Author Archives: mumonthenetheredge

Appliance Paranoia

28 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, mental health

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There are certain Signs I can look out for that tell me that I am Not Okay. 

One of them is hypochondria. 

So far this week I’ve had a suspected DVT (my leg hurt a bit), a brain tumour (headache) and that thing where you can’t ever go to sleep and your body shuts down entirely through exhaustion and madness and you eventually die horribly, that I once saw on an episode of Poirot, (although it may have been worrying about this possibility that was stopping me from sleeping in the first place).

Clearly, the only person suspecting these things is me. And I do KNOW it’s one of my Signs… 

But. 

It still feels real late at night, when my Anxiety is most active. 

Another of my Signs is Appliance Paranoia. 

This is when I decide various household objects – mostly electrical – are trying to kill me. 

So here’s a list of some of them and how my Anxiety currently rates them on a random Scale of Danger I don’t pretend to understand.

  1. Phone charger by my bed

ANXIETY VERDIT: Completely harmless. 

It stays plugged in 24/7, often ends up covered in pyjamas and old bed socks, and is in use nightly less than a foot away from my head while I’m comatose.

  1. Every other phone charger in the house

ANXIETY VERDICT: Deadly.

They must be physically unplugged and isolated on a hard surface 2 feet away from all flammable materials or they will MURDER EVERYONE. 

  1. Laptop charger

ANXIETY VERDICT: Okay in the day, and whenever I leave the house. Highly dangerous after 10pm. 

Although this one can just be turned off on the wall without being unplugged…

  1. Monitor

ANXIETY VERDICT: Completely benign. No action needed. 

  1. Toaster

ANXIETY VERDICT: HOMICIDAL.

Must be unplugged after use because of EXTREMELY HIGH RISK OF SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION. 

(Although to be fair to me, this one is based in some amount of reality as the heating element is gone, and you can’t put in a second round of toast immediately after the first without it smoking and setting the fire alarm off. 

I should probably buy a new one, but strangely I would rather just worry about this one, because…. Okay I don’t know why).  

  1. Dishwasher

ANXIETY VERDICT: Untrustworthy.

Must never be left on overnight. You have to wait up for it to finish and cool down, or not put it on until morning. 

Although apparently it’s fine to put it on and leave the house to burn down without you there to do anything about it…

Look, I don’t make the rules. I just have to follow them. 

  1. Fridge/Freezer

ANXIETY VERDICT: Benign.

Apart from the fact there’s an intermittent sour milk smell that I keep trying to clean away but keeps coming back and I should really get to the bottom of, but I’m choosing to ignore by dint of not breathing when I open the door. 

(This is exactly the sort of escalating situation Future Me is going to want to kick Past Me’s ass over, but as Present Me adjudicator I’m going with a LaLaLaLa can’t hear [or smell] approach).

  1. Oven

ANXIETY VERDICT: Shady as F. Needs supervision.

Must be checked carefully at night time to make sure it’s off. 

But you didn’t check properly, so get up again after you’ve finally got into bed and tried to sleep for at least ten minutes, and then go back downstairs to check it. 

Repeat as required. 

  1. Induction Hob 

ANXIETY VERDICT: Friendly but stupid.

Randomly beeps a warning and stops working whenever it feels it’s been misused, eg by having the temerity to clean it, adding or removing a pan, or getting the slightest moisture on it. Can therefore probably can be relied upon to short out before attempting to kill anyone. 50 bonus points/smiley face.

Although, come to think of it, you might as well check it when you check on the oven… 

  1. Toothbrush charger

ANXIETY VERDICT: No.

Makes a very loud buzzing noise when it’s on which is clearly a sign of IMMINENT AND HORRIBLE DEATH. 

Can be used, but only during the day and must be unplugged if you leave the house.

  1. Fire alarm

ANXIETY VERDICT: THESE ARE TRICKING YOU INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY.

They therefore need checking, preferably late at night when you’re very tired and everyone else is asleep, because YOU NEVER KNOW. 

  1. Boiler

ANXIETY VERDICT: Evil, but too mysterious to interfere with. Requires Ongoing Worry. 

All boilers are inherently malevolent and have nefarious intentions: FACT. You must therefore vacillate between completely forgetting you have one and being mortally afraid it will slowly poison you all in your beds. 

(I learned boilers were evil at a young age from the boiler that used to [intermittently] head my childhood home. I don’t know what was wrong with it, but it involved by parents spending a lot of time ‘relighting the pilot’ and shouting at each other). 

I’m told (by my Anxiety) that the best way to keep fears of carbon monoxide fresh is to read internet horror stories about them obsessively. (I also like to do this in the summer, when boiler use recedes, with Secondary Drowning. [Fun Project! Look this up to add to your own list of Anxieties!]) 

You must also regularly grow to mistrust the alarms you buy to monitor CO, buy more, randomly insist on ventilation at inconvenient times, and lose all documentation about when your boiler is due a service – and then worry about that as well. 

  1. Christmas lights

ANXIETY VERDICT: Festive vipers. Extreme caution required.

We decorated for Christmas last weekend, because a bit of sparkle and twinkle is frankly what we ALL need right now. (Even if Past Me left the lights in a MAHOOSIVE knot. B Hitch). 

(I also find Christmas lights are another good indicator of how Okay I am. If it gets to the point where you can’t be arsed to put on the Christmas lights you know you are dead to joy and require an intervention. Seek help immediately.)

 However, my Anxiety says they also want to kill me. Even the LED ones… 

Must be switched off at the wall if not under direct observation. Also check to see if they’re getting hot every couple of hours. 

  1. Lamps

ANXIETY VERDICT: Mixed risk.

I don’t like my overhead lights, but instead of replacing the lightbulbs for something yellow and cosy I’ve chosen to invest in a series of lamps to create ‘mood lighting’ instead. It now takes me a good 2-4 minutes to actually illuminate my living room which is super-duper convenient, obvs. 

Most of these lamps are apparently fine, but my Anxiety has taken against one, which must be switched off and unplugged at the wall, involving yoga-esq bending over and grappling behind furniture, usually accidentally switching the wifi off as it’s where the router is plugged in, too. 

