Dotty

Probably for the same reason that I think Monday, Thursday and Saturday are even days, and Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday are odd days; turning right seems the natural way to go. Even when I drive, if I am lost I turn right. Even with aeroplane travel I turn right – although I did turn left a lot around Eastern Europe (the upgrade was usually only £10 or so) and once had the good fortune to turn left to and from Washington DC (the pre- and post-flight benefits were worth every penny)… what I mean is that I have always just meandered through life, so far, making very few positive, I am going to change the course of my life, decisions.

Looking Up

I never lay on my back watching the clouds float by wishing that I could be a Business Development Manager; Project Manager; an Adult Film Synopsis Copywriter; a Jam into the Centre(ish) of Doughnuts Injector; even once a Marks & Spencer Dark Green Corduroy Men’s Trousers Quality Control Inspector. I fell, drifted and wandered into each of those (and many other) roles. I do have to say that I enjoyed each and every one of them, in their own peculiar way: but I never “chose” them.

Inspired by this Blipfoto (I’ll tell you more about www.Blipfoto.com another day) from my beautiful cousin, I bought the March issue of Red magazine for the pure nostalgia of it. Reading this, I came across an incredibly inspiring article by Viv Goskrop – and that led me to make a HUGE decision.

When Wee2 starts school in August, I am not going to look for a two-bit part-time job to earn a bit of extra cash. I am not going to work in an industry that I have old knowledge of at a much lower level and do a job far below my capabilities because I can no longer commit to 14 hour days and jetting around the world with ½ a day’s notice. I am going to do something I “love”. Not only am I going to do the thing I love, I am going to do it well – better than and unique from anyone else. I am going to go back to school and I am going to be taught, and learn from the bottom up how to be a professional photographer.

I know that I can take pleasing pictures, I know when a picture works… what I don’t know is why it works, or how to make it work. When I know these things, I will see the shot and make it my own – before I even take the lens cap off.

I am going to turn left (and write a bit, too).

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First of all I would like to extend my thanks to everyone on here and Twitter who have shown me such support, love and understanding, that it has quite taken my breath away. I wish I could thank you all personally. I wish I could hug you and show you just how much every word means to me. I know that your words and concern were sincere and not ‘just words’ – I feel it in the very heart of me, and I am truly grateful to know such a kind community.

I have lashed out at the two people who mean more to me in the world – I have said words I sincerely regret and did not mean – they were designed to drive them away. They didn’t. They won’t let me go. They still love me. I don’t understand how or why, but they do. And I love them. It hurts me to love them – they are so far away and every time I leave them is harder than the last. They speak their mind and they are not afraid to question me, they delve deeper into me than I am comfortable with. I am learning that this is real love and real commitment. It isn’t an easy subject – give me Latin any day, even physics which I was so singularly inept at that my teacher despaired of me. (I got the O-level though – just to spite him).

Anyhow, life goes on. The earth turns, the sun rises and sets, the clouds float by, it rains, it is fine, it is day, it is night. This too shall pass.

My husband has taken my children away on what was to have been an amicable break for all of us. After Wednesday night I was told that I don’t deserve the pleasure of seeing my boys cycle freely, swim and slide in pools with gay abandon and so I am left to my own devices.

I am using this time well. I have a haircut planned for this afternoon to put right the devastation I created with a pair of blunt nail scissors on Thursday. I am seeing my CPN tomorrow.  I am having coffee on Thursday with a kind friend and a rummage in a very secret charity shop which receives samples of the most beautiful Tweeds our mills have to offer. On Friday I am traveling to Edinburgh to meet with a solicitor so that I can do the very best I can for my boys and not be ridden over roughshod by my husband and his family. Next Tuesday I have a meeting with the homeless department: they believe I have a good case and have been very helpful.

I am looking forward and I am picking myself up. It is tiring – I have known sleep deprivation and exhaustion, but nothing could have prepared me for the mind-numbing state I find myself in right now. I will do it and I will survive and I will be the very best that I can be: and that means being a mother that my children can be proud of and glad to know.

Thank you, to you all, for your help and support.

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This post is uncomfortable to write. It will doubtless be uncomfortable to read. If you are one of the people who object to the fact that I write (and heaven forbid publish), then please click on the little red x button. That is what it is for.

