Holding It Together

Tags

alone, crying, loneliness, pretending, tears

The other week, my therapist said that I didn’t look like someone who was only just managing to hold it together and not fall apart. That phrase rang with me all the way home.

I have had a lot of practice at holding things together.

When I was a child I held the tears in until I could go and throw myself on my bed and weep into my pillow. Crying was seen as a weakness, especially when my father didn’t acknowledge he’d done anything wrong. I spent so many mealtimes watching 2sis argue with him, only to run away in floods of tears to my father’s shoulder shrug that I decided never to give him the satisfaction of making me cry. He did of course over the years, but as a child I learned to not bother telling him what I really thought or felt.

In the playground I never knew what to say when I was being picked on. How to react to verbal abuse when fighting back wasn’t allowed? I didn’t know what to say, and I knew saying “stop” wouldn’t achieve anything. So I went silent, retreating into myself but trying to not show fear, hurt or pain, to just hold it together until they went away, that may be if they thought it didn’t bother me it would stop.

As an adult, with ex1 I was the one to worry about what was happening, how to deal with it, what I could do. He was the  one who would just get drunk and not think about it. Then I had to be supportive when he moaned at me about how hard life was. Holding it together had become so built in that it took me two years to acknowledge that I had the right to divorce an alcoholic husband, who refused to acknowledge he had a problem. When he finally left I discovered a hidden pile of unopened white envelopes, of bills unknown that I had to sort out which seemed to symbolise our difference in attitudes.

As for ex2, he had massive problems with accepting responsibility. He’d lie in bed and hope it would all go away, while somehow also managing to twist it round to being my fault. Meanwhile I’d be trying to carry on a normal family life, not wanting to acknowledge that yet again, I’d picked a dud. It took me far too long to walk away from him and by then I had four children to bring up on my own.

Children make you hold it together. I don’t want to burst into floods of tears in front of them and half scare them to death. I want to appear strong and reliable to them; I’m the only parent, the only responsible adult they have. When they were very small I would occasionally cry out of sheer exhaustion and the older ones would huddle round and cuddle me. It felt as if it was the first time I’d had a positive response to my tears, although no doubt that is an exaggeration.

But the huge tears, the floods, I keep to myself, I let them out in private when I need to and that is getting less often. Whether that is because I don’t need to any more or whether it’s because I don’t want to remember how painful those unacknowledged tears are I really don’t know but when I do cry I think about being alone and I think of all those tears quietly shed.

Holding it together is not just about crying of course. For me it is, or rather it has been, presenting a British stiff upper lip to the world, of not showing the turmoil that is going on in my head and in my heart, of not letting anyone realise that there is anything wrong, of keeping quiet, of pretending, locking myself up deep inside of me where no one can ever see.

Learning to undo all that is so hard.

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End of the Year’s Counselling

Tags

achievements, BFF2, blockage, counselling, crying, dreams, emotions, feelings, grieve, HAES, progress, tears

On Friday I am due to have my final session with my current counsellor. We’ve been working together for a year now. It will be a bit of a wrench but it is part of the process. I get my counselling from a training facility so I’ve always known that I’m not going to get  more than a year with a particular counsellor. It gives a good opportunity to review the year and see where I’m going.

It’s also hard to contemplate starting again, to have to explain why I am seeking counsellor to an assessor and to then start again explaining myself from scratch to a new counsellor. It does however stop me from getting into a rut as I can see how easy it would be to carry on with counselling for years when it feels comfortable. Each year I explain myself slightly differently and I usually hear the difference. One of the issues I raised for two years in a row is the fact that I can’t cry in my sessions, that I don’t/can’t/won’t open up emotionally.

I haven’t managed to cry this year. I’ve come close. I’ve had the occasional tear running down my cheek but I haven’t properly cried although I have fought back the tears.

I’ve struggled with this all year, recognising that although I want, theoretically, to open up, I wasn’t going to do it. It wasn’t about trusting my counsellor or anything to do with him per se, but more that I didn’t feel comfortable making myself so vulnerable in anyone’s presence. Part of what I’ve realised over the last week or so is that I’ve focused on moving forward, on having a plan and trying to look to the future, which also includes trying unsuccessfully to adopt HAES principles. While that is laudable, I haven’t stopped grieving over the past, feeling that I’ve missed out on my childhood and, as I wrote previously, that I’ve dumped my dream career as well. I am still trying to gloss over the pain that these losses cause me.

