Category Archives: Motherhood

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.

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.

Mummy – a poem

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Poetry

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There is a magical stage of literacy, unique to the 21st Century, that takes place in the mysterious place just before the full formation of the written word, where small children can form coherent sentences and complex ideas, and – most importantly – can use the voice record function on a technological device.

The Smallest Small is at this stage right now, possibly not for a great deal longer, as her education is thankfully soon to be safely back in the hands of the professionals.

I still dread the weekends when my kids go away, and I still miss them terribly. But every now and again I receive one of these recorded-to-text philosophical missives that make it seem almost – ALMOST – worth it.

Followers of this page will note that I dabble in the odd bit of poetry. I am not afraid to say that I am completely outclassed by the post-modern, stream-of-consciousness musings of the Small Small – pictured here in a slowly deflating paddling pool, presumably contemplating it as a metaphor for life, and composing her next masterpiece of deep thought and emotion.

So here, for your edification, is her only very slightly edited contribution to the literary world (I’ve added line breaks, punctuation and title, and removed the complaints her sister is a meanie).

It covers the pain of love; the meaning of existence; the nature of obsession; death and reincarnation; identity; the human condition – and for some reason my behaviour. (In my defence I am actually very nice to people most of the time – honest).

Please imagine her dressed all in black on a small stage, possibly in a turtleneck, doing a full-on spoken word performance. It makes it even better.

The Estranged Greeting 
(mostly) by the Small Small (and possibly Siri)
Age 5  

Yay Mummmy,
I love you so much for different days.
Do you like it when I’m away?
Do you remember, that day, 
when I got killed?
And it was so frightened -
I didn’t want to leave you,
always. 

I get mixed up, 
because it’s all -
I just like everything.
It’s just really fun being like this, 
so I am.

I love you so much -
you’ve been a great Mummy,
I hope I have more of you next time.
I just love you too much -  I can’t stop thinking about you
so I decided to do it.
And I’m to go to you tomorrow -
but is it safer to you to move? 

I’m just doing a normal hello hello.
That’s what I need.
Hello, it’s my turn to say hello to you!
I hope you have a good time.
You still got the virus? 
Hope you’re being really nice to people. 
I wish you so much - love you so much -
I just never want anybody.
It’s not me making you, and me loving you - 
it’s not because you’re NOT
it’s just because I love you. 

And that’s how people -
people people people -
people are just people 
I just like being me - 
and you might like being you - 
and it all just depends if you are you.

I just love you so much Mummy
I wanna kiss I love you,
I love you, that’s what I do.
Wanna hear this, 
but don’t wanna hear anything.

I love you Mummy,
and I can just see you and your little face - 
I want to see you forever.
You are the best.

Part of the reason I wanted to share this is to remind myself that I’m loved, because I forget it really easily.

I haven’t got a continuous monologue with love – I can’t rest in it. It’s like a conversation I have to start over every time, like everything that went before it didn’t happen or didn’t count.

I’m always back at square one, striving to earn more of it, worrying it will disappear if I don’t, pouring so much out I feel empty of it – like I love everyone I love more than they love me – no matter what I do or how hard I try to win more of it.

I’m afraid that people will stop loving me, replace me, prefer someone else, realise I’m a bit rubbish – because all of those are things that have really happened and I’m afraid they will happen again.

I’m still learning that love isn’t always conditional, or transactional, or reliant on my earning it – on my effort or my sacrifice. That it can just be. And stay. But at low moments, it’s hard…

And this week there have been a lot of low moments with the smalls, who have basically yelled at me, whined at me, moaned, hit each other, and generally not appreciated a single thing I’ve done for them – including shaving foam craft activities, burning myself hot glueing Barbie furniture, inventive homeschooling with the Darlek spelling voice (don’t ask), garden playdates, making a cheese sauce from scratch 6 times because the bloody roux wouldn’t work and it’s all the Big Small wanted to eat, a sleepover in the lounge because it was so hot, and filling that blinking paddling pool up with buckets of warm water so they could play in it for a sum total of five bloody minutes.

