Tonight I Feel Tired
Tonight I feel broken by it all.
Not broken in a dramatic sense. Just worn down. Worn so thin by years of explaining, advocating, evidencing, justifying and pushing that I don’t know how much energy I have left.
I am sad. Really sad.
The kind of sadness that sits heavily in your chest and catches you by surprise because you’ve spent so long being strong that you don’t realise how much you’ve been carrying until something finally cracks.
Today was another one of those days when I found myself talking about processes instead of a child.
Another discussion about pathways.
Another explanation of why something couldn’t happen.
Another reason not to answer a perfectly reasonable question.
And all I could think was: where is the humanity in that?
I don’t need everyone to agree with me. I don’t need special treatment.
I don’t even need people to reach the same conclusion as me.
I just need people to talk to me. To answer. To explain.
To recognise that behind every email, every assessment and every request is a family trying their best.
What makes this so painful is that the need isn’t in dispute. People see it. They write about it.
They acknowledge the challenges, the vulnerabilities, the supervision, the impact on family life, the sacrifices that have been made.
And then somehow you still end up feeling as though you are standing outside a closed door.
I think what hurts most is the loneliness of it.
Professionals see snapshots. Meetings. Reports. Assessments. But they don’t live it.
They don’t see the constant vigilance.
They don’t see what it costs a family to hold everything together.
They don’t see the exhaustion that sits underneath the advocacy.
And some days I carry it quite well.
Other days, like today, I feel completely defeated by it.
I am tired of fighting systems.
Tired of learning policies.
Tired of understanding thresholds.
Tired of becoming an expert simply because nobody else knows my child as well as I do.
Beneath all the frustration, I think there is grief.
Grief for the ease that never came.
Grief for the childhood I imagined.
Grief for the fact that every small step towards support seems to come attached to another battle.
And tonight, more than anything, I feel sad for my child.
Because none of this is their fault.
They’re just trying to navigate a world that often asks more of them than it does of other children.
I know tomorrow I will get up and keep going.
Most adoptive parents do somehow, in our own way.
We become stronger than we ever wanted to be.
But tonight I don’t feel resilient.
Tonight I don’t feel strong.
Tonight I feel tired.
Heart sore.
Disappointed.
And desperately sad that after all this time, I’m still standing outside a door, waiting for someone simply to answer.