Although I’ve been aware that I find it difficult talking about my emotions, especially the darker ones, it wasn’t until this year that I really and truly realised how impossible I found talking about my feelings out loud. I was brought up to bury my emotions, to chin up and soldier on and I think one of the things I need to do is to simply stop. Stop trying to move forward and be positive and really think about how I feel about my perceived losses and to acknowledge those feelings. It’s not wallowing in self-pity which is what I feel it is. I haven’t really given myself the permission to be miserable. I have been talking about this with BFF2 who has a similar blockage and trying to explain it has really helped me understand what’s going on in my head as well.

What else have I achieved over the last year?

I have a visit from my mother arranged next month. Last year I would have said not to bother. We haven’t spent time alone together for a couple of years so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Acknowledging that I can’t do HAES on my own and need help (which may be on its way, yay! ) has also been difficult.

Writing this blog, which isn’t quite a year old is also a major achievement. Learning to at least try and express myself publicly, even if anonymously, is a huge step forward that I was almost about to forget to recognise. I am doing it for me rather than the readers out there but to those of you who have been reading me on a regular basis I send my thanks and hugs for your contribution and simply your presence. I am surprisingly not amazed that I’ve kept this going.

I have got better at recognising that I have needs and trying to meet them. Even though life seems a massive struggle at the moment I’m still trying to give myself time and to not worry about work and other trivia.

I’ve also this year lost for the first time a knee patch of psoriasis. Anyone who lives with it knows it goes up and down depending on stress so to actually lose a complete patch is a huge sign.

I am sleeping better, although recently I’ve lost that. Over the year I have experienced regular solid sleep for the first time in years which has been wonderful.

I have come to worry less. I’m not sure I’ve learned it, more that I’ve just got better at letting things go.

So, after having sat down not being able to think of any achievement, I’ve actually made progress. I shall no doubt come back from my session with a different list

Time To Come Off the Fence

Tags

anxiety, confrontation, fear, parents, protective bubble, tears

We discussed this whole question of my feeling torn in two directions in counselling.

On the one hand I’m feeling that I’m still in quite a nice place at the moment and I’d like to focus on staying here and feeling good, trying to drive that feeling forward into the future, with hope, joy and a positive disposition.

On the other hand I can’t ever be genuinely happy until I am at peace with myself and that involves digging up emotions I’d prefer to leave buried. We have done the superficial rational looking at my childhood, what happened, why it happened, why my parents are who they are and how all that has permeated my life beyond the obvious. That has been essential at clarifying why I feel the way that I do and also to stop me from feeling quite as responsible and guilty as I had been. I’m still not free of it but this focus has been a vital first step.

What is left is dealing with the emotional turmoil that resulted. This I find incredibly hard as I have been taught to bury all emotions, especially those that aren’t “nice”. By which I mean that it’s OK to get happy about something, but not to get cross. Either way, one shouldn’t get loud.

This goes some way to explaining why I don’t want to confront my parents and there is debate as to what exactly that means. Can I tell them how I feel without bursting their own protective bubble? I find this very difficult to answer. Am I saying no because it’s the truth or just because saying no is easier. Can I tell them how much I feel they’ve messed up my life without dissecting their own lives for them? I either need to find a way round this need I have have to protect them, either by shucking it off or by saying what I need to say about me rather than about them. And if I do burst their own protective bubble, then what’s the harm? It’d be painful, but at best they might learn something and at worse, well would I be any worse off than I am now?

The closer I get to thinking about trying to have some sort of honest conversation with my parents the more I dig my heels in and stall. I’m having to drag myself kicking and screaming into just thinking about and I really don’t know how I’m going to find the courage to say anything.

I’ve got better at complaining about the little things in life; those that are really inconsequential or not personal. I’ve got better at saying “I disagree with you and here’s why”. I’ve even managed to tell friends that they’ve upset me and not dissolve as I do it.

But it seems such a huge leap between that and having an honest conversation with my parents, either of them. I can’t see any smaller interim steps and I can’t see a way of having a small conversation with them.

