Destroying My Campsite

Tags

anger, assertive, camping, non-verbal

I can’t ever beat my father with words. He flips them and uses them against me; he fails to understand my meaning; he doesn’t understand my meaning; he throws statistics and facts in my face. I cannot compete. It doesn’t really matter what we’re talking about, he always wins and that is the way he likes it.

When my middle sister was a teenager she would challenge him (or try and have a conversation with him) over dinner and I remember her leaving the room in tears, time and time again, frustrated that she couldn’t get anything out of him. I tried on occasion, but I learned from my sister that it wasn’t about winning, as winning was impossible, but it was about trying to have a go. I did say to him more than once “I’m right and you know I’m right but you just won’t admit it so I’m walking away from this conversation.” which summed it up. I gave up.

My eldest sister threw the tantrums and my middle tried arguing. Way before I remember either of these I had learned to keep quiet, to retreat, both physically and emotionally. I hid in books, in keeping quiet, in keeping my head down. I didn’t challenge then and I still run away from confrontation even, sadly, when it’s simply being assertive.

In all the scenarios in my head when I have challenged my parents I have always done so with words, because that’s how we communicated. Even in EMDR sessions it’s been about myself and my people explaining to my parents why their behaviour is detrimental. Today I did something different and that feels important. We camped a lot as a family so that we could camp and walk as opposed to just walking. It makes for a nice variety. My memories of camping are blurred by time but I remember the misery of waking up in a tent in Scotland with midges and my middle sister before I got my own tent and how joyless it all felt. The above photo, and the look on my face and body conveys all the exasperation that I felt.

So this time, in the scenario in my head, rather than talk about the fact that this was all we did on holidays, that no-one ever asked me what I wanted or how I enjoyed these times, that maybe a bit of variety would be good etc. etc. I decided to slash the tents instead. A magical knife appeared that allowed me to slash through the canvas of the tents, both layers, and wreck the tents. That wasn’t enough though and I stomped on the water bottles, the billy cans, all the camping paraphernalia and flattened the lot, breaking tent poles and doing almost a war dance on the remnants, with snotty tears cascading down. I can see me. My sisters couldn’t stop me and my parents returned from their stroll to find a horde of fellow campers and officials watching me throw this massive tantrum. Some of the campers suggested to my parents that I clearly wasn’t happy and maybe they should take me home.

That felt like a win. Maybe the first full time win in my head when my parents couldn’t not see me, even if they didn’t understand. At least they saw my rage. In my head they did anyway. This also explains one of my favourite moments in Marcel Pagnol’s autobiography, when as a little boy he stands up in defence of his father and is seen. It’s a moment of glory and power that I’ve always treasured and now I understand why.

That feeling of strength stayed with me for a bit and I’d like it to stay for longer. I think of assertiveness and autonomy being an iron bar in the shape of “I” that is my spine, that it’s the strength of valuing being me. I think of the imaginary mini-me dancing on the grave of the campsite and I see strength in her that is inspirational. I need to find other non-verbal ways of challenging.

I would like to be mad as hell.

Angry Words

Tags

anger, daydream, death, parents, roleplay

After a very peaceful day I have surprised myself by having highly inflamed rant at my parents after they try to stage an “intervention” along with my sisters to ascertain why I’m not as friendly towards them as I should be. I somewhat let rip, telling them how angry they make me and asking what did they do for me, before storming out with a screw you to them. And then I stop daydreaming.

My heart is pounding. Nowhere near as much as if this had really happened but I can feel it. I think about this more and more and don’t really know what to do. If I have words, however calmly, they don’t listen and I get more angry. But the more I don’t say anything the more it angers me anyway.

I debate for a few days over replying to an email from them. How much to say if anything? I put off returning their phone calls and most definitely going to see them. I note when they ring my sisters but not me to pass on news but I don’t look forward to their calls or initiate the call myself.

I have come so far on my journey in the last few years but I don’t know what to do with them. I can’t change how they react; I can only change my attitude but what changes do I make to help me find peace when every contact with them brings me anger. I don’t want to wait until they’re dead for something to shift.

What Happens to the Anger?

Tags

acceptance, anger, calm

So I recently wrote a post on anger and all the people I am angry at. This list basically comprises my parents, my middle sister 2sis, one teacher in particular, and myself. I am less angry at boyfriends for being damaging twats and schools for being blind. I say less angry because I recognise that I hid my pain so school staff would have had to be paying attention to pick up on it and I chose my boyfriends because it was almost inevitable that i would pick men who would walk over me.