  1. Router/TV boxes/phone/Smart speaker/DVD player/Ancient Wii

ANXIETY VERDICT: Chill out dude, it’s all fine. 

Despite the fact these are all plugged in via a complex system of extension leads with curtains on top of them. 

I will repeat: I DON’T MAKE THE RULES HERE. 

  1. Washing machine/kettle/other

ANXIETY VERDICT: Don’t care. 

Please let me know if any household objects are out to get you, too. 

And if you’ve got your Christmas lights up. 

AND, more importantly, if you are otherwise #Okay or #NotOkay right now…

Please also share this, because it’s very lonely coping with shady ovens and nefarious boilers all by yourself, and if this gets to someone else with Appliance Paranoia or a similar condition, it may just help them. 

And maybe by laughing at it during the day we can rob it of some of its power at night time. 

Lots of love. 

XXXXXxxxxx

A shell of an adult

28 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by in mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

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There are some days when I feel like an absolute shell of an adult. 

I’m afraid of my post, my bank account, and of answering the phone. I can barely dress myself properly, or look after myself in terms of anything but the most rudimentary grooming. I can’t remember birthdays, addresses, diary dates or passwords. I can’t remember to put the bloody bins out without the help of my neighbours, who regularly just do it for me. I don’t know where my pension is. I avoid housework. I don’t know what APR means, or how much tax I pay. I can’t do small talk. I’ve got no idea when my car insurance is due. Unfairness undoes me, and my emotional regulation is often sketchy, to say the least. Written instructions, flat pack furniture and deadlines are my kryptonite. My mum and dad still lend me money. I still have spots, and I still have dreams about flying, and falling. 

Basically, on the inside, I’m still 9. 

And I feel like I’m masquerading in the roles of mother, employee and girlfriend, in some sort of Freaky Friday or Big type mix-up, and that somebody somewhere is someday going to finally notice that I’m an imposter merely PRETENDING to adult. 

Badly. 

But then a friend pointed out to me the other day that I’m actually doing it okay, overall. You know, in the grand scheme. That I’m functioning ENOUGH. 

That being afraid and incompetent and failing often AND CARRYING ON ANYWAY is, in fact, a pretty good definition of being an adult. 

(That and enjoying cleaning out the filter of a tumble dryer…)

Here are some of the things I need to remember I HAVE achieved as an adult. Alternative Life Skills…

I’ve created a warm, cosy and welcoming home. I am the hearth for two beautiful children, who feel loved and listened to, and empowered to be themselves. I’ve set boundaries on what I’ll accept from people, and what I won’t. I’ve addressed conflict when I’ve wanted to run away from it. I’ve picked myself up, and carried on. I’ve made fun and good times out of nothing. I’ve said sorry when I’ve been wrong. I’ve said thank you when I’ve been grateful. I’ve built friendships and networks that support me, and I’ve supported them back. I’ve found my voice, and used it. I’ve managed my feelings, and other people’s. I’ve retained, in my dreams, what it feels like to fly, and what it feels like to fall. 

If I am a shell, I am also the sea you can hear when you put it to your ear, and listen. 

I may never be a practical person. I may never be on top of my finances, or my correspondence, or the washing. 

But maybe those aren’t the most important things about being a grown-up, after all. 

I am being the adult I am as hard as I can. 

Now I just have to remember who insures my car and find the paperwork for it…

Sometimes it’s abuse

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Motherhood, Parenting

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So we’re about to lockdown again, and that’s going to be harder for some people than others…

One thing I didn’t lapse into – or miss when it ground to a halt – was soaps. I don’t watch soaps.

I was cured at a relatively early age when a lovely friend going through a hard time came to live with me and used them as her safety zone. So every night from 5.30 we’d watch Neighbours, Home and Away, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Corrie and Eastenders. In a row. And when she left I never watched a soap again.

But I HAVE recently been following the storylines about coercive control.

It’s great to see understanding about domestic abuse as more than violence hit the mainstream in the stories of Geoff and Yasmeen (Corrie) and Gray and Chantelle (Eastenders).

But I’m still sort of disappointed that it’s still all so EXTREME.

Because often this sort of abuse isn’t massive explosions or incidents. It’s insidious microaggressions and neglect and contempt and degradation that build up over time in a drip drip effect, drowning you as slowly and surely as a tidal wave. Just… invisibly. So any one thing witnessed by others looks insignificant. Normal. It doesn’t show the full picture, the history, the DAMAGE. And you don’t notice it yourself.

Why does the frog stay in the pot? Because it doesn’t know it’s boiling…

It’s the same with the legislation for coercive control that came in in 2015. It’s a great step forwards, but it’s still hard to identify – or prosecute – unless the circumstances are pretty damn extreme. There has to be evidence of repeated threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse used to harm, punish, frighten, exploit or isolate someone.

And it’s not always that clear cut. It’s not always that CLEAR. That’s partly what makes it so effective, and so pervasive.

Financial abuse isn’t always as obvious as cutting up someone’s credit card or taking control of their accounts.

Sometimes it’s managing ‘the bills’ or the joint account because ‘you’re not very good with money.’ It’s taken on as a favour, not to worry your pretty little head about – another household chore while you clean the bathrooms. And the kitchen. And do the hoovering. And the washing. Sometimes it’s having to beg for household expenditures – and having to be infinitely grateful for them. Sometimes it’s making you feel grateful when they bail you out from overspending the money you have been granted, while they’re still buying cars and new clothes and shiny gadgets. Because they earned it. They worked hard for it. They deserved a treat.

Sexual abuse within relationships isn’t always being pinned down and penetrated while you’re crying and saying no.

Sometimes it’s doing it when you don’t want to, when you’re tired, when you’re so dry it’s actually hurting you, but the discomfort is better than the names you’ll be called if you don’t, what’s wrong with you? are you frigid now? I’ve got needs you know, you’re killing me, other people are having more sex than us, if you loved me you’d do it. Sometimes it’s easier to do it and take the hit for the team, for the family, so you can have a nice day, so they’ll join in with you and go out and follow your plans for the day and not sulk, and slam and stomp and put a black cloud over everything until you do what they want anyway, for the peace. Sometimes it’s living under test conditions about how much ‘affection’ you’re showing to get something you want. A holiday. A night out. A baby.