So if you’ve forgotten that you’re loved, if you’re feeling underappreciated, overwhelmed, emptied out and tired out this Sunday morning – this beautiful voice recorded text message poem is for you, too.

It is a reminder to all mums, that THIS is how your kids really feel about you.

I don’t know if you wanna hear this today, or need to, but they want to see you and your little face forever. They love you for your different days, or in spite of them. It’s not because you’re NOT, it’s just because they love you. Because you are the best. Yay Mummies.

xxxx

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

WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE ANIMALS???

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

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They are the hidden victims of coronavirus, after all.

Here is Catonthenetheredge ‘enjoying’ a game of Cat Buckaroo with the Smalls, as evidence.

Clearly I don’t think cats are victims… (Apart from all that stuff about being carriers and having to be kept indoors, or not, as it turns out the case may be).

But if I think too much about the victims, the families, the people going out on a limb to help them all, I’ll start crying again.

And sometimes smiling at the little things, like the palpable suffering of Catonthenetheredge in quarantine with the kids, is a bit of a relief.

If you’d like to keep cheering me up I’d love to see more pics of animals spending unprecedented amounts of time with their people.

Xx

The Wuwwier

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood, School

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The Wuwwier.

Ahhh, literacy, my old friend. Here we go again.

It’s safe to say the literacy journey is not an easy one for the Smalls-on-the-netheredge, especially at the start.

This is probably my fault. I didn’t learn to read until I was 7. I still can’t really spell.

My mother swears she sat on the sofa with Roger Red Hat open on her lap, me on one side, the dog on the other – and that the dog learned to read before I did.

(She gave up on trying to teach me how to tell the time, which is why to this day I can only have digital watches. I CAN read an analogical clock, now, but it takes several minutes, a lot of counting round in 5s, and I’d never bet on someone’s life I’d got the right answer).

It is now the smallest Small’s turn to struggle with her reading, writing, and spelling – and something is just not CLICKING.

It’s my second time round in the Mum-role of the literacy-rodeo. I’m sure it WILL click, in time, possibly with a bit of extra help from school, just as it did with the Big Small (sort of – there’s still some interesting flipped characters and spellings are a struggle) and me (sort of – I doubt I’d be employable without word processing and spellcheck).

But it IS something of a worry, which is why I was particularly delighted to get my very first note from her this week.

OK, it’s not perfect. Mummy is spelt entirely with Ws instead of Ms, which is an understandable mistake, and frankly, a rather alarmingly accurate one.

It made me laugh. Because I am a WUWWY.

I am a Mummy who worries… Sometimes a lot.

I AM worried that she can’t hold a pencil properly and can’t seem to recall the shapes of letters or process phonic sounds, and what does that mean, and is it just a starting blip or is it going to be a bigger problem, and what can I do to help, and should I back off when she gets frustrated, and how DO you actually make getting things wrong FUN?

I worry about her cough, every time she coughs, and how bad is it this time, and when to go to the Dr, and how many antibiotics she’s having, and about the operation she has to have, and the general anaesthetic and how she didn’t go out well last time, and how awful that was to watch, and what will they find this time, and will she be okay, and what if it’s serious?

I worry about how much the Big Small worries, also inherited from me, and ranging from what’s going to happen at school today to failing the spelling test, to who said what about whom in girlville, where she’ll get changed or what if there aren’t any toilets – and her hysteria over anything new or unusual, from me dying my hair to a change of pick-up routine or not having the right bloody tights.

I worry that she won’t do clubs where she won’t know anyone. and she doesn’t get to go to the ones she WILL go to every week, and what’s she missing out on, and how it will impact her opportunities and friendships when they all do stuff without her, and how to help with the friend issues, and when to intervene and when to stay out of it.

I worry about the school and club trips and what if something goes wrong, and what if mine is the one in the headlines standing up on the ride, falling through the gap, not strapped in the coach properly, messing around, in the wrong place at the wrong time – and what that phone call will sound like.

