Category Archives: mental health

It’ll be scary this Christmas

02 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood

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It’ll be scary this Christmas.

For so many people, struggling to make ends meet.

Worried about what fresh hell 2021 is going to bring…

I’m lucky enough not to be scared about having enough food, or heat or presents.

But I am very much afraid about being on my own.

Every year I have offered to share the day with my ex, and he’s said no. He’s said the day itself isn’t that important to him. What he meant was he had other plans…

This year suddenly it IS important to him – and it is undeniably His Turn. And he doesn’t want to share it because all of those presents will be ‘too much for the kids’. Personally I think it would be their idea of heaven, but I am now overruled by the circumstance of recent history I didn’t choose, and the universal law of turns.

And of course, OF COURSE it’s the year I can’t see my family, 3 hours down the motorway and shielding still. I haven’t seen them in nearly a year.

It IS only a day, I know in my head. And I know I’ll see the Smalls the next day, and I know I have to share and he’s their parent too, and that really it’s the best thing all round – but I am still scared to wake up by myself.

I’m scared in my heart.

Because Christmas is a cornerstone of childhood, a cornerstone of memory, a cornerstone of MAGIC – a dying commodity. It IS important. To me. And I am missing it.

I think that’s what I’m most afraid of. Of missing it. And not just Christmas – all of it. It slides away so very quickly, doesn’t it?

My Big Small is 9, and on the final cusp of belief, and I’m so conscious that I don’t have long left. I am more than halfway through my time with her. I have maybe three or four Christmases before she’s lost to monosyllabic teenagehood and a phone screen.

This year has been a huge change, the turn from 8-9, summed up in a Christmas list that falls directly between toys and teen stuff, and includes both Polly Pocket and leopard print jeans. She’s growing up. And I feel slightly panicked by how fast it’s happened, how much I’ve forgotten already, and at the risk of sounding like a white rabbit – how little TIME there is.

And in the time left half of the Christmases won’t even be mine. And then it’ll be gone. This incredible season where magic is real, for children – made so by communal cooperation and parental hard work. This time of year where I can actually feel it, too, where I almost believe in it – just for a moment, through them. And I really, really want magic to be real. This year I NEED it to be real.

I suppose I also feel much the same way about summers. About weekends. That there is only so much childhood left. And I am afraid I have not made the most of it, and that I have not made the right memories, the right choices, the right impact. That I’m not doing any of it right and there are no do-overs. When it comes down to it maybe I am still afraid of who I am when I am not their mother. Who I will be. What there will be left over when they are grown and gone. Whether I’ll still be able to taste magic.

And of course it is another milestone where I suddenly look up and in at THEM being the perfect family I wanted, and worked for, and stayed too long trying to achieve, and finally broke for – and I am shocked it still has the power to hurt me, years down the line – and I am afraid I will never actually get over it. Layers on layers of fear…

I wish things were different, corona-wise, and that I could do what I wanted to do on Christmas Day, which was to spend some time doing something PRACTICAL for people who are afraid for much better reasons than me, volunteering somewhere and taking a much needed lesson in perspective, humility and GRATITUDE. But we are where we are.

Christmas is going to look a bit different for everyone this year. I think it just means we have to work a little bit harder to feel the magic. And to MAKE it. In our own way, on our our own timetables. And sometimes on our own.

xxxx

Ideas for places to donate: Mind Christmas Appeal, Shelter Christmas HopeWomen’s Aid – Gift of HopeFind a Foodbank – The Trussel Trust

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…

#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

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

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.

Lockdown meltdowns

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting, Uncategorized

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It has been a week of tantrums at casaonthenetheredge.

Some of them have been from me.

Several of them have been from the Big Small, now 8, who greets every suggestion I make for her education or entertainment with disinterest, scorn, or downright fury.

She does not understand why her 5 year old sister has to do less work than her, or indeed why she should be doing any learning at all. When coaxed to make an attempt at it she cannot be left unsupervised, as she apparently suffers from random attacks of amnesia, illiteracy, or violent interest in blank walls.

When her attention is recalled to her task it mostly results in screaming.

She has screamed about division. She has screamed about spellings. She has had a full-scale meltdown over a five times table worksheet. She has even screamed about being asked to draw a character from a book or shoot nerf gun pellets at maths answers.

I think the last one resulted in one of my growing collection of ‘hate mail’ letters from her. She wrote it to Mummy, crossed that out and put my full name, as – and I quote – “you’re not my Mummy any more.” Shade.

I chose to count it as the day’s English task, and resisted correcting the spelling or asking her to redo it in her best handwriting.