The question is though, what do I do with this anger?

There is no point in trying to have confrontations with my parents and try and get them to understand how much they buggered things up for me. I have tried it and I end up more emotionally drained than when I started and I don’t get any understanding from my parents, more a bewildered confusion as they try to work out what it is I’m blethering on about. I end up angrier. Also, and I don’t really know if this is still about protecting them or not, they are both 80+ and increasingly fragile and lacking sense of the world anyway so having a go at them would seem mean.

While my sister isn’t fragile I have to a great extent wiped her out of my life. We met up some five years ago for the first time in five years and talked for a few hours and that was the last time we spoke. I have no desire to do it again. What I realised after that conversation was that I still don’t trust her; I don’t know who she is; I don’t really care about her one way or another. She has shown minimal effort in wanting to get to know me and so have I. So we leave it there, which is fine except that it means I am never going to have any sort of reconciliatory conversation with her. Again, what’s the point?
Moving away from family to schools and teachers. Nowadays children who don’t speak the local language are much more commonplace and schools are a lot better at looking after them and integrating them. Teachers are a lot more aware of bullying and that unhappy children can be really quiet and well-behaved. Teachers still struggle to deal with it. After all they are supposed to be educators and not social workers and they can’t go and sort out parents for the child’s well-being even when they recognise the issue. However I would like to think that I would get more understanding if I was going through the same situation this decade.

My French teacher is probably dead by now. Even if she wasn’t and I tracked her down, what would I say? You were an unsupportive bitch and made me cry a lot? What would that get me?

I can now recognise that my choice in boyfriends or partners is poor, not because I’m a failure but because it is the natural consequences of my upbringing. My mother taught me to be passive and deceitful in a relationship and to hide my true feelings and never argue. My father taught me that what the man wants, the man gets, or else. There was the biting sarcasm and trenchant wit, the put-downs that my sister then repeated. He was master of the house with intellectual superiority. Despite writing all that down, I still feel that somehow, somewhen I should have worked out what I was doing earlier and stopped making bad choices with regards to relationships. As it was it was only ten years ago that I realised and went stop, no more. Whilst I think I would now make better choices, I’ve also become a lot pickier as well as being aware that my own self-esteem is still not strong enough to make me look at developing a relationship with anything but horror. Acceptance and regard for my own body is still some way off (something else to blame my parents for).

And that leaves me.

I am still angry with myself for making “bad” decisions, however much I accept the inevitability of them. I’m angry at myself for leaving it for so long to finally start working on myself. I haven’t really forgiven myself. This is something I still need to work on.
The other issue I need to think about when it comes to anger is, what do I do with anger now? I spent my childhood learning to not display temper or anger, to squash it and try and ignore it. I tried dealing with it my understanding why my parents were that way inclined and to feel sorry for their behaviour rather than scream and shout. That all helped diffuse the anger. But even now I simply don’t get angry. 3son drives me nuts at times. He is extremely frustrating. And yet I rarely get angry with him. I will tell him when he irritates me and why. I will express my annoyance. We may have a productive conversation about it or he may just get really defensive and it not be worth the effort. Sometimes he will tell me what an idiot he’s just been so I don’t have to bother. I will use words like frustrated, exasperated, infuriated which come so close to anger, but I will not say I’m angry. Am I still suppressing my anger or do I genuinely not feel anger?

That as a question sounds ridiculous. How can one deny ever feeling an emotion that is such an important one. I feel that I have transferred the anger into acceptance. My peers on my course tell me my demeanour when practising skills is that of calm acceptance with a willingness to hear anything. 3son told his girlfriend a year or so ago that he didn’t think he could say anything that would shock me. My meditation practice is transforming anxiety into calm and I have become a lot less stressed person. Have I transformed this anger into a positive acceptance and willingness to be open that makes me a better person? Do I need to dig up the anger from childhood, something that takes me a lot of effort to do?

I honestly don’t know what the answer is here. I feel the positive aspect of the increased calm and acceptance but I still don’t really know whether I’m ignoring an elephant in the room.

I Am Angry

Tags

2sis, anger, dad, mum

Anger is something that I am not used to expressing. It wasn’t permitted and my parents never used it. 1sis was the only one who ever got angry and it never did her any good. She would still end up in floods of tears. So I got used to squashing my anger, sitting on it, burying it and never ever expressing it. I carried on that pattern with partners so spent thirty odd years learning to ignore it. Letting it out is therefore not easy.