Sometimes isolation isn’t about stopping you from seeing your friends and family.

Sometimes it’s coming away from friends with them slagging everyone off and being expected to agree, or having your own behaviour analysed – you teased them, you let your parents tease them, you didn’t stand up for them. Until it’s easier not to see some people at all – the people that cause the arguments. So you don’t have to face that swing of mood when you get back in the car, when they feel they have been disrespected, when the smiles for the crowd turn to accusations.

Sometimes control isn’t about taking your phone and tracking your email, or your whereabouts.

Sometimes it’s just sulking if you’re going out. Sometimes it’s getting ill on all your big events and complaining you’re not being sympathetic enough. Sometimes it’s flattery through jealousy, are you sure you don’t fancy so-and-so? I’m just checking, you don’t dress like that for me. So you WANT to reassure, you want to come home early to check on them – you feel guilty – or even lucky they love you that much.

Sometimes humiliation isn’t shouting insults at you as you cower in a corner.

Sometimes it’s telling you they don’t like your haircut, because it’s not feminine, and they’re just being honest. Sometimes it’s telling you you look classier when you’re not showing so much boob. Sometimes it’s you coming away from a night out together high on life and friends to be told to bring it down a notch, you were being too much, people were staring, people were laughing at you. Sometimes it’s hearing about a work day and telling you that you did it all wrong. Or that you’re doing the household chores wrong, or dealing with the kids wrong, that their mother or their friend or their ex used to do/does X or Y and why can’t you do it like that? Why aren’t you better? Why aren’t you coping?

Sometimes it’s telling you that you never follow through, that you’re not meeting your potential, that they’re only trying to help you by saying so. Sometimes it’s taking the mickey when you cry at a film, when you pronounce something wrong – and then they tell other people all about it, just for a laugh, can’t you take a joke? Sometimes it’s being told that the emotion you’re having is wrong, why are you like this? you’re overreacting, you’re a psycho, I’m not dealing with you when you’re like this, I’m going out.

Sometimes it’s when they show more compassion and empathy for friends or strangers than for you, and they will rush to someone’s aid, and leave you in pain – but to say so is you being selfish. Or stupid. Or jealous. Or mad.

And somehow, by now, you believe it.

Sometimes it’s not all the time.

Sometimes there are good days. Sometimes they’re in a good mood. Sometimes they buy you expensive presents. Sometimes they join in and you think you imagined it. That you ARE a good couple, a good family, after all. Sometimes they praise you on social media, and you take it, even though they never said the same thing to your face… Sometimes you actually bring them up on something awful they’ve done or said, and they even apologise. It was a ‘bad call’. And sometimes you believe them, because you want to, because you remember that love bombing stage when you were on a pedestal, when you could do no wrong, when you were wonderful and beautiful, and the memory and tiny tastes of that are just enough to keep you going.

Sometimes it’s not even deliberate.

Sometimes it’s not a campaign of dominance, plotted with purpose by someone evil. Sometimes it’s someone ordinary. Sometimes it’s thwarted expectations. Sometimes it just… develops.

Even more often than ‘sometimes’, human beings are the meanest to those who mean the most, and they grow to hate what they once loved. The two are so close they just blur and one just – tips – into the other – without you even realising it.

I have written this ‘you’. These are stories I have collated, from women on this page. Women like you. Because as we head into a second lockdown without even the good weather to escape into, I want YOU to think if any of this sounds or feels familiar.

Because if it does, I want you to know that it IS abuse.

It does not have to be dramatic. It just needs to be consistent.

And YOU just need the strength, and the evidence, to acknowledge it. Not evidence for a court – evidence for YOURSELF. Because it’s so very, very hard to spot it when you’re sitting in the pot like a frog.

It’s so very hard to believe YOU when you’re low, and tired, and alone.

It’s so very hard to believe YOU when everyone else sees you happy together, or sees your partner cheerful, and helpful, and kind. When even the people who DO see think it’s okay – because you clearly aren’t making them happy.

So if your phone is your own and it’s safe to do so, please start taking notes. If you do nothing else having read and responded to this, just write it down. What is said. When. How. And how it makes you feel.

It really is the only way to combat the amnesia of abuse that’s built into it.

You may look back on your notes as a diary of petty arguments, and laugh at yourself. Or you may look back on it as a pattern of escalating toxicity and SEE.

Seeing is believing. And believing is the first step out.

If this is someone you know, please share this article. Please keep being there even when they’re evasive.

Please tread carefully – because a direct assault on their abuser will only make them retreat further into what’s been made to feel ‘safe’ – and what isn’t safe at all.

Please keep their ‘diary’ in your safe keeping, saving the snippets they do share or you witness, so when they’re ready to see it, you can show them.

xxxx

National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000247

Women’s Aid

Refuge

Respect Men’s Advice Line0808 8010 327

#TiredbyDefault

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in mental health, Motherhood

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I’m tired.

Tired is my default setting, really.

Sometimes it’s very difficult to work out what I’m feeling underneath feeling tired, because tired is the heavy veil over everything else. It slows my movements and my thinking.

I’m tired by default.

And so are lots of women.

Women, you see, are more likely than men to be the ‘default’ parent. And that’s been especially true during the last six months of the pandemic.

Not only are women one and a half times more likely to have lost their job than men, but they’ve been spending more time juggling household responsibilities. Mothers combined paid work with other activities – usually childcare – for 47% of their pandemic working hours, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Men juggled for 30% of them.

Meanwhile, researchers from the University of Sussex found 70% of mothers were completely or mostly responsible for home schooling during lockdown. Even now the schools are back, women are still the ones most likely to be taking the childcare and work hit, and will continue to do so during this long, looming winter of local lockdowns, tiers, and random isolations.

67% of working women feel like the ‘default’ parent all the time.

And being the default parent is TIRING.

Being the default parent means your kids will walk past your partner to ask you for a snack.

It means if you’re both on the phone for work, they’ll pick you to interrupt.

It means you’re the one being called to wipe the bums and mop up the spills.

It means you’re the one the school calls when someone’s sick – and you’re the one taking the time off.