I worry who I would be if I wasn’t their mother, and if I define myself too much by them, and if that’s fair, on them or me.

I worry I’m not doing enough to support either of them, and there just seems to be no time, and certainly no way to carve out one-on-one time, and am I listening to them enough, or too much? and is it better for them to feel heard and accommodated or to just have things decreed for their best interests and maybe that makes them feel safer? and do I negotiate too much and have I set the right boundaries, and am I showing weakness or modelling humanity – and what if I’m getting it totally wrong and mucking them up?

I worry I’ve passed on my crappy worrying and spelling genes.

I worry we’re not having enough fun together, that we’re just plain routine and chores, and the time is short and I won’t have them for long and am I wringing enough out of it all, and am I enjoying it enough, and are they, and am I making enough effort and enough memories, and what WILL they remember, as they grow?

I worry they don’t know I love them, or that I love them too much, and what if that’s stifling, and CAN you spoil kids with too much affection, and am I spoiling them in other ways because I’m making up for the broken home, and how do I stop?

I worry how much my strained co-parenting relationship is affecting them, and how to make it better without just agreeing to things I don’t agree with, and how to talk to them about those disagreements – which they see and ask about – and if I’m answering the questions right, and if they know we both love them to the moon and back, and if they know that actually makes them lucky?

I worry if they will still love me back every time they come back from his.

I worry about the state of the world they’ll grow up in, and global warming burning the planet, and the rise of nationalism and the far-right past threatening to repeat itself, and War, and local violence in The Star, and homeless, hopeless families right on our doorstep, and Ebola, and acts of terror, and my inability to protect them or do anything at all to make any of it any better.

I worry I’m failing them, in big ways and little ways, all of the time.

I worry I worry too much.

That last one is something I’ve been accused of, recently.
That my anxiety impacts my ability to make ‘sensible’ decisions for the children.

I thought about it long and hard. The Wuwwying. And then I realised that the reason I thought about it long and hard is because actually, THAT’S WHAT MY ANXIETY DOES.

Look, there is clearly a downside to worrying. I know it well. If you let anxiety rule you it CAN impact the decisions you make (possibly stopping you from making any), and even your personality – because worry can come out as anger.

The thing is, when you know about the anxiety, you can watch for it, FEEL for it. And ultimately manage it. (Possibly with medical or theraputic support). But when The Fear comes down on you and stops you breathing, it is possible to both recognise it, and do something about it. You just need to learn what, and how.

I have learned that the way to deal with worry is not to let it bully you.

You can arm yourself with information to combat it, gathering the evidence to undermine it, and put it back into perspective.
You can refuse to listen to it, and think and do other things.
When it does get the better of you you can stop, and breathe, and make amends.
When it is too big, you can break it down, and do the little things that you CAN affect.

My anxiety doesn’t stop me from letting the kids go on school trips, for instance.
If it has led me to shout, I say sorry, and explain why I got angry.
If it is loud, I play louder music and I run to outrun it.
When it gets big, I go small, with recycling, food bank donations, teaching them tolerance.
When I question myself, I weigh up the pros and the cons, I take advice, I look inside myself, I test it out, I sleep on it – and then I make the best decision I can at that moment in time.

Because that’s the flip side of anxiety. Over-thinking involves THINKING, and that’s actually a GOOD thing. Questioning whether you’re doing the right thing, for the right reasons, at the right time – the very fear of getting it wrong – can actually lead you to make GOOD decisions. In fact, I’d rather make decisions with and in spite of anxiety than make them with and because of arrogance.

The stopping and thinking bit is okay, just as long as you START again.

Self-doubt can be harnessed into self-analysis, and that deliberation can translate into careful, powerful, and very deliberate action. Parenting with anxiety doesn’t necessarily make you a bad parent. If you can work through the overwhelm and the paralysis, it could make you a considered and considerate one. It may even make you a BETTER one.