So what am I angry at?

I’m angry at my mother for not fighting more. For me and for her. She said she tried for the first few years of marriage but it didn’t get anywhere and she found it too painful. I understand that but it stopped her from being the person she could have been and it stopped her from coming in between my sisters and I except for on very rare occasions. I lost her as a trusted companion years ago, and although I accept that you can’t go back I missing that loving and close relationship we had despite its faults. She was my female role model and what she taught me was subservience to the man, constant worry and agitation, a lack of an independent life and an unwillingness to fight for herself. She also presented two faces to the world, one where she moaned to me about Dad’s inadequacies and one where she I was angry at my father.

I’m angry at my father. For putting work first and us second, for not being able to open up and be warm except for on the rarest of occasions. For terrifying me, for making me hate him, for making me feel sorry for him. When I found out that he hadn’t just applied for a job he’d seen advertised but he’d pushed to create the job abroad that only he could do I was angry for him for not considering me. He considered 2sis who was about to do her A levels and made provisions for her, but I would just get thrown into a francophone school and be fine. I was angry at him for not listening to me, for not paying attention to who I was but just telling me how to be more like him. I was angry and so frustrated that he would never admit he was wrong. I was angry at him for not giving me choices, for being mean on presents, for dismissing anything he didn’t want to pay attention to. I was angry at him for not really believing I was car sick, or hungry, or needed the toilet when it wasn’t convenient for him to stop. I was angry at him for thinking my tears weren’t important.

It’s not just my parents of course.

I’m angry at 2sis for taking out her anger at my parents on me, for diminishing me and mocking me just to bolster her own ego. She copied her father really because she felt insecure.

I felt angry at schools and teachers for not recognising there was anything wrong, especially at Mme Van Der Steen for bullying me rather than supporting me in class. None of the teachers picked up on the bullying or did anything about it.

I’m angry at my first boyfriend for making me cry so many times and then for threatening suicide when I tried splitting up with him. He paved the way for a succession of bad relationships.

I’m angry at my dad for thinking it’s OK to let me go and live with his mistress and that I wouldn’t find out and neither would my mother. For being so insensitive and just plain stupid.

I’m angry at me for buggering up my A levels and not going to university and for not picking a better drama college. I’m angry at my dad for paying no attention to what I wanted to do and at my mother for not feeling able to intervene at this major point.

I’m angry at me for letting it all happen. Even though I know have a better understanding that such things follow almost inevitably one from another I just wish I’d woken up sooner to what was happening to me and made better choices decades ago. I’m angry at all the wasted time.

Personal Development over the Last Year

Tags

anger, control, inner child, progress

An essay on personal development was the one essay I was looking forward to doing this year as I have plenty to say.

Unfortunately once I read the criteria this is not for general personal development but for personal development resulting from interaction when using counselling skills. This is somewhat limiting, to say the least. I am frustrated by the essay so I thought I’d write the one I want to write.

I have changed a lot over the last year.

I am finding my inner calm. Daily meditation most days has resulted in my stressing less and not getting quite as wound up as I used to. I cannot recommend enough the Calm app which has been perfect for me.

To some extent as a consequence of this my alcohol consumption has diminished, both in frequency and in quantity, which in itself is no bad thing. I’m more aware of my body reacting to alcohol  and would prefer to stay relaxed.

I have felt the need to leave the house in the evening less. I have craved less for generic adult company. This is because my children are growing up and are more companionable when we do talk and less difficult to deal with. Maybe I’m also reacting to them better.

I have put greater effort into keeping up with those few friends I really want to. I have got better at initiating contact and making arrangements.

It seems a small matter but I have succeeded in swapping my daily routine and working on me or my sons before I start working in the day. It is a specific change in priorities.

An even smaller matter, seemingly, is that I’m getting in touch with my sweet tooth. I’m starting to eat peanut butter, jam, sweeter ice cream just a little bit more often. I’ve always stayed with the tart lemony puddings or sorbets and the less sugary ice creams. I’ve been trying to pay attention when I feel like something sweet and actually have it.

I’ve been eating more fruit. My parents were never fond of fruit but always had apples and satsumas in a bowl and ate them because they are good for you. The occasional pineapple was a treat and my father would carve it up after much discussion of the best way. I have been shaking all that off and going for mangos and melons, sometimes in chunks in little plastic pots that make me feel guilty.