It means you’re the one getting to grips with the endless school emails, planning the dress up days, the pounds to the teacher, paying for the school meals, booking the parents evenings, emailing the show and tell pics, measuring the feet and ordering the new school shoes/trainers/jumper.

It means you’re organising the family calendar and remembering where everyone has to be when, by what time, in what kit – while your partner asks you every week where the pick up point is.

It means doing the homework, filling in the reading diary, cleaning the uniforms, making the lunches, getting the kids ready, shouting ‘teeth’ and ‘shoes’ a lot in the mornings, turning out the used lunchboxes after school, and constantly chasing the missing water bottles.

It means you’re listening to the friend dramas and long boring stories, keeping up with the mums, negotiating the play dates, hosting them, charming the school office lady, planning the birthday presents, wrapping them – usually alone – and don’t get me started on Christmas.

It means remembering to order the repeat prescriptions, going to the pharmacy, applying the medicine, making the doctors appointments, collecting the samples, waiting for hours in the waiting rooms.

It means being expected to know where every toy and pencil and item of clothing is, at any given moment.

It means picking up the clothes and the towels, hanging the washing, putting it away, wiping up the crumbs, changing the loo rolls, throwing bleach at the toilets while begging people to check and flush, often while your other half ‘didn’t notice,’ or worse, thought it was just your job because you ‘work less’.

It means planning the meals, doing the weekly food shop, making sure the snack cupboard is full, clocking when the milk’s about to run out, cooking the boring everyday meals – and losing both your will to cook the fun stuff and the title of family ‘chef’ which now goes to the other, non-fishfinger cook.

It means – possibly as a residual result of breast feeding and/or mat leave – being the one that gets up most often in the night if someone cries, drying the tears, cleaning up the sick, singing them back to sleep.

When you are on your own, being the default parent means even more. It’s more than just the mental load of your family – it’s a heavy emotional load, too. And it’s why I find the legal phrase ‘equal shared parental responsibility’ occasionally frustrating.

It means packing the bags and keeping track of the clothes and toys across two houses, or facing the wrath of your ex and/or your kids.

It means tying yourself in knots of guilt and exhaustion struggling to carve out one-on-one special time with each child so they can process and vent their day – without their sibling chipping in.

It means being the safe space where your kids lose it, where all restraint collapses, where you get what they later admit is behaviour, tone and attitude they would never display at the other end, with the other parent.

It means being the primary repository for worries, and woes, and the testing ground for the pushing of boundaries.

It means being held to a higher standard than your ex, who can be forgiven for inconsistencies, or for making changes, when you won’t be.

It means they are jealous of your body and your time, tiny, controlling dogs in the manger that want you there always, always the same, their anchor, even when they’ve floated away – where every new dress or new hair style is a trauma, and time with your partner is a betrayal of your love for them that will be met with a backlash of emotion.

It means trying to manage everyone’s feelings and expectations, trying to set boundaries, trying to hold the hearth and home they need within yourself, without losing yourself entirely.

It is no wonder we are #tiredbydefault.

Being the default parent is invisible, thankless hard work. Your children will never be grateful for it; your partner past or present will never fully understand it.

But perhaps the worst thing about it is that you are constantly conscious of it being as much of a privilege as it is a burden…

I WANT to be my kids’ safe space, desperately. I WANT to be the one that looks after them when they are sick. I WANT to be the one they call for when they wake from a nightmare.

I also want it to be okay to say that it’s hard, and that it’s not fair.

I also want someone to SEE it.

And sometimes, I even want a bit of help.

The truth is that gratitude and love stop women from shouting about how unfair it all is. We’re afraid to be seen, to ask for help, for fear that we will be considered ungrateful or unloving if we do. We chose this, after all. And we would choose it again, and again – every time. Of course we would.

But we need to stop allowing that to be turned against us. It’s part of what holds us back.

Because the truth is that being the default parent feeds into all the other inequalities that women face. It is the root of them. It impacts our ability to work, the hours we can work, the level we can work at, our energy to innovate and take risks, our will to make stands professionally or personally, our capacity to practice self care.

Being #tiredbydefault is robbing the world of what else we could give to it if that love, energy, talent, creativity and organisation was supported, recognised, rewarded, amplified and channelled outwards – reaching beyond our own families.

So if you are #tiredbydefault (but not too tired to say so), please put it a comment. And if you can summon up the energy, I’d love to hear about what being the default parent looks like for you.

We can see each other, if no one else does.

And maybe we can even demonstrate by real examples its very real impact.

Don’t Look Up

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in mental health

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It’s just another manic… October.

I wish it was December.

Cos then I might remember……

that everything isn’t terrible and life isn’t actually awful, after all.

Lalala.

October is never a good month for me.

It gets dark on the inside as well as the outside.

Right now everything feels insurmountable, and terrifying, and difficult, and HEAVY.

It all sits on my chest and I can’t breathe properly, and it stoops my shoulders until my back hurts, rolls in my stomach so I can’t eat, and fills my head until I can’t sleep, and I can’t think, and I most certainly can’t DO.

I wake up and doom floods in before I’ve had a conscious thought; I go to bed and yawning unspecified desolation is waiting at its dimming edges.

When the world gets too big for me to navigate it, I do the only thing I can.

I go small.

I shrink everything down to the very basics. My kids. My house. The work I need to do to keep my kids IN a house. And then I do the next thing directly in front of me that needs doing – because it’s all I can look at and all I can hold in my head and all I can cope with, and I can’t risk looking any further in case I fall from the tightrope.

They say don’t look down.

But the thing is – the real trick is – don’t look UP.

You will lose your footing.

You will lose yourself in the swirling denseness of everything and vastness of nothing all at once, filling the sky and roaring to your edges and through them until you don’t exist, any more.

So don’t look up.

Look down.

Go small.

Stay low.

Shield your eyes and your mind.

Draw your edges around you like a cloak and hold on tight.

The fog on the ground may choke you but it is also HIDING you.

And that’s where I am right now, in hiding. A hedgehog in a ball, a snail in a shell, trying to feel safe, protecting the squishy bits. Clinging to the floor.

