Jail time

I feel like I'm in prison most days. Hell, if I'm being honest I feel like I'm living in prison every day. Granted, it's a prison of largely my own design but still. I'm so starved for adult interaction I can actually taste it at the back of my throat sometimes. It tastes like resentment in case anyone was wondering. I bet there are many people in actual prison who constantly think to themselves (considering all they have is time to obsess over what went wrong) “Damn, I sure fucked that one up didn't I?” or perhaps “Where on earth did I go so wrong?!”. I myself tend to wonder “What the hell happened to my life, how did I end up here?”. You always read in parenting magazines how important it is for adults, particularly single parents, to make sure to carve out time for themselves away from their children, to have social lives outside of the home or else it can lead to resentment and high stress levels. Let me tell you, they aren't kidding about that shit!
I never leave my house. I'm so lonely and yet I'm surrounded by my 3 children 24/7. I am slowly losing my mind. I need a break so desperately. It feels like I'm screaming in a room full of people but nobody can hear me. Don't get me wrong, I love my children very much, anybody who knows me knows that much. I don't regret any of them but I am starting to resent all of them. I rarely leave my house and never for anything fun just for me. I don't venture out on the weekends when my sitter isn't here because it is so much work to get all 3 fed, bathed, dressed + myself out the door. I'm exhausted by the time I have them all loaded up in their car seats. Then there are the mechanics of trying to manage 2 infants and my preschooler. Most shopping carts at stores do not accommodate that many children making even something as mundane as going grocery shopping a virtual impossibility without someone to accompany me. Plus the twins aren't small, they each weigh upwards of 20 lbs so carrying them isn't much of an option either, definitely not both at the same time like I could in the early days.
I guess the newness and novelty of having twins has largely worn off for my family. Unless we are out in public of course, they then are oh-so-thrilled to proclaim that yes they are twins and thank you for saying how cute they are. My family members practically fall all over themselves to push the stroller on those occasions, but God help me if I ask them to change a shitty diaper or babysit for me. I know this is all my doing though. I answered the ad, I signed up for this whole thing. I found the donor and I “won” the position and agreed to the whole IVF roller coaster but what seems to be lost on everybody who loves to throw in my face that “I asked for this” is that I was seeking to have 1 more child, not two. I wanted my older son to have a sibling and I felt capable of mothering 2 children. I did not go on a quest to have twins. That's just what happens when you use ART, you take a gamble and the odds are mostly in favor of twins or higher order multiples. The thought of triplets literally makes me feel nauseous and that's what I started out with during the pregnancy, 3. I can't even fathom that right now.
I suppose I'm just having a shitty day, one of many in what's been the hardest year of my life. I know I'm very blessed and I have much to be grateful for. Things could be much worse. My children are pushing me to the brink but at least they are all healthy and happy (except for an occasional disgruntled 4 year old). I just need to get the fuck out of this house and out into the world and get a break from my kiddos. I wish for a job because then at least I'd get 40 hours a week away from all 3. How sad is that?? Right now I'm in school 2 hours a morning 4 days a week. That's all the break that I get. Class gets out and I come back to prison to try and do things around the house, homework, and watch the clock until it's time to pick up my oldest from school. Since my sitter watches the twins here in my own house I often to retreat to the smaller of prisons, also known as my room. I'd give my left arm to have an evening to myself to go have dinner with a friend (what are those again?) and go see a movie. My mom has something against the twins, this much I'm sure of. Her preference for my oldest is so strong and so obvious it's shocking. She has never spent more than an hour alone with them in the year they've been alive. If I plead with her to come watch them so I can run to the store as soon as I'm getting ready to leave the house she starts nagging about 'the clock is ticking and I better hurry and get my ass back home'. I've confronted her about this and she has sworn she's going to change but it's yet to actually happen. I think my only choice now is to cut off her access to my older son. I'll be damned if she's going to play favorites with my kids. It won't be long at all before the twins can see what is obvious to me.
Shit, I'd write more but it's time to go back to the chain gang. The twins have awoken from their naps (and are actually banging their bottles against the rails of their cribs, not unlike jail!) and it's time to go back to my drudgery. Only 3 more hours until I can put them down to sleep for the night and try to get moving on my homework....