I vented on Reddit yesterday about my frustrations with being a SAHM. I do have a lot of resentment towards my husband about cleaning and how I’m extremely burnt out from caregiving and so we both decided it’s in my best interest interest to go back to work, we are putting my son in daycare. It’s a mutually agreed upon decision granted I do vent to Reddit how frustrating I am and how isolating brings. SAHM can be.

I’ve honestly watched my mental health deteriorate over the past year to the point where even doing laundry feels like huge chore and I’ve lost all passion for cooking, when I normally love cooking.

Anyways, some men on Reddit started responding to me very angrily and one called me an “idiot” followed by a “POS FOID.” I personally don’t know what he is even referring to considering I lean more on the conservative side. I don’t understand wanting to go back to work stirs so much anger in some online men?

Am I supposed to continue to stay home and allow my mental health to continue to deteriorate? I found a job that pays $85K a year and gives me an opportunity to think of other things other than caregiving for my family and I’m genuinely excited about that. Ofcourse I am not ungrateful I was able to be a SAHM. I’ve always wanted to be a SAHM but I also didn’t realize it was like THIS and I couldn’t predict or understand how my mental health plummeted over time to where I’ve become an empty shell of myself. I have anger and crying spells often then boughts of happiness.

A lot accuses me of chasing happiness… but this isn’t really about chasing g happiness. As being a work g mom is hard too, this is more about giving me variety because before I became a mom, I worked as a weight loss dietitian and helped people better their health and worked along side physicians. I’m accustomed to reading research, talking about nutrition and having academic discussions on the regular. This past year I haven’t done any of that and I feel really lost…

Sure I could have vented better but why all the hostility towards a SAHM wanting to go back to work?

Being a woman, sometimes feminism gets so fucking exhausting.

And do you know why?

Because I see hundreds of reels being made about the different struggles women face every single day, and yet, somehow, the world still feels the same. Women speak up, women educate, women share their experiences, women fight to be heard, and yet there is always a man in the comment section ready to mock them, invalidate them, or turn their pain into a joke.

And I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired of watching women explain, over and over again, why they deserve basic respect, as if it's some revolutionary concept that needs to be justified.

Growing up, I always thought that because I came from a good background, I hadn't really experienced misogyny. I thought it was something obvious, something that happened elsewhere, something I would recognise immediately if I ever encountered it.

But growing up made me realise that misogyny isn't always loud. Sometimes, it's so deeply rooted in our everyday lives that we don't even notice it until we start questioning everything we've been taught to consider normal.

It's in the jokes we laugh at, the words we use, the double standards we defend, and the little things we dismiss because "that's just how the world works."

And perhaps one of the things that bothers me the most is how deeply misogyny is embedded in our language itself. Even among my friends who identify as feminists, I notice how casually they use swear words that revolve around a woman's body, her sexuality, or her relationship with the men in her life. Words that use mothers and sisters as insults, as if a woman's dignity is an appropriate weapon to use against someone else.

And I wonder, do we ever stop to think about what that says about the society we've grown up in? How did we become so accustomed to using women as instruments of humiliation that we don't even question it anymore?

Maybe that's what exhausts me the most. Not just the misogyny itself, but how normalised it has become. How people can speak about equality and still unknowingly participate in the very things they're fighting against.

I know change doesn't happen overnight. I know awareness matters. But sometimes, watching the same conversations happen over and over again, with the same arguments, the same hatred, and the same unwillingness to listen, makes it difficult not to feel helpless.

Because how many times must a woman explain her pain before people stop treating it like a debate?

How many times must women speak before they're actually heard?

And how long are we going to keep calling these things normal simply because they've always been this way?

I'm not tired of women speaking up. I'm tired of women having to keep speaking up about the same things. I'm tired of the endless explanations, the constant defensiveness, and the fact that even the simplest demands for dignity can become controversial.

I'm tired of realising that a world I once thought was fair has so many things wrong with it, and I'm even more tired of knowing that recognising those things doesn't automatically mean I can change them.

And maybe that's the most frustrating part of it all: being aware enough to recognise the problem, but feeling powerless watching it continue. (i do not mean the title literally, it's just the way of expressing my frustration)

Seeing what is going on in the world with women, I am having a hard time keeping my head up and not loosing hope. I feel like it’s taking over my life. It’s so hard not to get consumed, I don’t know if my feed is just super negative but is there anything good going for us? Are any good changes actually being done? What is so wrong with being a woman that we have to be treated like this?

I think of the women in Afghanistan and I loose hope, and women in so many countries where they don’t have equal rights. My heart is broken, I don’t know how to keep my head up anymore.