I’ve written about mental health on here many times. And looking back, I write about it a lot in October. Because this is apparently part of my cycle – this is what I DO in October. But it has still come as something of a surprise… like the monthly amnesia of PMT, but less frequent, and less likely to be fixed by ice cream.

I’ve done SO WELL in the pandemic so far. I’ve managed. I’ve coped. I’ve been resilient. I’ve learnt a lot about dealing with trauma in the last few years, and in many ways divorce was a training ground for this – for isolation, devastation, fear and uncertainty.

But no matter how much I think I know, how well I think I’m doing, how far I think I’ve come, it still gets me, sometimes. The darkness. It sneaks in, just at the corners at first, and then it engulfs me, all at once.

And when that happens – when it gets bad – I go small.

It is a way of regaining control when I am hurtling out of it. It is about making your environment micro enough that you can get a hold of it again, in manageable, bite-sized chunks. You do one insurmountable, gigantuan, impossible thing at a time, and you don’t look up.

Get out of bed. Shower. Get the kids up. Make the breakfast. Don’t look up. Pack the lunchboxes. Do the hair. Get in the car. Don’t look up. Talk to the mums. Smile behind the mask. Respond. Don’t look up. Turn the computer on. Check the emails. Write the articles. Fill in the timesheet. Don’t look up. Pick the kids up. Make the tea. Do the homework. Wash the clothes. Read the story. Don’t look up. Clean the mess. Put the clothes away. Move. Go to bed. Sleep. Don’t look up.

It is not a list, because a list is too big. There is too much future, too much flow. It is the next thing that needs doing, or else bad things will happen, followed by the next thing, and then the next. Staccato. Deliberate. Finite. Controlled. Don’t. Look. Up.

When I feel like this, going small is actually one of my healthier coping strategies. Because in the past I’ve exercised control in ways that were… less healthy.

In the past I have made bargains, and created routines, and gone through rituals that can’t be interrupted, that repeat until I’m exhausted enough, until I’ve paid a debt I don’t understand. I’ve created impossible, obsessive to-do lists of imaginary necessities so I can be all-consumed by them. I’ve cleaned until my hands are raw from bleach and I won’t let anyone else touch anything in case they contaminate it. I’ve stopped eating, or over-exercised, to feel the pain of hunger or muscle strain and been glad that the outside hurts like the inside because I can make that stop and go as I want it to. I’ve picked holes in myself so I can press the wounds when I need to feel something.

So if I don’t respond to your text message, I’m not being rude. If I make awkward, disjointed conversation and don’t meet your eyes, I’m not being snooty, or evasive, or weird. If I can’t finish a thread, a task or a thought, I am not being difficult, or lazy. I have shut down because I can’t do anything else right now.

And I am not the only one.

Health experts are warning of a tsunami of mental ill-health swelling in the wake of Covid as we all struggle with so much everything, with bereavements, and redundancies, and financial worries, and paying the bills, and what about Christmas, and fears for the future, for our health, for our families, and isolation and dark, cold nights, separation from our loved ones, relationship issues, and the tyranny of both never-ending routine and ongoing uncertainty.

This World Mental Health Day on 10 October is a chance for all of us to check in with ourselves, and the people around us. 500,000 more people are predicted to need mental health support as a result of the pandemic.

In many ways, I’m lucky, because I HAVE been here before. I have had other manic Octobers, other dark seasons. I know what to look for, what the danger signs are. When to go small. When my need for control goes too far. When to ask for help. And I know about the Other Side – the one you can’t see because you just can’t look far enough ahead. The one that you can’t imagine existing.

I know the bleak and gray and desperate will be over, eventually. That there will not just be an ending, but a next that comes after it. Not everyone knows that, or can remember it, or can hold it in their heads when things go bad.

And if you can’t do that, if you don’t believe in the Other Side, it makes carrying on the ultimate leap of faith. Only it’s not a leap, it’s one heavy step at a time.

And I want you to know that I know every single one of them is an act of sheer bloody heroism.

And sometimes, sometimes heroes need help.

So they can look up, again, and FLY.

xxx

Samaritans 116 123 jo@samaritans.org.

Mind 0300 123 3393Mind.org.uk

Shout Crisis Text LineText “SHOUT” to 85258 or “YM” if you’re under 19

To tell or not to tell…

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour

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To tell or not to tell, that is the question…

And I’m asking it basically because I can’t face facing the fact the world is clearly going back to lockdown-hell-in-a-handcart very shortly. So I’m on a distraction arc.

One of the things I learned in the LAST lockdown was that my kids sharing a room is not going to be ideal moving into the future. One of them may not survive beyond teenhood, and I’ve got no idea which one to back. It could go either way, frankly. Small Small has weight and determination on her side; Big Small has RAGE.

And that basically means, longer term, I need somewhere else to work than the spare box room – and that I’m very seriously considering joining the multitudes and investing in a garden office.

Garden offices are one of the big Covid WINNERS. Turns out nobody likes their family that much, and many would quite like to get away from them and move out, even if they can only wangle moving out to a Man/Woman cave at the bottom of the garden.

In my mind this will be a stylish sanctuary where I will suddenly become super productive at work, possibly gaining industry fame and a huge salary involving 000s in the all right places, plus be visited by a creative muse, causing me to simultaneously knock out that book Boynotquiteonthenetheredge has been nagging me about, and probably getting a great publishing deal and winning The Booker Prize in 2021. Or maybe 2022. Let’s be realistic.

There is, I admit, a nagging feeling somewhere at the back of my mind that even with a garden office I might, weirdly, still be a procrastinating chronic underachiever, and that the sanctuary will either be too cold or too sunny or both at once, become a breeding ground for mahoosive spiders round the back, and end up being furnished with crappy garden furniture, kids’ bikes, and the old paddling pool.

I am quashing this.

Because DISTRACTION ARC.

Anyway, all of this led to a nice lady coming round to take a look at a dark corner of my garden and take a few measurements.

And this is where I had my ‘to tell or not to tell’ moment.

Because measuring involves bending over.

And the nice lady was wearing a pair of well-loved black leggings.

And, it turns out, a very nice, very visible pair of high-rise black lacy pants – that frankly put my enormous granny knickers to shame, and I wish I had the belly and post c-section nerves to wear myself.

