I'm exausted all day and wakeful all night. I can barely function. When I do sleep it's fitful and full of dreams and if I don't keep waking up for no reason then the kids wake me.

It would seem that my biggest affliction is irony. Somtimes I can't help feeling like someone is playing with me. And then I switch on the television news and I'm reminded of how much worse things can be. Then I feel guilty for feeling bad. I only have exaustion, constant pain, two kids and a relationship in free fall to worry about.

Nobody tried to blow me up today. None of us is in danger of starving to death. No-one is trying to recruit my kids as suicide bombers.

Life is good.

Now if I could only make myself believe that.

We live in interesting times.

I find myself wondering if we're on the verge of a real war on terror. We've seen America and Britain go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq because someone blew up some Americans. We blew up a lot of Afghans and Iraqis so someone blew up a lot of Spaniards in Madrid. Now we have terrorists blowing up people in Britain and Iraq but they are apparently the same terrorists.

Do we face a future of random terrorists blowing people up all over the world for reasons they can no longer articulate while our once liberal democracies tear themselves appart looking for the perpetrators.

But don't listen to me. I know nothing.

Today someone tried to burn down my building. They set fire to my baby's buggy. It was parked in the outside hall there's no room in the flat. What kind of sick freak does a thing like that.

The flames and the smoke went up the stairwell. No-one was killed and we all got out of the building safely but for a while one of my upstars neighbours was just about ready to throw her kids out of the window. As she said later "How desperate is that?"

When I got back into the house the news was on the television. A suicide bomber drove a stolen fuel tanker into the middle of a crowded market and blew himself up creating a masive explosion and an even bigger fireball. Many people were killed. Many houses burned. Some parents were so desperate they were seen throwing their children from their windows to escape the flames.

How desperate is that?

I feel raw. Like someone born without skin. I feel too hot as though the air around me is slowly boiling. I feel out of place and awkward, as if all my clothes were half a size too small.

Is it just me that feels this way. I look at other people and they seem to fit in but perhaps they feel exactly as I do. Maybe other people can't tell how I feel. Maybe other people look at me and envy my apparent unruffled calm.

I know that some people envy me my mind. That's because they don't have to live with it. It's a very clever mind but it gives me no piece. It's never still or quiet and it is far too much in love with it's own cleverness. It makes me ill with it's constant chatter. It makes too much of everything.

Sometimes I wish I was stupid. Or at least a bit more average.

You'll often hear people say 'If only he/she/they had asked for help'.

Well that's not true. You can ask for help all you want and most people just do not want to know.

If you're someone like me and have a reputation for being capable then people will simply assume that you can deal with whatever it is. Even if it is something completely outside the scope of your knowledge and experience. They'll actually get really pissed off at you for asking. Even if it's their job to help you.

And of course after it's all gone horribly wrong I just know they'll all be standing round saying "If only she'd asked for help."

Is it wrong of me to want more from my relationship? Not much more. Just to actually spend time with him.

He spends all day with his back turned to me and the kids. Doing things on the other computer. Then he goes to bed. I love him. I believe he makes me happy. But it would be nice to see his face occasionally during the day. It would be good to discuss something without getting the feeling that he's pissed off at me for disturbing him.

And what is it that I'm disturbing? Vital beta testing. Of a MMORPG.

I would say it's sobering to be less important than a computer game but actually I'm used to it. To my father I came a long way down a list which included, ahead of me, the television and the car.

I knew that most women end up marrying their fathers I just thought that I'd be different. NOt that we're married. But that's another story.

Today I am not well. I've had ME, aka Cronic Fatigue Syndrome, for years but it seems that I sometimes need reminding just how ill it can make me. For a while this morning I was stuck slumped in a chair, unable to get up, and , for a short while, unable to move my head.

Of course I'm sure there are lot's of people on hand to tell you that I'm not really sick. It's all in my mind don't you know.

Well quite possibly it is all in my mind but that doesn't make it any less real to me.

I love frendship. Isn't it great the way you think you have friends until you need them and then, all of a sudden, you find out that your 'friends' just don't look at you that way. They think you're all independant and capable and strong so you don't need help.

I am fairly independant, occasionally capable and usually quite strong. It doesn't mean that I never need help, just that I never get it because my 'friends' are always off helping their obviously needy friends.

As someone once said to me "At least you have your dignity."

Possibly. I think dignity is what you get when you can't have money or power.

Cynical? Me? Hell yeah.

It's official. I'm not such a bad mother after all and they're not going to take my kids away.

So why do I feel like my safety net has disapeared?

The one good thing about having social workers about the place is you know that if you're really screwing up badly they'll take the kids away. It means that there's a limit to how much damage you can do to your kids.

Oh I don't mean physical damage. I mean the really nasty stuff. The mental damage you do without even meaning to.

Take me for example. I have a deep conviction that I am a bad and usless person. I have a self eteem so low that not even snakes could limbo dance under it. And my parents didn't mean for that to happen. They tried their best and if I'd been born with a slightly different personality I might have thrived with exactly the same upbringing. They wern't bad parents they were just unlucky and ignorant. But it was the 70s and no-one was making helpful TV progams for parents.

Woe is me for I am sick of heart.

I don't know where that comes from but it keeps running through my head. I suppose it's the grown up version of "Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Think I'll go and eat worms." Which was the recurring thought that haunted my childhood.

I find myself living in an implausable alternative reality. I never expected to be a Mother and now I am I find that I'm strapped to the wheel of time. I find that I'm part of a genetic chain stretching back through my Mother and Grandmother and forward through my daughter and son. My mind keeps rebelling aginst the whole unlikelieness of it all.

It's a strange thing to be a parent.

I know I'm a better parent than a lot of other people but it's not enough. I'm still a terrible, terrible mother. I'm failing in almost every department and yet I'm still better than a lot of the parents I see. Should I keep striving to be better or would it be kinder to my kids to let them go and give someone else the chance to do a better job?

My daughter is old enough to miss us. It would be a terrible thing to do to her in the short term but what about the long term? The longer I keep her the harder it will be for both of us if I do have to let her go. The longer I keep her the more damage I'll have done to her.

I don't mean physical damage. I don't beat my kids, but I do shout at them when I shouldn't. I don't give them a proper routine. I don't think I set consistant boundaries for them. I'm bad for them but things could be so much worse.

The thought of keeping them and the damage I could do to them makes me sick to my stomach. The thought of giving them up is even worse.