I also went to bed and cried.

Fortunately not all of her ire is directed at me. She and the Small Small have also screamed at each other, and competed over everything from who gets to sit on which side of the sofa to who’s imaginary horse is the fastest, who gets to go upstairs first to who twatted the other one the hardest.

Possibly my favourite of the week’s tantrums, however, has come from the Smallest Small.

In the run up to The Tantrum, she was engaged with the Big Small in what I thought was an innovative and enriching activity. (If I learn anything from lockdown it should be that this is a clear warning signal that it a) isn’t, b) someone is going to end up crying, and c) that’s most likely me).

In this particular instance, I had got the smalls to lie down on the floor with their arms out, drawn round them, and got them to colour themselves in. The idea was to cut these out, and send them to the Grandsonthenetheredge in the post as a life sized ‘hug’ (credit to random internetter, not my own idea).

This took some time to set up, and resulted in a full seven minutes of peaceful art – which is above average in the current concentration stakes – until the kids buggered off and I finished off all the colouring. Don’t worry, they came back every now and then to complain I wasn’t doing it to their specific instructions.

Despite this arms-length creative process, the Small Small became violently and incomprehensibly attached to her avatar, and proceded to have a full-on existential crisis at the thought of sending it off to Granny.

“I feel like I don’t exist any more mummy!”

“It’s like I’m not here!”

“I miss myself so much already!”

Having become irrevocably bogged down in the philosophical matters of reality, self determination and the true meaning of life, I did manage to get the damn picture in an envelope, although obviously I then had to colour in a second version, mostly alone, for the sake of ongoing harmony and peace.

Since then the Small Small has abandoned these pretensions to intellectualism and civility, and has basically gone feral.

It won’t wear clothes. Especially shoes and pants. It went to the toilet during dinner the other day, and came back announcing “just to let you know, I am definitely wearing knickers.” Big Small and I both expressed the opinion that people ACTUALLY wearing knickers seldom feel the desire to assert this to a general audience, a suspicion which proved on inspection to be well founded.

One day last week we managed to compromise on a swimming costume, but a lot of the time it’s just been naked.

It’s also reverted back to eating with fingers and is receding daily into illiteracy, clearly following its sister’s lead. (On the plus side I feel pretty sure if I continue to leave her to her own devices she may start spontaneously fashioning rudiementry tools next week, so I’m going to count that as a developmental win).

The thing is, when I come down to it, I feel a lot for both Smalls.

Because I feel moochy and not much like doing anything. MY concentration is shot. I am angry for no reason. There are moments when I want to tear all my clothes off and howl at the moon. (So far I’ve settled for pyjamas and crying into the cat. She cares for this even less than she cares for Cat Buckaroo).

I’m questioning the meaning of my existence, too. So many of the anchors I need to feel real and grounded aren’t there anymore – touch, social connection, routine, planning, looking forward to things. I’m flat without them – adrift. And I miss myself – or the version of me that had all those things.

I feel scribbled in and scrunched up, a paper version of myself stretched thin trying to be a teacher, a referee, a counsellor, an employee, a housewife, an entertainer, a social organiser – and I’m not doing any of it right.

I feel like I’m the one that really needs my tantrum script – the one I have whispered into the tangled hair of a melted down Small A LOT over the last few days. It’s okay. Let it out. It’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay.

So I’ll say it to you, in case you need it too.

It’s okay.

It’s okay to be a crap teacher.

It’s okay to feel stretched thin.

It’s okay to feel unreal.

It’s okay to feel like you’re failing – we all are.

It’s okay to cry.

It’s okay to shout.

It’s okay to throw a tantrum every now and then.

It’s okay to start over, and show your kids how to start over. It’s okay to be overwhelmed.

It’s okay to be afraid.

When it all gets too much, all any of us can do is to go back to basics – as the Small Small has demonstrated. And that means looking for the little things under the roar of the big ones.

With that in mind, I’ve kept the hate mail from Big Small, and I plan to tease her with it in the future. Possibly on her 18th birthday.

The phrase “just to let you know, I’m definitely wearing pants” is now a family joke.

This week also saw Small Small rename hay as ‘horse noodles,’ which is frankly brilliant, and will also become part of our family language.

Meanwhile, Big Small invented the game ‘Killer Bee Wasp’ which has had us all screaming with laughter in the garden after tea.

It’s these moments I’m trying to let in to fill me back up, fill me back out, anchor me down, make me feel real and rounded and normal again. Or as close as is possible right now.

I hope it is enough for me to weather the tantrums of next week, too.