What’s more, being afraid and doing things anyway is actually the very definition of being BRAVE.

So if you recognise any of this, if you are a Wuwwier like me, or just a Worrier, if you are doing it all anyway, remember you are also a Warrior.

As the Small Small reminded me, it’s all in the spelling.

And sometimes turning things upside down isn’t a mistake.

Pleurisy

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Motherhood

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I’m going to start this Century as I mean to go on –

apparently with a lung complaint from the turn of the LAST Century.

I have Pleurisy.

It hurts.

If I thought much about Pleurisy in the past it was as some vague and unspecific Victorian/Dickensian illness that involved coughing a few delicate spots of blood onto a snowy white hanky and looking wan.

I can confirm that it is more like hacking out an entire lung THROUGH your ribs until you cry.

The limbo between Christmas and New Year (without being too dramatic) can be a sort of wasteland of regret and hopelessness without structure or meaning.

I find it quite lonely at the best of times.

But there is no loneliness quite like being poorly on your own – apart from possibly being poorly on your own WITH SMALL CHILDREN.

It is a loneliness you can peel back in layers….

There is no one, for instance, to hand the children over to, so you can go back to bed.
There is no one to accompany you for an entire day in A&E, fetch you snacks, put money on the car, or wait to hear your name while you go for a wee.
There is no one to hold your hair back while you’re sick, or change your sheets when you have sweated into them.
There is no one to make you a cup of tea.
There is no one to get the Christmas decorations down, run the hoover round, put the washing on, get the kids up, feed them, and try to stop them killing each other or themselves.
There is no one to ask you how you’re feeling.

To be fair, I don’t think these most things happened when I was WITH someone either, which was its own sort of lonely, so I shouldn’t miss what I never had. And of course I should be grateful the children have at least made an effort…

They have both actually done a commendable job of EMULATING sympathy. Briefly. But let’s face it, children are not the most naturally empathetic of creatures, and therefore this has not really extended beyond a single day, a Get Well Soon card scrawled hastily on a scrap piece of paper, dry cornflakes in bed because they couldn’t reach the milk, the odd kiss, and being occasionally patted on the back when it actually looks like I might not take another breath.

However, to give them their due, they HAVE managed to play reasonably nicely together – in between arguments (obviously) – which has allowed me to take the odd nap.

I put a film on the other day and woke up semi-delerious to find they’d tired of it, and had somehow managed to unearth and build a game around a Bible, a picture of my Great Great Grandmother, and a condom with a best before date of May 2003.

You could not make this stuff up.

Look, on reflection I believe the latter items were both tucked INTO the Bible for safe keeping, a storage solution that must have made sense to 20ish year-old me, but frankly it was so random I had to double check I was awake. And there was no one to share the randomness with – another layer on top of the layers…

For the first time in a long time it’s really made me question my decision to stay in a city that’s not my city, where I don’t have family back-up or support. It’s another particular flavour of loneliness, an isolation. A lack of options. A panic.

Oh, I have lots of friends and lots of them have been lovely, don’t get me wrong – but asking for their help isn’t easy at the best of times. And it’s even harder when you’re already feeling vulnerable. It seems ridiculous, but it’s when you most need help it’s hardest to seek it. And around Christmas, of course, everyone else’s village is kind of busy. Or ill too…

I suppose I just want to acknowledge the hard and the lonely stuff, to myself. And to offer sympathy to others. To you, if you’re finding life hard, and if it’s even harder for you to actually ASK for sympathy, or for help. However much you need it. However much you deserve it.

You are not alone in the lonely.

So to the single parents limping through the last of the holidays with over-sugared, spoiled-rotten, and generally rotten children.

To the people parenting through stuffy noses, both-ends-at-once stomach bugs, and hacking coughs.

To the Pleuretic, should that even be a word.

May your blessed routine and childcare return next week.

May you and your village get better soon.

And in the meantime, may your offspring bring you offerings of dry cereal, homemade cards, antique photographs, and out-of-date contraception.

Amen.