Loving Someone Doesn’t Mean You Never Feel Broken

I’m not one to portion blame to others. But I can honestly say we’re only two days into the summer holidays, and I’m already at breaking point.

My daughter is twenty-four. She’ll be twenty-five after Christmas. She has severe additional needs and can become violent towards her brothers. Her team know this. Her nursing team discharged her and she is now under Continuing Healthcare who, quite frankly, have been poor at their job.

It’s summer. She struggles when her brothers are around all day. Again, this is something they are fully aware of.

Today she went into full meltdown.

She cut her ten-year-old brother’s head. Thankfully it was only a graze, but it was still enough to remind me how quickly things can escalate. She started throwing heavy objects around the room. Then she threw a bowl at the door which shattered into hundreds of pieces.

Sometimes it feels as though the system simply doesn’t care. Out of sight, out of mind. Leave the families to sort it out. As though life isn’t already hard enough.

This is merely a rant because I don’t have many outlets. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll have caught my breath and things will feel more manageable.

But right now, they don’t.

Right now, they’re far from fine.

The hardest part is that people often hear these stories and assume the parent must resent the child.

I don’t.

She is very hard work.

But she’s also very lush.

Those two things can exist together.

She has an incredibly unhealthy attachment to me. Nobody can speak to me for too long. Nobody can touch my things. She struggles if my attention is elsewhere. I’m her safe place, and whilst I understand why, living inside that reality every single day is exhausting.

There is something else that I rarely admit because it makes me feel selfish.

I don’t want to be a full-time carer anymore.

I do.

But I don’t.

I know that sounds contradictory, but it’s the closest sentence I’ve ever found to the truth.

I love my daughter more than words will ever explain. I would protect her with everything I have.

But I have also spent years surviving rather than living.

When your child has profound needs, life doesn’t naturally move through the stages many families experience. Other parents begin to reclaim pieces of themselves as their children become adults. Holidays become easier. There is more freedom. More spontaneity. More time to simply be.

For us, that never came.

I don’t think a parent ever imagines they will still be providing this level of care twenty-five years later.

Loving your child and feeling broken by the responsibility are not opposites.

They are realities that can exist side by side.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever have a life that belongs to me.

Writing that fills me with guilt because mothers are supposed to give everything without complaint.

But perhaps being honest isn’t selfish.

Perhaps it’s simply acknowledging that carers are human too.

I don’t have the answers.

I just know that today was hard.

Tomorrow may be too.

But tonight, these words are enough.