Wish me luck. I’m sending it to you.

xxx

Pan-dem-ic

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in mental health, Poetry, Politics

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Hi.

I’ve really struggled to write anything on here.

I’ve really struggled full stop, to be honest.

Everything looks the same but feels different.

The world has twisted and we’re seeing it distorted from a new angle, where nothing has quite the same meaning any more – even words. So it’s been hard to use them.

I’m lost for words… and lost in them.

Everything I write is all peaks and troughs and seems irrelevant, either narrow and selfish or wide and wild. The weights are all wrong and off kilter. There’s this whole new language – from ‘coronavirus’ to ‘social distancing’.

And then old words I thought I knew mean different things now. Teacher. Doctor. Unprecedented. News. Connect. Lonely. We all understand them differently than we did just six weeks ago. We thought we knew what ‘isolation’ and ‘quarantine’ meant – but now we can FEEL them. Now we really know them. And we wish we didn’t.

We say to children, don’t we, when they are in heightened emotion – we say: ‘Use your words’. And I want to – but words have changed for me. They look and feel different, in my head and heart and mouth, on paper, because EVERYTHING looks different. Which is where this poem came from, I suppose.

I AM writing, because that’s how I make sense of things. And this is all so non-sensical. Sense, but less – but also sense-full because all my senses are all on full alert at the same time… And that’s exactly it. New raw eyes on old words, which are suddenly full of new gaps and meanings. Where sign, signifier and signified have been exploded. (Either that, or the poem came from trying to teach phonics and do **shudder** ‘Fred Talk’ with a five year old who seems to have a vested interest in illiteracy).

Pan-dem-ic

I would like to fry you

in a pan

make you fam-iliar

break you

up

beaten

like a pan-cake

a head-ache

a cough

flip you

off

scoff at you –

scoff you

whole

starting with the holes

you made

every –

where.

Dem is fighting words

fright-end words

because you are en-dem-ic

end-emic

you end,

every –

thing

one

we knew

a dem-i-god

of death and indoors

causer

of the big pause

–

tick

ick

I

C

you

and you make me sick,

pan-dem-ic.

I suppose if there is good to come out of all of this it is in the fact we are all collectively seeing things so differently – up to and including words. We all have new eyes.

And that disorientation, that space – the lift of the stomach before we plummet – might be uncomfortable, but it also makes this ROOM to grow, and innovate, and ultimately to change.

Once we have ‘survive’ under our belts, it’s up to us to choose what we do with the new perspective we’ve been given.

It’s up to us to break down and break up what we thought we knew, decide what’s important, and rebuild ourselves, rewrite our values, our families, our communities, our society.

And choose new words and ways to frame it all. New signifiers for what’s really significant.

I hope you’re all ok. God, I hope I’m okay. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, isn’t it?

Much love.