On an emotional level I’m also just plain scared of bringing up all that frustration I feel when talking to them. I always end up feeling as if I’m put everything into nice simple over-explained phrases and they still don’t get it and then they turn it round to make it my fault. Then at the end they always say that they don’t really get what I’m trying to say.

I see three steps forward. One is to talk to 1sis about all this. I owe her a conversation or 6 anyway as I haven’t been in touch for a while. Second is to think back to those confrontations and try and revisit them, to bring back those emotions and experience them while in a safe place. Third is to actually focus on what I want/need/can say to them.

As a last comment, I shed one tear at counselling while discussing all this. I get closer to proper tears but am fighting that hard too. But one tear is actually progress.

The Loss of Hope

Tags

films, friends, future, happy, hope, perfect moment, tears

The last post left me feeling upbeat, that I’m doing something positive to make a difference, not just to my life but to that of my children. I said a while back to my eldest that if he doesn’t need therapy when he’s my age I’ll feel I’ve done a good job.

The opposite happens when I watch a soppy sentimental film, the kind I used to eschew as being beneath me although I’d watch the occasional one for just being fun. Now when I see our heroine having stumbled around in the dark, not seeing the hero standing in front of her or having whatever twists in the tale to deny her him; when she finally sees the inevitable light and it all ends happily ever after I cry.

Not with sappy tears of happiness, but with tears of misery, of jealousy and envy for that one perfect moment when you think life’s going to be happy ever after, even if it’s not true but for that one moment when you can believe in that possibility.

I suppose, thinking about it rather than just crying about it, that my parents denied me that hope that that one true moment could happen, let alone that it could last. While they told me I had to make plans, they didn’t tell me to dream and to chase it, but to be realistic and get what I want by planning and working hard.

But I want to cry when I see grandparents picking up their children, or whole families visiting a special assembly, or when families and friends get together for a celebration to have fun. When I see people together and they’re happy, it hurts. People being there for one another as my parents never were. And I wish I had that, just once.

This may sound over-dramatic, but when you’re crying in front of a film that isn’t that good, that certainly isn’t true and yet you still yearn to be that person and have that dream, even though you know it isn’t real but you want it anyway, well it’s a mess.

I’ve got to the point now where I can be with a group of friends, that I have enough to be called a group, that if I’m lonely or sad there’s someone to talk to, whether with sympathy or just to make me laugh. I’ve come such a long way in the last five years or so.

But that doesn’t stop me feeling that I’ve missed out and that I’m still missing out. I don’t look forward to the future because I still lack hope that tomorrow might well be a better day and the thought of ten years from now is just not somewhere I want to go.

I’m sure I’ll get there eventually, but in the meantime it’s a lonely place to be.

Isolation

Tags

alone, crying, emotions, fear, isolation, tears

“It’s a theme that keeps popping up” said my counsellor.

Yes indeed it is.

I felt isolated from my two sisters as the age gap (8+ years) was so enormous. I felt isolated from my father as he kept us at arms length. I felt isolated from my peers, first because they bullied me and then because I stopped having any idea of how to talk to them. I felt happier talking to adults but was aware I was talking a lie and didn’t want to be caught out (“What do you do for a living?”…) I felt isolated from my parents as they weren’t really listening to me. I felt that I had no-one to talk to about my relationships when they started to break down, that my partners weren’t listening and no-one else was. I felt alone in the evening with young children in the house and not being able to go out. I felt frequently, if not for most of my adult life, that there was no-one to call.

And of course, it becomes self-reinforcing. When I eventually had the conversation with a school friend in the sixth form, she asked why I was so stand-offish and reserved when I first came to the school. “I wasn’t”, I said, “just shit scared”. I had by then lost much of my confidence. I walked into a room full of people and felt unable to walk up and join in a conversation if not invited. When I started a new job or a new school I would have sleepless nights for several days beforehand as I worried over them. I dreamed of making prat falls or otherwise making a complete idiot of myself so I’d be totally humiliated. It wasn’t until I moved to Manchester and spent six months moving from one temp job to the next that I really conquered that fear and just got on with it. I still find meeting new people difficult but I’ve got better at not putting up such a cold front that no-one wants to talk to me.