I also wish that people would tell me when I’m having exactly this sort of wardrobe malfunction.

Mine are never sexy wardrobe malfunctions. They tend to involve buttoning something up wonky, wearing bright pink pants under something light and not noticing until I glance sideways and wonder who the fat trollop is in that shop window, or leaving a skirt tucked into my pants after going to the loo.

I once wore a dress to work inside out for an entire day, and finally noticed at about 3pm after a wee. I went back to tell my team, only to find out that they KNEW, and hadn’t said anything because – and this is a direct quote – ‘they thought I already knew.’ WHY WOULD I BE WEARING MY DRESS ON INSIDE OUT ON PURPOSE??????

I’m not actually sure whether this reflects worse on them or me, come to think of it.

Anyway, as a result of these various experiences I would rather KNOW than not know. But there’s no doubt that telling a stranger this sort of thing is a bit, well… awkward.

Nice garden room lady and I had slightly bonded over the rudimentary, and probably completely inaccurate, application of trigonometry (it’s a triangular plot), but we’d still only known each other for a sum total of about ten minutes, while embarking on the first tentative footsteps towards exchanging a not insignificant amount of money.

On the other hand, I was already intimately acquainted with her under garments.

And imaging her next visit to be to some pervy bloke who’s exactly the sort of idiot that fancies an office room makes them look important and productive. YES I KNOW.

I was so distracted by the ‘to tell or not to tell’ dilemma I spent much of the last few minutes of our garden-room conversation answering quite at random.

What if she gets offended? What if she gets embarrassed? What if it’s deliberate and that’s the look she’s going for? What if she tells me to mind my own business? What if I’m not supposed to be policing women’s bodies/telling people what to wear? What am I actually going to SAY? Is ‘I can see your pants and the outline of your fanny’ too blunt? Is it actually any of my bees wax? Is this what sisterhood looks like? Feminism? Do I need to add this to my endless list of worries, OR my endless list of guilt? WHICH ONE OF THEM IS CURRENTLY LONGER – QUICK LETS GO THROUGH EVERY AWKWARD THING YOU’VE EVER SAID AND REGRETTED, AND NOT SAID AND ALSO REGRETTED, YES RIGHT NOW!

So in the end I….….

Told her.

On the way out.

I think I mumbled something about her lycra having given up the ghost but I’ve blocked the details out, now.

Boynotquiteonthenetheredge is horrified, and firmly of the opinion I’m never going to see a quote from these people, or hear from them again.

I think I might get a discount. But that could be the distraction arc talking, also known as self delusion.

So to tell or not to tell? What would you do? When have you done it/not done it? And would you like it done back?

#lalalaletsnottalkaboutcovid#sisterhood#totellornottotell#overthinking

Happily Never After

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in mental health, Parenting, School

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So the kids finally went back to school, and they all lived Happily Ever After. The end.

Seemingly I will never learn about Happily Ever Afters.

It’s not that nice outcomes don’t exist – I’m not that far descended into cynicism. But nice round easy endings just… don’t.

There’s always an AFTERWARDS, that you don’t get to read about, that you haven’t thought through.

A big ending is never really an ending, is it? It’s usually just the beginning of something more mundane and boring and gruelling that no one’s interested in reading. Possibly there was a sequel but the publishers wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, or it went straight to DVD.

I thought the kids going back to school (if only for 3 days so far) would be a finishing line. That I’d breathe a sigh of relief – even that I’d feel euphoric! Certainly that just making it this far would feel GOOD.

Well if your kids aren’t back yet, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t, really.

I think it’s a bit like that thing that happens at work when you’ve been flat out towards a goal, or when there’s been an emergency, and you finally get the project over the line, or the disaster averted, and you sit down go or go off on holiday and immediately everything catches up with you all at once and you fall over.

All the stuff you ignored or staved off as you battened down the hatches, powered through and got the job done – hits you like a freight train. After the sort of guerilla parenting we’ve all been through over the last 5 months, fuelled only by biscuits and worry, I suppose it was inevitable.

Looking up, rather dazed, at the far edge of the lockdown mire I’ve just inefficiently dog paddled through and half drowned in, I find myself arrived not at the oasis I was expecting, but at a wee narrow ledge just before the plummet into the NEXT boggy terrain of infinite school uniforms to wash, school coronavirus rules to navitage, packed lunches to make, anxious children to cajole out the door on time, friendship dramas, nit letters, homework battles, the fresh reinforcement of bedtimes, negotiation of extra curricular activities, newly significant sniffles, and more kid-free time than I’ve had in half a year – and that isn’t QUITE as fun as I thought it would be.

You can’t go from 100 miles an hour, constant facetime and sky high anxiety down to 0 on all fronts, BAM, just like that.

There’s a crash.

I’d brought the uniform, the shoes, read the billion emails from the schools, but I hadn’t really PREPARED for this next bit.

There is still so much of EVERYTHING, isn’t there?

Not least the residual worry, and the prospect of a long winter battling children in the back of the car to shove swabs down their throats, and inevitable periods of random isolation…

We’ve reached the finish line, and there’s another bloody marathon.

So if you’re looking at your Facebook feed of celebrating parents and wondering why you’re feeling Oooofy and anti-climatic rather than amazing, this is probably it.

So I’m also here to tell you that it’s okay to have realised your life is not as magically better with the onset of school as maybe you’d hoped.

To have been thirstily looking forward to this moment like a holy grail – and to feel a bit deflated finding out it’s a plain old empty mug.

To have been craving normality, and alone time, and to still feel abnormal, and miss your kids like crazy.

To wonder if maybe you ARE crazy because you’re still not happy.

Because the only thing really certain in the story of parenting is uncertainty – and inconsistency.

Having children is, after all, the very hardest of all the Happily Ever Afters.

xxxxxx

Parent like someone is watching

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Divorce, Humour, Parenting, Uncategorized

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Sometimes I like to parent like someone is watching.

Oh, not in the Instagram-ready, photo-story, Facebook Life way.

I haven’t posted pictures of my kids on my personal FB account for years. (I haven’t been on it for years, to be fair). I don’t even TAKE that many pictures. I stopped in silent protest when I realised my now ex was living a life on FB I didn’t recognise – our life – but he was a person, husband and father in pictures and pithy sentences that I didn’t know – that he couldn’t be in reality.