Xx

The shades of lonely

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in mental health, Parenting

≈ Leave a comment

My house came white. Gleaming white. And I keep thinking I need to decorate it… But the prospect of decorating by myself is kind of lonely.
It’s not so much the hassle as the CHOICE. It’s such a responsibility! You see colour is HARD. It means things. It infers. It makes statements, and creates moods.
Colour makes people FEEL things.
So I suppose it’s not really surprising that colours and feelings sometimes get mixed up.
Feeling blue.
Seeing red.
Tickled pink.
The green eyed monster…
I think it’s because we know the words for colours before we know a lot of other descriptive words. Certainly we know our basic colours before we know the words to describe more complicated things – like feelings.
So when we don’t have the words for a feeling, we still have colours as adjectives to fall back on. Before words form, and after they’ve been lost, there’s colour.
Well, it occured to me there isn’t a standard colour that we’ve collectively agreed upon for LONELY.
Loneliness is something I’ve thought about a lot, in recent years.
The first time I felt lonely I was a child.
I was a child with OCD, and I needed to check the light switches and taps, and I couldn’t not do it in case something bad happened, and I couldn’t talk about it because I knew no one else would understand, and I didn’t have the words.
The second time I felt lonely – really really lonely – was when I became a mother.
I felt removed, and isolated, and drugged with doubt and fear, and I couldn’t shake off doom and I knew no one else would understand, and I didn’t have the words for it.
What I did have was colours.
The thing is that I don’t think lonely is one colour. There’s so many different TYPES of lonely… and each one has a different tint, a different flavour.
Possibly it’s so hard to pin lonely down because we don’t actually TALK about it. It doesn’t get a lot of our words.
Loneliness is the nation’s dirty secret. There are more than 9 million people who describe themselves as lonely in the UK. That’s one in every five – which is quite a lot. And for a thing that happens a lot, we don’t say much about it at all.
Being lonely is… well… lonely.
So I thought I’d try and write down some of the shades of lonely I recognise. Because by giving them a colour, maybe I can give them a shape, a voice. And maybe other people who have painted with those shades might recognise them too, and end up feeling a little less lonely in their own lonely.
If any of these ARE familiar, please let me know in comments which one or ones have decorated your life.
If you have your own shade, please add it to my list. #ShadesOfLonely
Oh, and if anyone would like to give me a job making up spurious paint names, please do get in touch (I think I may have missed my calling).
The Shades of Lonely
Jurassic Crystal
A primal, biting lonely that descends on new mothers. Appears when you are staggered by love and horror, panic and euphoria; when you are supposed to know what you’re doing but don’t, when people think you’re coping but you’re not, when you wander between wonder and wondering what the hell you’ve done, if it’s too late to back out, if you’re going mad, if you can say so, if you’ll ever sleep again, if the baby would be better off without you, or if they’d feed better with nipple shields or the very expensive bottles with scientfically nipply teets – best order them off Amazon Prime now.
Wilted Rose Shimmer
The shade of a bad date where you’ve just realised, iridescent over the top of your smile, that there’s no one in the world that will get you, and maybe actually it’s you and not them.
Amethyst Mosaic
The lonely you get in the school yard, trying to fit in with the other Mums and break into conversations, where you are all pointy purple peaks at wrong angles, with pieces that don’t fit.
Penzance Drizzle
The particular shade of Cornish skies that hangs over you at conferences, and forms an invisible barrier between you and the delegates you’re supposed to be **shudder** NETWORKING with.
Penzance Steel
The unforgiving deeper shade you get standing alone at the side of a room trying to hold a buffet plate, drink, fork, and handbag, watching interactions with both jealousy and relief they don’t involve you, while hoping no one comes up to talk to you with your mouth full, and pondering how soon you can reasonably leave.
Acerbic Lemon
The aggressive, industrious lonely you get rage-cleaning because you hate it, but like things clean, and no other bahoostard can be bothered or will do it properly – tasting vaguely of bicarbonate of soda under the back teeth.
Unsunflower Smudge
The existential shade you get browsing Facebook and trying to figure out why your life doesn’t look like this, why everyone else’s families are happier than yours, what you’re doing wrong, if you’re experiencing your own life wrong, if any of it’s actually true, if reality is even a thing anymore, and if you have a trip to the park or a family meal without it being witnessed online are you actually there/consuming calories at all?
Cerulean-brink Tincture
The clear, fearful lonely you get watching the world go to hell on a handcart, when you are powerless to do anything and afraid for the future, and when you realise a Home Economics GCSE, English literature A-level and a marketing certificate do not constitute the apocalypse survival skills you’re likely to need. Only you can’t voice those fears, obviously, because they’re probably stupid and ill-informed – but they’re still there anyway.
Velvet Rust Ice
The deep, plush lonely of 3am, feeding and rocking a fussy baby in the dark by cold light of smartphone, desperate for sleep, tarnished with the knowledge the rest of the world is muted and peaceful, far, far away. Rough and smooth with a metallic finish. Old blood, and a draught around the legs.
Toffee Dove Mist
The lonely of facing a mountain of domestic chores or even a single domestic disaster, where everything is muddied to brown and responsibility curdles it grey.
Writhing Chartreuse
The sweating, shuddering shade you get being violently ill, possibly from both ends at once, with no one to hold your hair up, help you back to bed, take the rubbish out to the wheelie bin, put the washing on, change the sheets, or basically care if you actually get up again the next day.