The state and media are also factors I wouldn’t want to omit. The way that being a single parent and on benefits is cited as the root of all our problems, that we’re all layabouts who dump our children in school (if we can be bothered) and then lie on the sofa watching telly, content to never earn a penny again is an image frequently promoted. I hate being misunderstood and misrepresented. I hate the fact that I’m not considered economically productive if I’m not at work. The fact that I’m there for my children, that I have time and energy to spend talking to them and taking them out, bringing them up ‘properly’, these things seem not to count. And that is also isolating. And demeaning.

I bottled it all up. I learned to not cry in front of my partners so as to not show them how much they were hurting me. I used to cry a lot on my own, but somewhere along the road as an adult, I stopped even doing that. I hardly cry now at all. Sometimes I have a little cry when I’m writing this, but usually big tears only come when I’m watching a sappy sentimental film or the very rare book. I went to the (absolutely excellent) Tracey Emin exhibition at the Harvard gallery and I almost cried. I was moved to tears, but just not quite enough to cry. It’s not that I feel obsessed about tears, just that I’m capable of laughing, of expressing love to my children and friends, of hugging, all these happy things.

But the sad emotions, feeling unhappy, isolated, tearful, miserable, depressed; these stay locked in. I am, going back to the previous post, scared to release them. And I’m so scared to release them, that I really genuinely don’t know how any more.

Theatre

Tags

autobiographical, grief, loss, tears, theatre

When I started school full time, my mother started performing and helping out in the local drama group. Her father was an English teacher who put on school productions and her mother loved the theatre. So it was no surprise that my mother wanted to spend some of her free time acting.

I remember her best and most distantly back as Mrs Noah, in an open air production at Hampstead which described the relationship between her and Noah, along with their sons on the ark. I can’t remember much more than that but it did touch me. Partly she was acting a mother, a role I knew her well in, but also for the first time I was seeing her as someone else, someone other than my mother. She was in a different role. And that caught my imagination.

She led me in to drama and I willingly followed with my début role being the dormouse in Alice and Wonderland, with one line to say. At the tender age of 6 or 7 I enjoyed the attention and the warmth of belonging.

When we moved abroad my mother and I went to numerous plays of varying quality. Since there was no professional English drama, it was all done by various amateur companies and we started to participate. My mother started looking after the mailing list for one of them and we both joined in the annual pantomime where I joined in with the chorus, not wishing or hoping for a bigger part until the last year where I finally got the courage to audition but never got a call back as I had failed to fill in the relevant piece of paper.

The delights of special effects that are mandatory in a pantomime had got me genuinely interested in how things happened. I was also aware that while the actors were in charge on stage in front of an audience, as soon as they became invisible to the audience the stage crew were in charge, whether in helping them to do a quick change or getting them out of the way for a set change, the actors became chess pieces to be moved about. In a good company of course, all elements of a production appreciate and value each person’s role and for several years with much the same people doing pantomime I had felt that we were a community, that we were all in it together and that we were all component pieces.

It was also the first time someone told me he loved me. He would have been 40,50-something. He was the only native in the company and he used to do the special act before the finale that gave everyone time to change into finale costume. We were dancing at the time. My mother was stood watching us quite happily. We used to talk a lot; there weren’t many of us who spoke fluent French and I think we both felt a little remote from the centre of activity.

I was occasionally asked what I did for a living. My mother never felt the need to point out to anyone that I was only 11 or 12 and I certainly wasn’t going to. I enjoyed it at the time but I look back and wonder what was going through her head.

By the time I first auditioned however I had moved to my third secondary school with its own theatre and had also drifted towards the technical side of things. I think I would have gone there anyway but I wonder what would have happened if my first and last audition hadn’t just got lost. I stage managed my first show, and had my first kiss at a cast party afterwards and realised this was what I wanted to do – the stage management, not the kiss (although that was quite nice…) I was high on the adrenaline and tension, and on the feeling of responsibility, that it was my job to make sure the show went ahead, that problems were resolved. I was also aware that if I did my job perfectly, and everyone else did theirs that I would be invisible.

We then returned to London and I was lucky enough to be able to pick a school which had its own theatre, that was also the same school that my maternal grandmother had been to. I auditioned for the first play, but in a strange place feeling alone I made a mess of it and that was the last time I tried acting.

