femalesunitedblog

Just last week, in a town near to me, a young woman aged 23 took her own life by jumping from a multi storey car park at 8am on a weekday morning, clutching her babie’s teddy bear.  When the police went to her home, they discovered 3 babies, all dead, aged 3, 2 and almost 1.  At the last update they had determined their deaths as inconclusive. The woman was also 8 months pregnant.  Her partner had left the month before.  As you might imagine, it’s headline news and the topic of many discussions locally.  I have heard many people’s opinions, what they think, people sure have plenty to say about it, and oh my – how cruel folks can be, or maybe very single minded. 

My feelings are that it’s a tragedy, completely.  All those lives taken.  I can’t understand or comprehend what state of mind that young woman had to have been in to feel that she had no choice but to take her children’s lives and her own.  Where was the support of family, friends, social services, the community?  How can all of these things have failed her in her times of need? 

I have 3 children, close in age, I am a single parent much of the time due to a partner that works away for long periods of time,  I know how hard being a mother can be at times, how alone it can feel, how isolating it is sometimes, how frustrating it can be,  how tiring it is, how mundane days can be, how unappreciated you can feel, how sometimes nothing ever seems to go your way and you can’t seem to do anything right, how you can feel that nobody else understands what your life is like, how you sometimes fantasise about walking out the door and just walking and walking, when you cry and can’t stop and you don’t really know why, when you shout and scream and then feel bad inside, when you feel you are not doing a very good job at being a mother, when you wish someone would come along and just take over, I understand all of those things.

I guess I never have reached such a low where I could ever consider taking my life, of feeling that worthless, I can’t imagine ever feeling that I wouldn’t want my children to grow up and experience the wonders of life.  True enough, the world and the people on it are pretty f’d up at times, but surely life is still precious enough to be worth it? When did things get so bad that a woman reaches that point in her life and nobody notices? Mostly, I feel sad and I feel angry.