Sometimes, I have bad days.

Lately, I have been wondering what it is all for.

What is it exactly that I work so hard for day in and day out

…because, quite frankly, I have nothing, N.O.T.H.I.N.G to show for it.

You see, working hard is just who I am.

It’s in my DNA to not just try but try hard, work hard (with the exception of school work…that was, up until Grad studies).

I have been like this since I was little.

It’s what made me climb the bookshelf from which I fell, leaving a little scar on the bottom of my lip where my tooth went straight through.

It is what sent me to Belize on a Missions trip with 30 strangers when I was just 11 years old.

And it is why, when somebody said, “You should invite them to youth group,” I did.

I lacked inhibition. I didn’t know there was anything to fear.

Sometimes, Often, I wish I could revisit my adolescence. I was so confident.

And people thought I had potential. I had so many of the qualities possessed by great leaders and successful individuals. I spoke well, I kept it together, I befriended the friendless. Life was full of hope, full of promise. The world was my oyster.

Now, I am married with children with no prospects, no money, no confidence and nowhere to turn. I have no career, and no hope of starting a new one because I can’t afford to go to school and I have to work day in and day out in an attempt to make enough for my family to live – but between you and me, it’s not enough and at the end of the day, I have nothing to show for my work, can barely pay rent and can’t spend time with my children. I can’t be the mother I had hoped to be or want to be. I can’t be the wife I should be.  What is it all for?

Then I spend my free time making reading aids for Ella to try and giving her a boost on the speech and language development because we haven’t had any help but the reality is, she is still going to be delayed cognitively and in speech no matter how many stupid little games I make up and someone along the way will say that it was a mistake to put her in French Immersion, even though she would probably fail in English anyway, because they grade on expressive language and not receptive language. What is it all for?

And no matter how hard I try, no matter how good of a parent I try to be, no matter how much I try to do the right thing, my son will still be 6 and complain about almost everything. What is it all for?

And no matter how many jobs my husband applies for, no matter how much we try to network and get connected, and no matter how much we do for free, people will continue to ask him to work for free and he might just never get a job where he is expected to do more than the 20 hours he gets paid peanuts for.

I want to quit.

I want to just stop trying. I want to stop crying.

But it’s not in my DNA.

And I want to be able to just swallow hard and bear my burden gracefully with poise and dignity

but apparently, that’s not in my DNA either.