I developed a wonderful relationship with one of the drama teachers and did productions permanently all through my four years there. We worked very well together and I’m grateful for all the support and encouragement she gave me. I still treasure the ear rings that were a post production present. By the time I was in my last year my peers didn’t feel they knew me well enough to ask me to help with the sixth form play that was an annual event so I was left out which disappointed me but hardly surprised me.

And so I went to college to learn Stage Management and Design. I had liked the informality of the college and had chosen it above several others, but without really discussing the choice with my parents. My father was dead against it although agreed to support me financially on a minimal basis while I went. I’ve talked elsewhere about my college life.

I did find it a bit difficult that many other students had professional practical experience but didn’t really feel that put me too far behind. What I found difficult was that in the two terms I was there we did about one hour of stage management with set design being the main component rather than on the side. I wanted to learn the basic principles of design but most of the time seem to be spent making finnicky models of our set rather than in discussing how to design them in the first place. I was frustrated, especially at the end of the first term when the principal said I would have to redo my model as it wasn’t good enough. Not that I was disagreeing with him; I just wasn’t bothered. The whole course was slapdash and disorganised and the building was a shambles. I learned hardly anything while I was there.

Some of the students augmented their living by being follow spot operators in the West End and the rumours came round that some West End theatres would not employ anyone from the college and by the end of the first term they all had said they wouldn’t. Whether true or not it was difficult to deal with.At the start of the second term I tried to talk to the principal about my concerns so I could hand in my notice if unresolved, not being the first to leave, but he kept postponing and eventually I just left, along with my newly unemployed fiance who had been fired for questioning the state of the college and no doubt for too much drinking.

I went there with an eight year old dream; not only had I found a career and vocation but also something that would show my independence to my parents, that would show them that I could make an independent decision and carry it through successfully. I walked out having lost all my confidence in my ability to do anything in the theatre. Apart from a tour with my partner straight after I did no more work in the theatre, and even abandoned going to see plays for the best part of twenty years after.

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve started going again, mainly because my children are old enough to. At first just walking into a theatre auditorium made me want to cry, bringing back all those unacknowledged feelings of loss, but I still went. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to take a role again though but at least I’m walking through the doors.

My love for the theatre is not something I talk about. I don’t want to have to explain it. My family never mentioned it. My college time has been expunged from my CV as potential employers asked me what that was all about and its lack of relevance to whatever I was applying for. With parental support I might have picked up the pieces and gone to a different college but as it was, shit college and what turned out to be shit husband  pretty much did for me.

This post is dedicated to my good friend Themepark who is showing the courage I never had to at least try to follow his dreams.

My Counselling Journey

Tags

counselling, digging, journey, liberating, map, tears

I was talking to BFF2 today who is starting his own journey into counselling and was trying to explain my own journey.

I know enough to know that I want to be a happier person but I’m hazy on the details of how to get there or what I need to achieve on the way. I know I need to like myself more, to have more confidence in myself, to be able to walk tall. But I don’t know how.

The first step, as in with an addiction and probably many mental health issues is to acknowledge it; to say I have a problem and I want help to find a solution. I did that, about four years ago.

The second step is to find help. For me I was lucky in that BFF1 was way ahead of me and had found a wonderfully safe, comfortable and affordable place to go so off I went.

After that it’s a lot less clear. I spent over a year focusing on my childhood, talking it out and discussing the whys and wherefores of my parents’ actions, understanding them but also looking at what that meant for me. What I did was very much mapping it out, rationalising it, intellectualising it, unravelling it. This was and is very important but it was only the first stage.

The following year we looked more at how I felt. I stated at the beginning of that year that I wanted to be able to cry in my sessions because I hadn’t reached that point and felt I needed to. We started talking about how I felt about stuff rather than understanding them. It was thinking about not why my father said something, but how that something made me feel. This was harder but it also felt warm and fuzzy. I wonder now whether my counsellor could have pushed me more but I also think I needed to start to explore how I feel quite gently. I felt I was in a very safe place and that was also important. I had my first dip into Intuitive Eating and for me my most mammoth achievement that year was to enjoy my birthday and celebrate it well for possibly the first time ever.

The year after is the current (academic) year that I’m in. I have a male counsellor for the first time and that’s different. I should point out that I’m at a training institute so I get a new counsellor each year; I’m not chopping them into tiny pieces. I’ll need to have another male counsellor to work out whether it’s him being different or his gender.

