It sure helps to vent, and what better place than here? You are trying so hard to be everything for everybody else that you've forgotten to look after yourself. Learn to say No now and then, and mean it. You might be a super woman, but Superwoman you aren't. So stop trying. Can you get occasional respite care for your mother? Try having a chat with the doctor, and the social worker at the hospital, or a local church or charity organisation. One day a week to yourself will be very rejuvenating for you. Pass the buck onto SIL if necessary. I have a friend who takes things on like you seem to, and people walk all over her with hobnailed boots. Now and then she remembers some good advice I gave her some time back - use the 'what if I were dead? ' tactic. In other words, if you got run over by a bus tomorrow, the world would still revolve, someone would step in to take over from you. They'd cope. So - sometimes, let 'em cope! Meantime, you need some free time, some space, and some freedom to live and breathe for yourself. You've earned that right.

flyleft, send me an email and I'll give you the whole ugly scoop - I don't want to totally derail this thread into something that I could easily see devolving into a political argument. oakleyok says: "I think we all would like a pat on the back every now and then. [...] It hurts when we do a topic asking a simple question or just to show something off, and all we get is criticism." So SAY what you want and don't want. Say something like "Hey, I finally finished such-and-such, and I wanted some pats on the back from my buddies because I worked really hard and my family just doesn't 'get it' how much this project meant to me. I'm not looking for critiques because I like it the way it is, I just want to share what I did." If you want people to critique something but you're feeling extra thin-skinned (not the best time to post, however), tell people to go easy on you. If you only want them to consider one thing, like a lamp, and not pay attention to the rug or the curtains, say so! "I do get my feelings hurt when I do a topic and the replies have nothing to do with what I ask." I'm sure you'll probably take this as "criticism", but you do need to become better acquainted with the concept of "topic drift". Side discussions do occur, especially in long threads, when person A finds something in a post by person B that s/he wants to address even though it isn't what the OP has asked, but it doesn't quite merit starting an entire new thread. And sometimes the whole thread does drift off into an unexpected direction and take on a life of its own... when that happens you either put on the big girl panties and go with it (because frequently when this happens it can be a LOT of fun) or you shrug and abandon the thread as a lost cause, but it's gotta sink in better that it is NOT about YOU personally when every single post in a thread you start isn't about you and your question from beginning to end. It's just the way forums work.

This thread is getting very slow to load, so I'll start a continuation of it. Please let this thread lapse. I hope you don't mind ravencajun. Part 2: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5724532/let-s-start-a-chain-reaction-game-get-some-activity-going-part-2

This thread has reached 5000 comments. I've started Part 3.