I go through phases of being a bit more active and going out for walks, sometimes for twenty minutes and sometimes for a couple of hours. I have tried to stop telling myself off when I don’t.

In therapy I am trying to force myself to concentrate on the important stuff but it’s not easy and I am so willing to sidetrack myself. Over the last few months I have been trying to get more in touch with the “inner child”, with the way I felt as a child. Not the narrative, not what happened, but how I felt as a result. Hence the few letters that I’ve written to me and to both parents.

What have I learned from this so far? I have well and truly buried past emotions as there was never any point in complaining hence I just squashed it all and that stayed with me with subsequent partners. At the time I was aware of some of what I was suppressing, but not all. So I find it difficult to remember how I felt without really thinking hard about it. I’ve never been one for reminiscing about my childhood. I also do not like to lose control. Since I was not allowed to get angry I learned to keep a stiff upper lip and to keep my tears for privacy. Eventually of course it was a matter of pride that I wouldn’t let my father see me cry so I ended up doing the opposite of what I wanted to. I bottled everything up. I still don’t tell them anything. Now that feels out of choice rather than necessity but it is still because I don’t want to have the arguments with them as I won’t win.

My inability to lose control, or my unwillingness, has meant that although I got drunk as a teenager, and indeed as an adult, I never got falling drown drunk and I never blacked out as a result. For the same reason I would never, could never do drugs. I did promise 1son when we discussed this that if I ever would smoke a spliff I would do it in his company first. I doubt it will ever happen. I have also felt the need to keep control for the sake of my children. When they were younger I didn’t want them to see me unhappy or angry or in a mess and I have had to learn to let them see me in such ways so they appreciate that I too am human.

Do I need to let my anger out? I need to acknowledge it and that’s another post to do. I need to hear that child who felt so ignored and so frustrated.

Dear Head, Dear Heart

Tags

anger, head, heart, privilege, sarcasm

 

Bellona-Dancer

Dear Me of thirty odd years ago,

This is your head speaking.

You have parents who love you, even if they can’t really show it.

Your sisters may have seen you as a little sister to be bossed around but they weren’t nasty to you, at least not until 2sis left home. When did that start I wonder? When did 2sis start putting you down all the time? 1sis floated in and out of your life sometimes interesting, usually entertaining, frequently disruptive in an admirable way. Both of them left you to it, most of the time.

You have a privileged upbringing. Your mum taught you to read by the age of three and only when I tried to do the same did I realise quite how difficult and time consuming that is.You were encouraged to read and taken on frequent trips to the library from a young age. Books saved you.

Your dad took you to work with him on Saturdays when it wasn’t too busy, even if he did always leave you to someone else to look after. He told you bedtime stories, often about his youth and there were always bad jokes.

There were family holidays, lots of them. All by car so if you could just learn to stop feeling sick in the car life would be so easier. It’s inconvenient to have to stop and it is such a weakness. Sleeping in the car may reduce your car sickness but you miss out on watching the miles roll by, holiday “banter” from your dad and family sing songs. Oh well. Holidays involved camping, walking and lots of fresh air. Scotland, Wales, Lake District. Been there and done that, in rain and occasional sun. The odd square of chocolate to help keep you going and proper walking boots and wet weather gear. Learn to walk faster and you’ll keep up. Don’t stop to admire the view unless it’s an approved stop or you’ll fall behind. What do you mean you don’t want to go?

Your mother took time out to take you to all the museums in London, introduced you to a life long love of theatre, Shakespeare, and Gilbert and Sullivan. Old films that you could share with your grandmother.

And then there are all those trips to your grandmother. How lucky you are to have a relative living in the sunny south of France who could show you a different way of life with lots of chat between you and your grandmother and your mother.Your dad would go off doing long walks so you can enjoy peace without him, as did your mother. Lots of swimming, eating, drinking and discovering interesting places. When it’s just you and your mum going you can sit in the front of the car and not want to throw up quite so much. Isn’t it surprising I was over 40 before I learned to drive!

Your other grandmother wasn’t quite so easy but even so, you learned to value your time with her. You wouldn’t have know your father had a brother if it wasn’t for her.

The, when you were seven you moved abroad. All of a sudden your idyllic life changed.

You were put into a French speaking school and had the amazing advantage of becoming fluent in a second language. Never mind that the other children thought you were weird and bullied you. What an opportunity!

You had the privileged advantage of growing up in another country, of learning to appreciate and value other cultures, other ways of life and to respect differences. It opened your eyes to a European, multi-cultural mindset that doesn’t really exist in England. You will appreciate that for the rest of your life.