I am starting to understand how much my childhood had affected me in the long term. Not the superficial, but still important, understandings such as bullying making me feel lonely and isolated but understanding how that permeated through my life in far more ways than I had thought possible. I need to feel it all the way down, not just in my head or in my heart, but down to my toes.

I had thought I understood what was going on in my head, that I had a fair understanding of my childhood and what it meant. I am realising that I’ve only scratched the surface of what it meant and continues to mean. I need to dig deeper still.

I also feel I haven’t talked enough about my adult years. I haven’t forgiven myself for them, for all the might haves / could haves / should haves that I didn’t have. I haven’t talked about those years I don’t want to talk about. I stopped writing the auto-biographical posts when I reached that point in time. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to feel those emotions. I don’t want to bring them up again and discuss them in counselling and to let those emotions out.

My counsellor is pushing me, asking me questions I can’t answer. I’m having to dig deeper, to the point where I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how I feel and I don’t know where I’m going. And that’s hugely frustrating. I’m feeling lost. I no longer have a plan; a list to tick off. I know where I want to be but not how to get there.

And maybe that’s the next stage. Not being sure of where the future lies and instead having to grope towards it in the dark. There is no map. Counselling is not linear. I was brought up on 5 and 10 year plans, with milestones to be ticked off and achievements noted. I need to accept, feel and acknowledge that there is no map, that what happens in sessions happens, that the dice fall where they may and that, in turn, is part of the journey. I also have the sneaking suspicion that once I can get my head round this, the idea of not having a map is going to be enormously liberating.

I still haven’t cried in counselling.

The note I wrote myself at the end of my last session said “liberating myself from having a plan; throwing away the map”. Coincidence?

Comfortably Numb

Tags

2son, ASD, camhs, mental, tears

Well it’s Thursday. I’ve calmed down a bit.

I had meeting on Tuesday regarding 2son. thera from CAMHS was unable to come but teach did. I felt a bit sorry for her as she was explaining CAMHS’ position which was under severe attack even though she wasn’t.

It was good to hear other people saying “why haven’t you…?” The situation is fraught with complexity. CAMHS can’t put things in place as 2son hasn’t been diagnosed. What happens if he won’t go to ASD assessment or talk to anyone? Home visit has been booked for the end of April, for a “mental health review” as it is laughingly called. We had one of those that lasted 10 minutes a year ago. CAMHS’ definition of mental health issue is clinical depression or above, so anything less than that doesn’t qualify for help or diagnosis. So hopefully by the end of April we will have both mental health ‘review’ and ASD diagnosis and can then make decisions based on that. But if he’s either not severe enough or doesn’t co-operate then there will be no diagnosis and no progress.

It all goes round and round in my head.

Anyway, the nice lady from Education Welfare brought her boss as she had more clout and at this stage more clout is needed. Big boss made two immediate suggestions, while asking lots of questions: that she would come and talk to 2son and explain consequences of him doing nothing, in terms of possible legal action against me and further consequences, in other words to threaten him and also that she would come and take us to the ASD assessment to make sure that he went. We talked about psychological advice, that we had an Educational Psychologist (EP) last year who 2son refused to see but who talked through strategies with me. I need that again, even if it’s by phone once a month it would be better than nothing.

By the end of the meeting I started to cry, which in many ways was good. I also spoke of the fear at the back of my mind that one day I really wouldn’t be able to cope any longer and would have to give up 2son to foster care so that I didn’t bugger up the other two any more than they were already suffering.

So we actually had quite a good, and long meeting and I said lots of things I possibly wouldn’t have said had I not already been quite so stressed out from my father. It was quite cathartic. What exactly will be achieved I do not know but at least I feel that I’m not the only person appalled by the lack of progress.

As to my family, I hung up on my sister on Monday and Tuesday, and left a message in response to her message on Wednesday where I said to just stop trying with my parents as I could do without the heart ache. One last thing I might try, when they come back from their cruise is my BFF1 suggested giving them a ring and talking to them without the emotional undertones that any conversation I have with them has. The other useful suggestion made by BFF2 was to hire a carer for 2son and go on holiday without him. I don’t know how appropriate / easy / expensive it is to pay for that sort of thing, or indeed whether social services would go mental at the suggestion but it’s worth exploring.

