. I saw the annoyance on my mom’s face while my dad said he just wants me to be happy. I honestly and truly feel that my mom does not like me. I annoy her. One of her clients asked her if I would be interested in babysitting for her over the summer. My mom begrudgingly asked me and told me she thinks her client confused me for my sister and to not mess it up because she is one of her favorite client. I babysat for the summer and then a few times after that when they went out for the evening. Nothing bad happened. However, years later I run into the woman and her daughter talk for a min and when I got home I told my mom. She gave me the most irritated looked and said oh. I asked if she still did her hair and she stared me down and said no. I’m not sure why this woman switched hair stylist after seeing my mom for years but I don’t think it was me. I guess maybe I did do something wrong but why did she ask me to sit again? And why would an adult stop seeing a stylist because of something I did or didn’t do? This never made sense to me. But I feel guilty and now I have doubts in my head like maybe I made this woman mad about something I did or didn’t do and stopped going to my mom. I attempted college a few times on and off for a few years. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and even though I had interests in things I didn’t think I could do them. I’ve always been intrigued about law but I am not smart enough for that. I am married with 3 kids and facing divorce because I picked the wrong person to marry. I am finishing up an associates degree in business admin and getting into another job slightly unrelated. I have been trying to get a job but I’m not even getting any interviews so I decided to take things into my own hands and pursue this other option.  I am working with a friend of my dad’s and I am so scared I’m going to screw things up with her and tarnish my dad’s friendship with her and her husband.

I joined this weight loss program and lost a total of 50lbs. It was a challenge where you pay and if you lose 20lbs every 6 weeks and are within you ideal body weight they will give you your money back. I failed one. Which I cried about because I didn’t want to fail and at the very beginning of the challenge my husband said I wouldn’t be able to do it and I proved him right. My parents (more my dad) offered to pay for me to do it again. I had already gained a little bit of weight back so I was excited and wanted to complete the program so I could get their money back for them. The day of final weigh in I was about 1lb off from the 20lbs. I failed again. I am currently back at my pre challenge weight and struggling to control my eating and my choices. I don’t know why this is so hard for me. I just want to eat when I feel sad or stressed. 

As I lay here thinking about my failures it brings up how no one likes me. That a lot of the people in my life seem to just tolerate me. I feel like I annoy everyone and because we are family they just have to deal with me.My younger brother passed away 3 years ago and my sister has changed into someone I no longer recognize. I feel like she simply tolerated me. She has sent me all these nasty mean messages in the past and said some mean and hurtful things to me. When I have tried talking to her about things she says I’m experiencing middle child syndrome and often repeats things I say to other people. My brother and I got along well and just seem to understand each other. We were honest with each other and could talk to one another. I miss him dearly. I have 3 boys and I had 1 girl but she was born prematurely and passed away shortly after birth. I felt like such a failure when that happened too. I felt like my body is suppose to protect and carry my children and I can’t even do that.

I am often the butt of everyone’s joke. I have no problem laughing at my mistakes or embarrassing moments, however, I often feel like I’m being ridiculed. Like the only thing noteworthy about me are these ridiculous moments in my life. All these moments are just festering inside my mind. So I’m laying here in bed thinking about all these moment and then some and stewing about them. Thinking I am the most unliked person who can’t do anything right. I am suppose to be going to my sisters today for a family picnic and I am really not looking forward to going. In fact I have been debating not going but my kids are excited about going and I don’t want to disappoint them. So I’ll be getting ready to go here in a bit and I will slap on a happy face and join the festivities. I often isolate myself at these events because I feel excluded from conversations often and no one seems to notice. Luckily I have my kids I can pretend to be busy with. They are usually playing with their cousins so I’m not really busy. I hate these feelings I feel and just want to be someone I am not.

I apologize for this being so long but I have a lot going on in my head right now. I thought Maybe just writing down most of it would help before I have to pull myself together and go join the family.