Trying not to quit

Since I spoke to my personal tutor, as mentioned in the previous post, I have been forced to admit that I am not coping.

I miss home. I miss my mum. One of my brothers is having a really hard time and I can't do anything to help him. I can't even give him a hug because he's in a different country. I haven't spoken to him properly for ages and I miss him more than I can actually articulate. I need him to cheer me up but I can't tell him how I'm feeling because he has enough on his plate right now. My other brother has been so busy with a new job that I haven't heard from him since the beginning of September, so I can't talk to him either. Add that to an increased workload and the fact that my father just walked out of my life and took my half-sister with him, and I don't think it's particularly difficult to see why I'm struggling.

I want to go home. I love University, I love my uni house, I love my friends here and I love earning my mum's pride, but I am falling behind because I can't cope.

I can't deal with all this shit and still be the First Class student that I have been working so hard to be.

My grades are really important to me and always have been, so the fact that I may be losing grip on the one thing I can actually do is beyond scary.

Despite my education being so important to me, I really just want to quit. I want to deal with one thing at a time and my family will always take priority. I want to lay in bed and cry all day. I want to take a week out to visit my brother or look after my mum. Most of all, I want time to grieve the loss of my relationship with my sister, and actually the final loss of my relationship with my father.

But I don't have time.

I have university. I have studying to do. And trying not to quit right now is actually the hardest thing to do.

You have only let me down.

Since I came back to University I have spent a lot of time pretending that everything is wonderful when I'm actually really struggling, and it has taken a lot to finally admit that to myself and others.

Uni itself is incredible, I am genuinely loving it. But, as my personal tutor pointed out on Monday I specifically said 'everything at university is great' rather than 'everything is great'. The problem is outside Uni, and I have been trying so hard to keep it that way and not allow it to effect any aspect of my academic life.



However, there is really no escaping it. It's the same thing every fucking time, except this time it's really a kicker.



You may or may not remember, but in a blog post titled 'Ugly Crying' (http://littleboatfloating.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/ugly-crying.html) I explained the then-current situation between myself and my father. In case you missed that little gem, I'll offer some explanation.



My father, as most of you will know, has never been particularly interested in making my life easier and happier. In fact he seems to revel in the opposite. Normally, I just ignore his best efforts to make me miserable and get on with my life. After over a decade of this shit you just get over it. This time, however, is different.



In the ugly crying post I explain our major fall out, cease of contact and the final argument in which he gave me the all or nothing ultimatum - be a part of his family or lose contact with all of them, until my sister is old enough to decide whether or not she wants to know me herself. When I ended the blog post I was still waiting for him to write to me. He did, in that he sent me a birthday card with two words in it, and a sticky note to say that I should write to him re a new start.



So I did. I told him that of course I wanted to be part of the family, that was what I had been trying for since I started University last year. I skipped the egg shells and told him that I would never willingly walk away from my sister, so actually I was making the choice without any real choice. I also said that although I wanted to have an actual father-daughter relationship again, I wanted it to be one without the pain and awfulness that we put each other through last time.



Apparently he did not find my terms agreeable, because although I sent the letter to him in August, I have not heard from him since.



The awful part, the part that kills me inside every time I think about it, is that I haven't heard from my sister either.



He won. He has rejected my terms and taken away the one thing that mattered to me under his control.



I still write to her, of course. But I don't know whether she even knows that. I don't know how he has explained the lack of communication to her, and my biggest fear is that she thinks I have walked away from her.



I made the choice to suffer his presence in my life so that I could make sure she knew I was always there. My father forced me to make that choice, and then rejected my decision for the sake of his own sense of control.



So now I don't seem to have a father. In my case, that isn't much of a big deal.  I don't miss him, and I don't feel like I am missing out on anything. It always angers me to the point of tears that he is entirely incapable of behaving as a father should. I am surrounded by wonderful men, men who are fantastic fathers or who would be fantastic fathers. So I know that it is possible. But apparently not for my father. Not for me. Other than this constant frustration, I couldn't care less about him. I am done.



My sister, however, is a whole other matter. I adore her, and I am completely heartbroken now that I may have lost her. There is absolutely nothing I can do except to continue to write to her, as I have been doing, in the hopes that one day she will see one and know that I never gave up. So now I'm playing a waiting game, hoping that she will be deemed old enough to make her decision sooner rather than later.



All of this, as might be expected, has made me feel really rather miserable. When I'm miserable, I'm a rubbish person, and I hate that. I was extortionately rude to a very good friend last night, and I barely noticed. That is not me. Misery makes me forget myself, and this particular misery, like it's cause, is unrelenting. I have been trying so hard to get by, and to separate my academic life from all this personal shit. But it isn't working. I am losing all sense of motivation, and I cannot imagine that I will still be at First standard by the end of the year. Today is the first day since I sent that letter that I have acknowledged the extent to which I am hurting, and the extent to which every other part of my life is suffering for that. I have been trying so hard to fight against the return of my depression and the eating disorder that followed last time, but I am so scared that I am just falling back into the dark place in which I lost myself the first time.



I feel so, so alone, and so fucking helpless.



But I hate self pity parties, so tomorrow I will acknowledge that tonight was for accepting how things are and how I actually feel, but I will tell myself that the new day is here and the pity party is over. I will force myself to get up and to carry on. I will focus on my work to the point that it numbs me. I will continue to survive, although I ache.