Fluorescent Mint
Jarringly, incongruously bright, the shade of social awkwardness overlaid with toothpaste that you get in a group of peers, where you feel slightly off-kilter and out-of-sync with everyone, and you’re looking at the world from the back of your head through the long, long tunnel of your eyes.
Aztec Tangerine Punch
The wild lonely of overwhelm you get covered in needy children when it’s just you and you have to be their everything and you’re supposed to make it all better and know all the answers – but everyone shrieking at you is only as loud as the roar inside your head that you’re not good enough and can’t help and you don’t know what to do and there are no options or good choices and you just crave some peace to pull your pieces together and hold them, just hold them, in an approximation of the right place. Acrid echoes of almonds, salt, and hangovers.
Dappled Apricot
The smooth tart lonely you get when you’re not covered in children, when there is too much peace, when they’re playing nicely or off with friends and getting independent and suddenly don’t need you – and you realise being someone’s everything was your everything, and that it’s already fading and it wasn’t enough and you didn’t notice or cherish it enough either.
Oxtail Blush
Late at night, weary and raw, when the kids have gone to bed and there’s so much to do to tidy up and prepare for the next day, but you’re so tired you can’t move and you’re watching unsatisfying crap on telly, because you can’t watch anything good because you’re supposed to be up and doing things, and it’s getting late and it will all start all over again tomorrow too soon but you can’t quite bring yourself to go to bed because the thought of brushing your teeth feels insurmountable, and you are conscious that you could just sit there all night and no one would know or care very much, and one day you just might.
Tuscan Dawn
When you’re watching a rom com, and someone says something beautiful about why they love someone else, and you realise no one in the world has ever felt that way about you.
Midnight Molasses
A gloopy black/brown, retracting sluggishly as you wake with a wrench in the middle of the night, trying to escape it. Cloying, receding nightmares and clinging, dawning realities are all mixed up and bogged down – and too sticky to let you slip back to sleep.
Hush-hush Turquoise
The cold, still lonely you get in a medical waiting room, waiting for results, possibly watching a Dr gear up to give them, where life stops at the bottom of a heartbeat in a calm that isn’t but can’t get out, where you are conscious of yourself as a straight rod of light inside, afraid to touch your own walls.
Sepia Mauve
A yellow-tinted, wavering lilac, that smells of old lady, potpourri, and burning rubber. A shade you get sitting on the sofa watching a programme you don’t want to watch but don’t want to rock the boat over, next to a long term partner you don’t really know and aren’t sure you like anymore. It is a sickly precipice of either change or resignation, and you can’t look at it directly.
Battleship Peach
When the kids go off with your ex and the days without them stretch ahead, thin, insipid pastel with a grey pearly sheen. It covers everything, at least for a while.
Sunset Ivy
Bright bitter orange, with livid green cheese-veins spreading out like poison. The shade of lonely you live when you see pictures or hear stories of your kids’ life without you, of the family that’s not yours anymore, of the woman that plays your role when you’re not there.
Hollow Ochre
The empty, defeated slurry of lonely after an early miscarriage. Where what you have to grieve is mostly an idea, more real to you than anyone, slippery, and slipping away. When you have been robbed by your own body and can’t talk about it or show your sadness, and it’s hard to see anything in colour.
Fuschia Auburn Blaze
A bright, exhausting slash of unreal pink, burning yellow to black at the edges – the exact shade of bruised fireworks behind your eyelids in the sun. It is the lonely you get when you are in the midst of an obsession or routine, when the Dark says you have to get up and do your checks, or or go through your rituals – and you can’t get out of it and you can’t talk about it, because no one is going to understand, and if you tell the secret there’ll be a price, and you’re trying to keep everyone safe, and if you stop or fail or let on, the Dark will win.
Vermillion Gash
A vivid, desperate, pleading wound, bleeding freely and seeping into everything. It is the volcanic shade of injustice and impotence converging, when no one believes you, when no one will help you, when your reality is denied, when you just want to be SEEN, to be acknowledged, to be understood – and you are clamouring for it but no one will hear you and you are screaming noiselessly into an indifferent abyss – and it hurts so wretchedly on the inside you want to claw at the outside so it balances out – so the colour of the lonely is made real, and red, and hypnotising, and both the sea you’re drowning in and your only anchor.
It has faded, Vermillion Gash. But I still feel a flash of it sometimes.
I think once it’s part of your palette it doesn’t leave you. Some of the #ShadesOfLonely are fleeting – others stain.
I hope you don’t ever feel Vermillion Gash lonely, or Hollow Ochre, or Fuschia Auburn Blaze, or lots of these colours, really. I hope you don’t have a worse shade all of your own. But if you do, I hope you show it to people. I hope you make ART with it. I hope you use it to describe part of the world not everyone else can see but that some will find a mirror in, not just a painting. Because by hiding loneliness away – especially the darker shades – we create more of it.
I suppose the first rule of Lonely Club is to talk about Lonely Club… And colours – the very first words of description we learn – can maybe help us describe the indescribable, the confusing, the secret, the shameful, the painful.
Start with the feeling, and then give it a colour. And then describe THAT.
If everyone shares a shade what we’ll end up with is a rainbow – the international symbol of inclusivity and hope. And you really can’t be lonely under a rainbow.
At the very least we can petition Dulux to create some new and patently ridiculous paint colours. Who knows? I may even use one in my living room. Eventually.