There is no doubt in my mind that if I didn’t have kids I would die today. I am so completely not interested in a future without Noah. I can’t even get my head around it. No. I don’t want it.

My kids keep telling me how much they love me. Then I think of my mother, sitting alone because all of her children hate her and have left her. I don’t feel like I deserve better. I haven’t done what she did, I did other things. I don’t feel better than her.

I feel like it is time to clear everything out of the house and spend the rest of my life wandering with a home. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere. I feel like my presence on this earth is a curse. I feel like I have been cursed. I will bring pain with me everywhere I go and I can’t stop it.

I don’t have hope for a better future. I have exhaustion and weariness and the desire to stop. Stop moving, stop breathing, stop fighting.

Instead of hope what I have is duty. I brought these people into the world. I won’t leave them. I won’t stay because there are three. I will stay as long as there is one. I just need one. I signed the contract on the debt of care I own them. I will honour it. I don’t need to feel good or happy or hope or love.

I just need duty.