I have moved from feeling bereaved to feeling numb. I have taken the week off work as I have tried and failed to do anything constructive in that line. I am feeling the pressure of work piling up and I haven’t check my credit card bill which can’t be put off much longer. All these things are adding up but I have tried to relax and let things go, although that’s mainly because my brain just simply won’t function. Also I’ve had 3son off for 2 days as he hurt his feet and couldn’t walk.

I am feeling all over the place but am trying to go with the flow. Learning how not to worry is not something I’ve achieved yet.

 

 

And the Rest Of It

Tags

angry, frustration, narrative, tears, whinge

On Friday, 1sis phones up to ask whether she can take 3son and 4son out on Sunday, to a protest party at Victoria. I say of course you can and thank you.

So we have a bit of a chat on Sunday when I asked her about throwing tantrums as a teenager. I’m not clock watching. So they run out to get the one train an hour as it’s Sunday and she rings me up from stations, “where’s the child ticket on the machine… oh look we’re about to miss the train” I tell her to go for the train but she misses it and then comes back to me so I tell her how to get there on the bus. Off they go, with 5 minutes to get there.

I go for a bath, relax, and don’t quite manage to have a sleep before they come back.

They missed most of it but are quite happy. I’m still shattered and cook them a minimal dinner. With my current inability to sleep, Sunday is the one lie in I get and I try and compound that by going to bed early, 7 or 8pm, not to sleep then but to settle down. I say half a dozen times that I’d like to go to bed but she doesn’t leave. I feel awkward about asking her directly as I did that a few visits ago and she didn’t like me saying “I’m tired. I want to go to bed. Thank you for coming but please go”. I eventually give up and go to bed and she comes and sits with me and talks, but I really struggle to say anything. I have already said that I really appreciate her coming and taking the boys out and that I’m very grateful.

We go back to talking about summer holiday and she thinks that I’ve suggested that she looks after 2son for the fortnight which agitates her as she couldn’t. I know she couldn’t which is why I didn’t suggest it and say that several times. She walks out without saying goodbye to anyone; I go back to bed.

Monday morning I get up early, take my children to breakfast club and go to my GP to get blood results to take to a routine hospital visit. There’s a problem with my blood test and I need to speak to a GP so can’t find out what’s wrong (is it the results, is it the test, don’t know). So I go to the hospital (bus, tube, walk) and get to the pharmacy just as it opens to pick up my prescription that I need for my appointment. “We can’t fill this,” I am told, “it’s over six months old”. “I know it is, my appointments are six monthly and this one got postponed”. “Well you’ll have to go and get another prescription and come back”. At this point I am not in a good mood. I go for my appointment and the receptionist can’t find me on the computer. I am about to explode when he timidly points out that my appointment is next Monday. I say thank you very much, in total agreement and flee the building as I fight the tears.

On the way home (walk, tube, bus) I decide to get on the Wii when I get home and expend some of that anger in exercise as otherwise I won’t be able to settle down to anything anyway. I’ve literally just started when my father rings.

I have that phone call of the previous post. I sit down and start crying and think, no, let’s get back to the Wii. Pick it up and the phone rings again. I consider not answering it but I do. My sister starts “When I come round, I need to feel that my visits are appreciated…” I interrupt, tell her that I’ve just had 20 minutes of my father and can’t cope with her as well and hang up.

Then the tears explode. Luckily my BFF1 is free and she comes round and we go out for lunch and a green stroll in the temporary but much appreciated sunshine.

I go to pick up 4son from school, appreciating that 3son is visiting a friend, get a takeaway and veg out in front of the television for a while and start to calm down. When I get to 4son to collect him, he’s jumped off something too high and has hurt his feet so it takes us half an hour for a five minute walk as he is in pain and I can’t carry him.

I stick him in the bath and foolishly check my email and read my father’s message and flood again. I watched a bit of television in bed and stay awake for hours; I return to what I did as a child which I gave up when I had babies, which is music and earphones. It does help and sometime after 1am I finally sleep fitfully.

My sister phoned me up halfway through this whinge thinking I was upset over hospital appointment and I summarised phone call with my father and she starts to talk through it, but I really can’t cope with it and tell her that I feel let down by all the various social services and by my family as well and hang up. Again.

