Am I cursed?

I admit to not being perfect. I will never be in the running for homemaker of the anything. But I try to find a balance between living in filth and obscessing over it. I think that most days I do ok. This rental house, with its ancient carpeting and other quarks associated with old homes that haven't been well maintained makes it so that no matter how hard one cleans, it never feels clean.

Anyway, after a particularly bad day at work, I get home and put my feet up, which is normal for our little family. The boys went to the park and I got some chicken started thawing for dinner.

Then there's a ring at the door bell. Its an SRS caseworker. Someone has reported my home to child protective services. According to the report, there are rodent droppings and roach infestations everywhere, the boy's rooms are full of garbage, the washer and drier haven't been used in months and are covered in mold, and the boys are terribly underweight.

None of this is true, and no one has been over to see my home in at least two weeks. Now, the trash can was full, with some boxes broken down and sitting next to it. There was laundry on the floor in the laundry room, waiting to be sorted into loads and washed. I run the washer and drier every day. While the kids' rooms tend to be messy, and I will admit that despite my no food upstairs rule, there seems to be a regular parade of popcorn bags coming down the stairs, they certainly do not have garbage piled in their rooms.

But it is still upsetting. I can't be perfect and these accusations seem to pop up all the time despite me trying to both limit peoples' access to my home and to maintain it in a decent state and I don't understand what it is that I am doing wrong.

And I realize that this shouldn't feel like such a big deal. A person showed up, looked around, and

and admitted that there wasn't anything like abuse or neglect going on. She's coming back

tomorrow only because she needs to put eyes on all the boys and two were out playing when she

was here.

But I feel like my relationship with my kids is threatened, and like my ability to parent is being

questioned and like I am a failure. I have had this happen to me three times, I know people who

have kept truly awful homes who've never had SRS show up. I feel cursed.

I had a bad day. It scared me and made me feel bad after what was already a difficult day at work.

And no one in my life was at all interested in offering me even a little bit of comfort or reassurance.

My dad told me, hey hire a house keeper. My guy asked my why I had a bad day and when I told

him he never bothered to reply back.

My brothers are more interested in trying to get money out of others than they are in even listen

ing to my problems, and now freaking blogger is acting weird.

I feel like crying, but I can't. I literally can't seem to work up actual tears, but I feel awful inside.

I want to literally crawl into a hole and never ever come out. I feel so lonely and like there is

no one and nothing in my life that just cares about me. I know it sounds selfish, but even the most

disgusting, rude, unpleasant people seem to have some one to hug when things get hard.

I don't.

I have a man who I consider a boyfriend who wants to keep emotion out of it. I have a friend I met

through work who seems only half interested in being my friend. I have brothers who are

messes. I have a cousin who is so wrapped up in her own pathology that I have real trouble getting

closer to her than I am, she's a void of black emotion that I get sucked into.

Ironic from me, but still true.

Please, help me not feel so envious of all the people out there who have happy lives. Help me to

accept that I apparently will never be happy, but that I must be okay with just being employed

and the mother to my three boys. That the fact that others have things much harder should

be enough for me to feel alright. Please help me find some kernal of joy in the fact that I feel sad,

lonely, envious, and over whelmed most of the time. That this feeling of treading water badly is

my normal. That my decency as a person, my ability to teach and to parent, and probably my

lovability, intellect and physical attractiveness will never be good enough to have the kind of life

I want.

What do I want?

I want calm. I want to be able to drop my kids at school, go to work, work a full day, and then go

pick up my kids without the drama of "I'm late because school gets out ten minutes before I can

leave and I have to get two kids from two schools that get out at the same time".

I want to feel loved. Not kid loved. LOVED, not sexed, loved. I want someone to love me. Why is

that so unreasonable? I want to have people in my life I can actually lean on.

I want to feel at least adequate at what I do all day. I want to feel like there is something real I

can actually do for these crazy kids. Right now I feel like I'm fighting forces I can't begin to beat.

I had three girls get into a screaming match in my classroom over a seventeen magazine today. I

had another girl tell me she didn't care what I did to her schedule, she was moving in a couple of

months and dropping out anyway. I have a 10th grade boy on my caseload that refuses to do

anything at all, in any class.

What do I do with that? Just refuses to do anything?

I feel like I'm drowning and everyone around me is sitting in luxury boats watching.