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Forever Broken

This essay made for sad reading. Everyone around me is talking about being burned out and how sometimes they need atleast a day off to keep sane, keep going. I felt the whole community rooting for me when I went on a two week vacation - people wanted to see it work for me so they could try it as well. The fact that I came back home without incident gave them hope. 

A few summers ago, this was an incredibly stressful time for me with J applying to colleges together with all other complexities that are part of raising a child that age. When I transpose that period of my life to present day, I don't feel like I could have made it. I would be broken. Broken or not, parents will continue to preserve because there are no options, and that can only bring misery to the kids. In describing the circumstances, parents of school-age children find themselves in, the author says:

It’s enough to bring a parent to tears, except that every parent I know ran out a long time ago—I know I did. Ran out of tears, ran out of energy, ran out of patience. Through these grinding 18 months, we’ve managed our kids’ lives as best we could while abandoning our own. It was unsustainable then, it’s unsustainable now, and no matter what fresh hell this school year brings, it’ll still be unsustainable.

Part of me wants to believe that collectively we will come out stronger at the other end of this. Many of us would have found our real purpose in life, some of our kids would have discovered inner resources they did not know they had. Maybe the broken will mend too. 

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