Being bullied is character forming. It strengthens you and teaches you who you really are. You don’t need friends.

You turned down the opportunity to move to Germany and become trilingual. What a wimp you and your mother were for saying no. Would your father have consulted you both if he’d already decided to go?

You were lucky enough to notice your parents increasing affluence, despite (or because of) your father’s tight control of the purse strings. Never mind that you were never spoiled, that Christmases were always limited and you had to earn larger presents. At least you learned the value of money.

You spend so many years moaning about your childhood whilst failing to appreciate all the wonders it brought. It’s about time you grew up and moved on, leaving behind all this nonsense and appreciating what you were given. You were so lucky!

Yours,

Head

 

Dear head,

I hate you.

I hated my dad and had forgotten the sarcasm and mockery, some of which he no doubt passed onto 2sis. I spend so much time now feeling sorry for him that I’d forgotten or repressed how much I hated him and how small he made me feel.

I thought my mum saved me but actually letting me hang out with people twice my age did me no good in the long run and meant that I never felt comfortable with my peers. Her inability to stand up to my dad taught me about being passive and accepting one’s lot.I’m not sure that I ever believed she tried standing up to him at first.

I still feel guilty for not having more than a minimal relationship with my parents and in some ways I’m still protecting them from the truth, as I so often did as a child.

I was so miserable for so long and then I continued it by going out with men who repeated the sarcasm, the dictatorship, the dominance. I never stood a chance until I learned to be independent.

I am better than all this shit and would like to let it go but I spent my childhood and much of my adulthood suppressing my anger and hurt as it served no purpose and it has festered. I am working on it.

So dear head, thanks for all the privilege, but, fuck you.

Heart

 

Letting Go Of Hostility

Tags

alcoholism, anger, ex-partners, ex1, hostility, insight, transference

This quotation from my DailyCalm recently resonated heavily with me.

This is mostly to do with the father of 1son who is an alcoholic. He drank heavily while I knew him and up to several years after we divorced.

He claimed that he woke up one morning and decided that he would be a better father to 1son if he quit drinking and so he just did. I didn’t believe it was quite that simple but he certainly never had a drink again.

I am very grateful that he did quit as it enabled him to be a better father to 1son who subsequently went to live with him which he couldn’t have otherwise done.

But, for all that I’m also just really angry that he’s never apologised to me. He’s never said sorry for the pain that he caused me, whether due to the alcohol or otherwise. He’s never acknowledged that he put me through all that and that quite simply pisses me off.

I put up with his drinking, his being drunk, his snoring, his siphoning of all money to drink. He got fired while I was pregnant as one of his departing work colleagues complained about working with someone in potentially hazardous conditions who would be drunk at 10am. They opened his locker and the empty bottles cascaded out, despite him having had sufficient warning that he could have cleared them out. Every time I hoovered I found bottles stashed behind the furniture and in weird places. He claimed that getting fired was deliberate as he wanted to stay at home and look after me whilst pregnant. Which would have been nice except that I’d been made redundant so we had no money coming in.

The day I brought my son home from the hospital, after three days stay, should have been one of the happiest days of my life as the new mother triumphantly returns home, babe in arms. Instead we got home and my then husband collapsed on the bed and started snoring. The place was in a tip and he’d clearly not done anything other than drink since I’d given birth. I scrabbled around emptying his pockets to find enough money to order a pizza, the only food that delivered, as the fridge was empty and seriously contemplated for the first time ever the fact that maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day, I would have to leave him. And then I cried.

Just writing that leaves me shaking with anger. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It took me another two years to accept that being a father wasn’t going to change anything and to get started on divorce proceedings. That whole period of itself was traumatic as he refused to leave our home so I took 1son and went and stayed with the local vicar for far longer than they were happy for. I’m very thankful to them, even if I cannot remember their names. Eventually 1ex went back down to London, to his mother’s and we returned home. He contested the divorce as I cited alcoholism as the reason and said he would agree to it if I changed it to no fault which I refused to do and he did give in. It was important to me that I didn’t back down and pretend that  the reasons were other than they were or that the blame for our marital breakdown might have been more 50-50.

Despite all my wishes I didn’t however actually break off communications and let him see 1son whenever he could. This wasn’t very often until I moved down to London a few years later but he did make day trips to see his son and I would always find an empty bottle, anywhere from a half to an eighth, of the cheapest whisky, neatly tucked next to a garden hedge or hall within a door or two away.