There’s a lot that’s been said about the social media fakery, the presentation of the perfect life, perfect family, or perfect body. About how disingenuous that is – how dangerous. And about how refreshing an antidote warts-and-all is, the cellulite bikini shot, the tantrum; the exposure of the art of posing and posturing.

But the truth of the matter is that we all repackage what’s happening to us all of the time to make sense of it – to make it more palatable. To ourselves or to others. And the warts-and-all stuff is as much a virtue-repackaging as the perfect picture is.

We all choose how to tell our stories. How to present ourselves. In many ways that’s what this blog is… processing. Repackaging on the way.

And sometimes it’s a good thing.

One of the ways it works for me is by DELIBERATELY repackaging my parenting in the moment – especially in the difficult moment – by the act of PRETENDING someone is watching it. Thinking forward about how I want to report it, to present it. How I want to have behaved. How I want to feel about myself afterwards. How I want my kids to feel about me…

So I pretend that it’s all being recorded, that someone is watching – that it IS going on Facebook – that I will have to watch it back and feel okay about it. I find it helps me keep my cool when the smalls are pressing my EVERY SINGLE DAMN BUTTON.

Someone IS always watching, of course. They are. And I am often conscious of the Small Gaze, what they’re learning, how I might be inadvertently finding new and subtle ways of messing them up, as all parents do. But the Small Gaze isn’t the one that helps me keep my temper. It’s that Imagined Gaze.

Dance like no one is watching – parent like someone is…

Of course sometimes other people ARE watching. The gaze is REAL. And that throws me off my gaze-game because I find I’m also reacting to THEM, to their approval or disapproval.

Like all socially awkward people, I have always been aware of eyes on me, and while it is a good thing on occasion, it mostly trips me up and over myself. Sometimes I perform for gaze; some MORE times I crumble under it…

Sometimes, I wonder who I am when I’m NOT being the person I want people to see, or myself to be. When gaze, real or imaginary, doesn’t define me or shape my actions. Is true authenticity even possible with other people? With myself when I want to like myself? AM I STILL ME IF THERE’S NO ONE IN THE WOODS TO WATCH ME FALL OVER????

This of course is all on my mind because the person who has most recently had the dubious felicity of watching my parenting is Boynotquiteonthenetheredge, who escorted me and the Smalls on holiday to the little village in Devon I’ve been to every year since I was a kid.

This is a person who’s gaze I’m particularly keen to keep admiring, in a place with lots of echoes, spending an unprecedented amount of time in confined, close, rainy quarters with me and my Smalls… and my parenting. And my sister.

I would like to be able to repackage this experience as an unprecedented success, but life is rarely that neat.

Blending different people together, and the different MEs I am under their different gazes, is HARD. And the Smalls are watching too, reacting to the changes, gazing themselves, gauging.

There was some challenging behaviour – mostly from the children and not me, I’m pleased to say. The Boy was sanguine and supportive, which is not the Male Gaze I have been under in the past, and weirded me out in it’s own way. Possibly being under a disapproving gaze for so long has changed me in ways I haven’t noticed until this time, this same place, with different eyes on me… Meanwhile, the Big Small was discombobulated, territorial (‘Do you love BNQOTNE more than you love me?’), and unwilling to share our family, all to a backdrop of the Small Small’s never-ending and entirely self-serving monologue (centered around the enduring paradox of ‘this is the best/worst day of my life’).

There were some lovely moments, and some memorable ones, but a lot of it was sheer hard bloody work – the navigation of expectations, and of gazes.

Since getting back, I have had several long, long naps.

Sometimes the only way to escape from eyes, including my own, is just to shut them.

[TOP TIP for rainy day holidays: bring googly eyes and the hot glue gun].

The cat the boy and the leg

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Divorce, Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

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It has not been a good week for Catonthenetherege.

It’s not been a good week for Boynotquiteonthenetheredge either, come to that.

These two unfortunates met at the top of the stairs in semi darkness. The former never having lived with the latter’s kind, at least not for a long time, lacks the instincts of cat-owners everywhere – which include a firm grip on the handrail and a slight pause for the thunder of paws, going past in either direction on an errand made suddenly urgent by the presence of a person.

Their meeting was not an auspicious one.

He hurt his knee.

And landed heavily.

On the cat.

Breaking her leg in three places.

Pandemonium – and some very expensive vet bills – ensued.

The children were hysterical, difficult to console, and not terribly happy with The Boy.

Well, Big Small is more philosophical, but Small Small shows distinct signs of harbouring A Grudge. (This is something she does well, and definitely gets from me). [Top tip for blended family interlopers: don’t break the kids’ pet’s leg. You’re welcome].

The poor Boy has clearly not been unaffected either, suffering not only the Small Small’s disapprobation, but also sleepless nights remembering the crunch. He has since admitted he now sees cats in the street several hundred yards away and gets palpitations lest he unwittingly damages them.

The cat herself made a sound I’ve literally never heard an animal make in my life, and hope never to again.

She has, however, since found solace in savaging every veterinary professional trying to help her, and I’ve had several conversations with people asking me whether Catonthenetheredge is usually a ‘challenging’ animal, and requesting my permission to sedate her in the interests of preserving HUMAN life and limb.

Having chosen, with the blessed assistance of insurance, to keep the limb most in question, Catonthenetheredge is now officially BionicCatonthenetheredge, and will likely set metal detectors off in the airport next time she goes on her holidays. Hence the Frankenstein scar.

Not content with this meagre suffering, I myself then proceeded to make a further attempt on her life (thank God she’s got 9) by being functionally innumerate and somewhat overtired, and massively overdosing her on the opiates she was sent home on – my first clue being how unusually compliant she was. It was not a fun wait for the vet to open and check her over…

Poor, poor, poor kitty. (She is fine. Stuck in a cage for 10 weeks for her leg to recover, and not happy about it, but otherwise fine).

The whole thing, all in all, has been something of an Adventure. The sort I could have really done without – and the Boy is not the only one it’s left with palpitations.

The thing about the Anxious, though, is that it turns out we’re actually pretty good in a crisis, you know.

