My bantu voice post divorce

 Writing seems to help me, it purges the lethargy from my soul and puts it on this screen. It's temporary, but so is everything I am experiencing. I'm so stuck, I have negative balances on all my bank accounts and every attempt to bring in income is met with obstacles. I'm trying though, and at the very least I have tried to apologize and mend the relationships I caused to explode over the last few months. I see my patterns so clearly... that for the last 20 years I have tried to run from my life.I see how it was always easier for me to blame others, instead of looking at my part in the mess. Looking and correcting, and really promising myself to now make the same mistakes again.   I want more than anything to just be a person who deals with my own reality, my own flaws, and my own strengths. I'm not the first or last person who will fail...I will keep trying for my own sake and for the sake of my kids. It's only over when I die, and that is still a long way away. F...

I wake up terrified, at 4 am most often nowadays. Filled with fear that a new day is on its way, whether I like it or not. Time is unbending, punishing, creeping. The early hours tick down to morning, which ticks down to mid-morning, which ticks on relentlessly to midday. I'm trapped in my mind, terrified at the lack of options and the cage I've built for myself. It's the same cage from 2 decades ago, how is this possible? I must have built this cage while I was busy with my life, leaving it deep in my subconscious while I was deluded. The fear now chases me int the cage, where I hope for time to stand still, like I did so many times ago. So now it's clear that I am the source of my problems, that whatever chaos I am in is no one's doing but my own. I'm the wicked one? What about the kindness and love I extended to those I loved, was that just another of my delusions? I'm so so scared. How do I rebuild when what I am building on was delusional to start with?...

There is so much chaos. So many scenes that I replay in my head — the arguing, the other parties, my children's tears — that I wish I could take back. The end of my 12-year marriage didn't even happen the way I imagined a marriage ended, quickly, quietly, through a conversation and drenched in mutual tears. The tears were spread out over three full years, smack bang in the middle of a global pandemic. I could rehash the drama but there is no point. Once the anger subsides, I am able to see my part in this. I made conscious and unconscious choices. Let me lay it out: Consciously, I chose to focus on my children, and not balance that with financial independence from my ex-husband. I've always worked, and for the last 8 years or so I worked a second job alongside being an accountant. But slowly but surely, as my hands became more full with being the mother I know my kids needed, I was less insistent on salary negotiations and more likely to say no to extra work. More likely to...