Are you ready for this?

I have to get this off my chest.. Sorry, I know you hate it!

I am fed up of being compared to others - especially someone who is plainly incapable, inadequate and has done nothing but damage peoples lives! Being told I'm a "nice" change, is so soul destroying. It's hardly a glowing comparison to be making, and says nothing about how I stand as my own person. I have never had someone look at me and tell me what they see - only ever had comparison, be it to mother, ex, someone else they know or "celebrity" ... I really don't know who I am.

In the past 10 months, I have waded through a life of contradiction, trying to hide some things but knowing that I couldn't live a lie even if others still were. And yet, although I have made steps forwards, I've walked right into another brick wall - thrown up by yet someone else! Someone who, by all accounts, wishes to mess around with the ones who mean most to me just to get their own way. They also seem to have the support of others, and have "weapons" in one form or another, by which they are hoping to achieve this.

I want to scream!!!

In my head is a little voice saying "get out", "run away" "you don't need this" "maybe they'll never be able to sort it"...

But my heart says "don't leave them behind" "you need them" "they need you" "it will change"...

I have a lot of me invested in this, but then again, I've been here, done that, once already and look where it got me!

With the apparent conflict in the situations others find themselves in having huge impact on my life, I am now stuck in a situation where I cannot move my life forward. I really want to be a more positive, energetic, vibrant person, happy to bring my children up no matter what life throws at me. But, and again, a big but, is that until I know for certain just what place others wish to have or have to choose to have in my (our) lives, that can't (won't) happen. I have no control over this because if I just make one of the possible decisions, it will hurt too many others and I can't bring myself to do that either.  I just don't want to stay in a perpetual state of "suspended animation" I'm human. I'm young. I'm healthy and I have so much to give to whoever chooses to accept it. I don't want to look back at the past - if I can't stay in the present (sometimes that is too sad) then I want to look forward to the future and if all that is happening is a replay of a broken record reminding me of the past, then this isn't going to be possible either.

Someone used a phrase in the last couple of days which captures how things feel right now - "like a flat, barren landscape" - featureless, and unexciting, but in some ways, I don't mind that, I'd rather this, than a huge sea of peaks and troughs, leaving me floundering for breath. But, and it's a huge but, I'd like to know that there is something out there for me.

Somewhere............????

 but at the moment, I can't see it anywhere......