I calmed children. I caught the damaged cat. I soothed the Boy. I got to the emergency vet. I got the insurance sorted.

Having something on which to focus our worry for a while – particularly where there is positive corrective action to take – is far easier and more rewarding than dealing with the generalised and universal worry we normally live with, and which we are powerless to mitigate.

I’ve found that to be true for the whole of the last four months, as well as for this specific domestic disaster.

The whole pandemic, really, has played into my hands. I’m not just anxious, I’m OCD, so I LIKE washing them. I LIKE knowing what mysterious forces are out to get me and mine and how to combat them with face coverings, distance and disinfectant.

The trouble is, of course, that crisis mode can’t last. Once the ‘crisis’ is over, the anxiety is still high, and it throws long shadows. Oh, they might not be reasonable shadows, and you might well know it, but they LOOM.

Right now in the dark mine whisper about the fragility of life, of bodies, of bones, whisper the what ifs, what if it wasn’t just a leg, what if a stupid accident happened to one of the kids, the crunch of THEIR bones in my mind’s ear, and the lack of control over all of it, how we are all just hostages to capricious fortune…

It’s made worse right now of course by the fact the Smalls aren’t even here to squeeze and defy anxiety with reality.

They’re on their first ever 7 day holiday with their Dad, and I feel like I’M the one who has lost a limb…

It physically hurts. And if I can’t keep them safe when they’re here, I sure as hell can’t keep them safe there. So here I am all wound up and dressed up in protective tiger-mum gear, with nowhere to go.

When I have spoken to them, they are obviously having the most wonderful of wonderful times. Which is of course what I want for them… but which also hurts in its own way. All the times I don’t get to see, or be part of. All the times I am not missed. All the times I am irrelevant.

If there’s a silver lining at all, I suppose it’s that at least there’s someone to look after and soak up the surfeit of directionless love. Even if it does scratch me every time I dare reach in to change its litter tray.

I may not be able to squeeze it, but at least I have the scars to prove it is alive, healthy, and reassuringly unhappy.

Catonthenetheredge, you are a mean, rubbish cat, but I love you.

Not least because that wobbly pink swelling I thought was the gross part of your wounds turns out to be your naked tummy, and proves we ARE kindreds, after all.

xxx

The voice in your head

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood

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About this time, three years ago, a voice I tried for a long time to block out whispered in the dead of night at the very back of my brain, that this really wasn’t right, and it really, REALLY couldn’t go on much longer.

It was the beginning of the end of my marriage.

I’ve learned in the intervening three years to listen to that voice a lot more.

I think it saved me.

I’ll always remember a story a probation officer friend of mine tells, about a lad she was working with, who finally admitted to her one day that he heard voices in his head. After some probing (the chief job of a probation officer) she worked out he was actually talking about his THOUGHTS.

And when she told him that’s what everyone hears when they think without saying the words aloud, he cried.

Possibly he cried because he wasn’t mad, after all. But I like to think he cried more because she had given him HIM.

You see, the voice in your head is the real you. In all your glory and hideousness and joy and despair and spiralling, kaleidoscopic iterations. It is your conscience, your inner monologue, your instincts, your raw, gut feelings.

YOU.

And when you stop listening to the voice, when you become disconnected, you can get very, very lost.

Sometimes it is trampled down, or quieted, or ignored. The things it’s telling you are too hard to hear so you pretend you don’t. You avoid, and numb, and mask, and redirect. You tell your own story loudly over the top.

Sometimes you are just too busy or too damn tired to listen anymore.

Sometimes it is undermined. You are taught that it cannot be trusted, that it is wrong, and you are wrong, and the voice in your head slowly becomes someone else’s, instead. Overruled. Replaced.

When I started listening to the voice in my head again after a very, very long time, it was like taking off ear defenders in the middle of a concert.

The thoughts I had were new and jagged and disturbing and poured in like an avalanche. My instincts were raw. They were BIG. The feelings I’d ignored or battened down were BIG. My own reality knocked me over and tore me up and I was filled and hollowed out on painful repeat, again and again.

I think the hardest bit was trusting the voice.

I’d lost my confidence. I still believed him over me. I thought all my thoughts and feelings were wrong – but also KNEW they weren’t – and I couldn’t reconcile the gap.

God, there were so many gaps, back then. Between fact and fiction and experience and representation – and I fell hard into every one. I’d lost what was real, what was true. MY truth. I’d lost me.

I didn’t believe me, or believe in me, and I was desperate to BE believed, to be seen.

I spent a long time looking for validation – searching for people to hear my voice, recognise it, confirm it, confirm ME. But no one could ever give me what I needed, could ever believe me enough.

Gradually, slowly, and very much to my surprise, I have grown to trust myself.

I look up now, look back, and I trust my own experience, and my own eyes, and my own evidence, and my own feelings.

My own voice.

I find I have very nearly reached the point where the only person I need to believe me, is me.

I am enough for me.

I have given me, myself.

And just like my friend’s probationer, finding ME has saved me.

Being at peace with the voice in my head, being able to tap into my instincts, being able to TRUST them, is one of the best feelings I have ever known.

In the last three years, I have learned to listen to myself.

I have learned to reflect on myself, and my motivations.

I have learned to be both self critical, and kind.

I have learned to seek truth, and evaluate it.

I have learned to be (mostly) honest with myself, for perhaps the first time in my life.

I have learned to grit my teeth through the big waves and wait – wait to hear the thoughts beneath the feelings.

And I have learned to let the thoughts settle before I act. At least sometimes (okay it’s still a work in progress).

I have learned that when I am truly me, when I listen, I am POWERFUL.

I think women have become very used to not being heard. To not being listened to. To losing our voices in the world – to being told they don’t matter.

It would be nice to think the voice in your head can’t be taken from you – but it’s clearly more complicated than that. Life creeps in and creeps up on you and suddenly you’re disconnected from who thought you were, from your thoughts themselves.

But if you can tune back in to your inside voice, and believe it, that’s when you can use it outside, loud and clear – and BE believed.

That’s when our voices are strong enough, true enough, powerful enough, to be heard.

Being YOU is superpower.

And maybe by tapping into it we can save not just ourselves, but the world.