I now appreciate that even if he hadn’t been a drunk I would probably have ended up divorcing him. I welcome the fact that we can get on as long as we keep our conversations (preferably by email or telephone) to matters relating to 1son or IT and rarely anything else. He has done his bit by 1son who got more attention from his father and grandmother than he could have done from me with three other children to take care of. I recognise all that.

But I still want him to say sorry and that isn’t going to happen. I cannot make it happen and I’m definitely not going to ask. So I have to let it go. I have known this for multiple years though and I haven’t.

I feel anger towards him in a way that I don’t towards my parents. I may not have realised it at the time but he was supposed to be my way out from my childhood, from the mess that my life was at the time that I met him. Instead of being my saviour, he instead reinforced many of my already existing feelings of inadequacy and made matters worse. So really I am angry at him for not being the person I needed and wanted him to be even though that wasn’t really within his power.

Maybe then I have transferred to him the anger that I should have felt towards my parents for all that my upbringing led me to feeling completely disempowered and without identity at an age when I should have been leaping forth into the world. It’s easier to feel angry towards him, who I have mostly cut out of my life, than it is to be angry towards my parents with whom I have much more complicated bonds.

So I have to let go of my hostility towards him because, ultimately, it’s simply not his fault.

 

 

My Parents’ Effects

Tags

anger, death, money, plans

Over the past ten years we’ve had a regular conversation about my parents’ eventual demise and what happens to everything. They’re comfortably off. I struggle to say rich although that’s probably accurate. My father would say he’s careful with his money and has always planned well and been prudent.

He also disapproves of paying taxes on money he’s already paid tax on when he earned it and has gone to some considerable lengths to minimise these concerns at my parents’ eventual demise. Every time his situation changes or there are changes in law he re-considers it all and then tells us all in precise detail exactly what he’s doing.

I stop myself from saying I wish he would spend as much time and care in leaving a positive relationship with his children behind when he dies. That’s not a conversation that is going to go anywhere at all.

Confrontations with a Teenager

Tags

anger, ASD, depression, slap, teenagers

He’s only 14 but 3son is a fully blown teenager now, who barely talks to me unless it is to sneer, mock, disagree or complain. He accuses me both of not caring enough to understand and not leaving him alone in peace. Whatever I do I cannot win.

Ever since 2son was diagnosed with ASD 3son has been hankering after a label. I’m not sure whether there’s some attention seeking there, or whether it’s a Get Out of Jail Free card, or even just he thinks it might solve his problems. I’m not saying he’s making it up, but there is certainly an element of grandstanding in all this. He constantly tells me that I can’t possibly understand what he’s going through but really doesn’t want to try talking it through with me.

Morning Rant

Tags

2son, anger, CATE, depression, frustration, routine, SEN, statement

It’s Tuesday.

3son woke up this morning with a couple of nasty bites on his lips and refused to go to school. It hurts. I hadn’t the patience to argue with him very much.

2son did not get up yesterday until 1pm and CATE finished for the day at half past one so there wasn’t a lot of action there. I ran up and down the stairs every half hour from 8am to try and get him up. He said he was nervous about CATE. Not about the other students or the teachers or the place or the travel, just the whole thing.

What can we do to help make it easier? Shoulder shrug for an answer. Are you going to go at all this week? Shoulder shrug for an answer.

I phoned up the social worker and explained that 2son hadn’t got up or gone to school at all. She’s got transport in place from today, coming at 8.40am. Fat lot of good that’s going to do. I said what he really needs, or what I really need, is someone to help him with evening and morning routine to help get him into bed. She’s applying for it but it can’t be as quick as transport.

I said I didn’t know how I was going to cope with this for the next few months, that my worst fear was that he would just stay at home and sink back into his old routines of not bothering with anything. The statement might provide something useful to meet his needs but by the time it gets done and resources are allocated we’ll be lucky if it’s this side of Christmas.

I didn’t work properly yesterday, with only half my mind on it and have to go back and do it again properly today. I can’t focus as I’m thinking about him upstairs. I’m feeling depressed, now there’s a surprise. I’m also feeling angry and bloody frustrated.

I’m tempted to start looking up the rules and to try and complain about the Commissioner’s decision but the chances of it leaving me anything but more frustrated is virtually nil.

I’m scared that I’m not going to get through the next few months. I’m more than scared, I’m petrified. I’m also trying desperately hard to not lose sight of looking after me.