When children leave for a week at their father's I again get this feeling I have no idea how to live. Or be a parent. I feel like by now a year after ADD divorce I could have a clue. I don't.

Someone said parents of our time are way too concerned with being ideal. An ideal parent, an ideal family, it forces children too to strive for perfection rather than joy and authenticity. I think by my constant overcompensating for the ADD ex whose capacity is currently unknown to me ambitions might run too high. I struggle to evaluate and maybe change this but I don't know how. I try every day to focus on the important things, which are love and communication and culture, but also home-cooked food and rides to extracurricular activities and adequate clothing and some days special treats. But I'm not getting the balance right, I feel overwhelmed and anxious. If I don't manage to keep on top of things, like when ill, I feel terrible. Less control doesn't seem like the answer.

Does anyone else feel like this? Like living with ADHD has made these (responsible but suffocating) behavior patterns for you, and you're not sure whether you should get out of them (perhaps you are doing the right thing but just feel bad anyway) and in that case how to get out?

In fact, I'm sick of producing healthy educational culturally sound choices for everyone (not least other ADD members of the family). Organic whole meal sociable nice-looking sensible spending whatever, I hate it. And yet the alternative is going with the children's father's inertia - unhealthy, wasteful. He's already spent the margins. It's my job to minimize the effects of it on my children. 

So tired.

I can't be a model to the children like this. My entire rhythm is off. 

Last few days I've concluded this looks like clinical depression, and so I've prioritized long walks. It helps, I get glimpses of interest in things, but still it's pretty bleak.

I thought about J and his Sunday recreation. Today I've tried to go abut my day like that, haphazardly. I just felt anguished trying and started to make long to-do lists of things to silence mental alarms as I moved through the home and saw everything that needed doing. The lists made me exhausted. 

How does one parent alone? I haven't felt much support from my ex for years. But now there's no one to talk to. And I'm lost.