Burned out

​for the past few weeks I have been extremely busy—getting all the documentation (almost 50 pages) ready and translating for Little N’s kindergarten application (not even college application lol), finalizing the divorce settlement (I really want to be single again before I turn 40 in a month), getting therapists for the kids and stuff fixed for the house, all on top of my full time job. Also, I was sick for several days last week and was having fever at work, but I didn’t take a single hour off from work because I have to save all my sick leave for my kids’ sick days and hospital visits. Just as I was recovering from the cold, I got my period again and because I have menorrhagia and anemia as a result, I was feeling really weak for almost two weeks but I still went to work every day, and still worked overtime every day.

On Monday, Jinu talked about what he did over the weekend with our coworkers, and it made me realize he plans group activities a lot with various friends, but never with me. As he expands his social network, he won’t need me anymore, and maybe that’s why he never materialize the meal he said he’d buy me from a lottery ticket and he’s never followed up with me regarding the bike trip I invited him to go with me twice and he turned down on twice. I just don’t feel like asking him to do anything with me anymore, because I can feel it—and my intuition is always right, has never failed me—that he just won’t do those things with me anymore. Even though every day at work he still comes to talk to me, still asks me to try his food, I just don’t feel that he cares about me, not in the way I wanted. 

Then I feel like I’m back in the same place—repeating the same thing Monday through Friday, dreading every weekend because no adult would talk to me except for my therapist, or my kids’ therapists. I have no one who can talk in-depth with me on weekends and that’s why weekends feel scary. I try to enrich my soul by going to movies, watching something that makes me cry, baking or cooking, writing and actually I talk to other kids’ parents if there’s a party or something, but they’re just not the same and they all feel like void fillers. I also spend lots of time with my kids but I really need someone who can understand me an be by my side, like other couples, sharing this life with me, and actually enjoying it with me. All people see is the weight of my life, never the beauty of it, the beauty I see, nor the beauty in me. People see my strength but not the essence underneath. Sometimes I feel like taking my kids somewhere else and start over, but there’s nowhere I can think of because I’d first need to know how to play the games in whichever new country I’m living in and just the language barriers alone would leave with my choices of English or Chinese speaking countries. I have thought of Japan but their culture is really too uptight and suppressed. 

And even if I move to somewhere new, how do I find a school that can support my kids as a foreigner? How am I gonna make new friends or even find the one? This is when I give up on the idea and just face the reality in the City of Rain.

X, where are you? I’ve been asking you this question for the decades but you just won’t show up. This pain, the false hope, the solitude are just so unbearable sometimes, so much so that I wanna run away, wanna hide.