This is a “dumping” post: no analysis, just a narrative to get it off my chest. I’m now off to big meeting about 2son and I just hope that everybody turns up, for starters.

 

 

I Feel Bereaved

Tags

angry, despair, holiday, permission, stand alone, tears

As I mentioned previously I’ve started trying to persuade my parents that they need to be my backup plan so that I can have a holiday this Summer with 3son and 4son even if 2son announces on the morning that he won’t go.

Well my father had a think about it and rang me yesterday to discuss it. He was querying me on what exactly I meant, what the plan was, what the details were and why couldn’t 1sis look after him for a fortnight. “Because she couldn’t manage a weekend” was my reply.

My parents are busy people, so he told me, they have plans and holidays and can’t really drop everything at a moment’s notice to come and help me. I pointed out that this is why I was discussing it now, so there was time to think about it.

If 2son wasn’t going to come on holiday, he might not leave the house and his grandparents might not be able to take him back to their home. When my father finally got the concept that my parents might have to look after 2son in our home, he went silent. “We’ll have to think about that”. He also went silent when he said I would be getting some money from my grandmother’s death (to spend on the holiday that I can’t have) and I said that I really didn’t give a stuff.

I sat down and cried. I knew what that meant. In the nineteen years since I first gave birth, I have had 6 nights away from my children. Most of my holidays have been with my parents, both to give me some support and them the chance to spend time with their grandchildren. Two Summers ago I had my first proper holiday alone with my children and there was a great deal of freedom in not having to consider any other adults, but a good deal of stress too, in trying to keep children happy in an unfamiliar environment on a budget.

Last Summer we didn’t go away. Whatever 2son said, I wouldn’t know whether he was going to come away with us until the morning and I can’t risk booking a holiday on him not coming. He said he was coming to his great-grandmother’s funeral, giving me cogent reasons why he should and then just curled up in bed and refused to move. I have been stuck with him at home for the last year other than a brief time in November when he started to go to school for a single lesson and the occasional evenings when he went round to his best friend. His brothers are becoming increasingly bad-tempered and less co-operative towards and tolerant of one another and stresses and strains are growing all round. I’m lucky that I’m able to work from home otherwise I really have no idea how I would cope.

We all need a holiday. 3son and 4son need a holiday (and shouldn’t be denied one because of their brother’s behaviour) and to get away from the house. 2son could do with a change of environment. I could do with a break from everything and a night or two isn’t enough to let me relax. So after six months of discussion my parents are taking away 3son and 4son for 2 nights in April. Operation Happy Child are taking them away for 2 nights in May, with considerably less planning.

Yesterday evening came the email from my father, telling me off for taking it for granted that they would help me have a decent holiday when of course they couldn’t. How could I possibly be so foolish to think it. Telling me they’re too old for babysitting when they’re about to go off on a two week cruise and regularly go away on quite demanding holidays leaves me unconvinced. If my children were a few years younger than the physical demands would be greater but seeing as 2son is happy to spend the day in bed, it needn’t be an issue.

What my father is really saying is that while he says he is willing to help, that help is only on offer if it’s his plan, his rules and I do it all his way so as to not inconvenience him. They have their own life to lead and they are not willing to sacrifice a week or two of it to look after their grandson directly and their daughter indirectly and certainly not if they can’t do it in their home.

I have to decide how to respond to this. One of the issues I’ve been discussing in counselling over the past few years is to what extent do I need to tell or explain to my parents how they make me feel, both from childhood but also now. Part of my frustration is that when I try I either get blanked or dismissed or asked so many stupid questions that I can’t cope and the emotional turmoil is too huge for the limited or non-existent return. Have I tried enough to communicate with them over the years or have I given up on them too early? Not getting any return means I don’t try and there’s your vicious feedback. On the other hand of course I need to move on with my life and accept my parents with their limitations and stop worrying about whether they understand me or not.

What I feel, and I’m not going to make any hasty decisions, is that they’ve cut me off emotionally and that by making it so clear cut, they’ve given me the permission to say I’m not going to try any more.

At the close of the day, and I have talked about all of it, I read this post and thought that maybe my day hadn’t been so bad after all.