The night before last, Wednesday 10 February, my life reached such a nadir that I could not continue with the pain of living. I had run the gauntlet, directly and indirectly, of family telling me that I was a disgusting person for even thinking to leave my husband. I was told that the reason my family forgave my husband his affair of 10 years ago (with a woman I entertained at a party we threw, who stayed overnight in my home), because I was the one responsible: I drove him to it.

Yes, I have children. They are never out of my thoughts. Suicide seemed to me a way of protecting them from me repeating the mistakes my parents made with me. I felt they were young enough to be able to recover and carry on with their lives. On that point I couldn’t have been more wrong, and I will always live with the guilt and regret of that lapse of judgment.

The ambulance was called (and the police via a very kind friend on Twitter to whom I shall be forever indebted – I don’t even know how to begin to thank her: all she knew was my name and my home town). I spent the night in hospital attached to a drip and I slept – I had a month’s worth of Diazepam to thank for that. In the morning the Crisis Team of two nurses came and pronounced me of sound mind and that there was nothing more hospital – either general or the nuthouse – could do for me. I went back to my cubicle, ripped out the cannula, put on my coat and shoes and began the slow cold 2 mile walk home.

I was met with silence from my husband – he has yet to speak to me other than telling me he is going to the pub, I have had messages of vilification from my family, but more importantly I have had messages of real support, real concern and real love from these so-called non-existent invisible friends deep in the mists of the internet.

Life is no less easy, in fact it seems a lonelier place than ever, but to those real and true friends I can never be grateful enough. Thank you just doesn’t do it – even though it is from the bottom of my heart.

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This is the end. I’m more sorry than you’ll ever know. Thank you to everyone who supported me xxx

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I have pronounced my self fit and well enough to recommence my domestic duties.

I am fit and well. I have read and enjoyed an entire book from beginning to end (the first in 4 months); I am neither weaning off nor becoming accustomed to medication; my vocabulary has returned to me more or less intact; I can cuddle my children and I can even cook a meal and have everything ready at about the right time. My mood is as stable as the next woman’s. So why is it that at 00.45 on Monday morning, I am awake, tearful, with heart racing and breath so short I feel I might suffocate?

I am dreading the school run. I am dreading 30minutes of my morning – 25 of which will consist of nothing more arduous than the searching for more answers to an inquisitive 4-year-old’s “Why?”s and the occasional “Come on or we’ll be late” remonstration. So I am left with 5 ghastly minutes (if I time it right).

Those 5 minutes leave me utterly perplexed. I am a woman, who, in my previous corporate life could survive and engineer any social interaction, no matter how sticky or awkward to advantage. But in the playground the rules change, the gloves are off – there is no code of conduct (written or unwritten) that I understand.

Just how do I greet those people whom, once I have braved the enclave of the stares and whispers of the known gossip-mongers, I have not seen for weeks or months? The people who know I have been too ill to face the outdoors? The people who have been told to their kind “She knows my number” that I simply can’t call anyone? The people I have seen and who have said “We must do coffee” 6 weeks ago – and had the reply “I’d love to. Please let me know when would suit you: my diary is empty” and from whom I have heard nothing since?

How do I answer these people, these so called real-life friends, when they ask how I am and look at me meaningfully?

There are those who question my wisdom in putting my words to virtual paper – for all the world to see – but who else do I ask?

I just don’t know.

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I am, deep, deep down, an incurable romantic. Mr and I don’t celebrate St Valentine’s day, but here is my favourite love poem:

Love’s Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle—
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

I’ve published this early – just in case anyone who feels so moved can ‘borrow’ it. Please do  xxx

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The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the
smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001
www.paradoxicalcommandments.com

I am drawn to paradigms and this text strikes a particular chord with me. The events of the last year have left me feeling incredibly vulnerable yet capable of inflicting dreadful hurt. My first reaction is to want to withdraw from the world and let it pass me by – yet I know that to be who I need to be to enjoy this life, I have to “go out there”.

I hope that reflection on this text will inspire me as it has inspired many others, far more vulnerable, before me.

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After all the upheaval, surviving the backlash and making what I thought were concrete plans, I have decided to stay with my family.

I don’t know that this is the right decision for me as an individual – but I do know that leaving is not the best thing I can do for my family.  There are many things I need to change first before I throw the metaphorical baby out. I still believe that I am not the feisty, vibrant individual my children deserve to know – but I don’t know when I fell back into believing that person could only be brought alive by a man, or that a man could be the cause of her demise. I was brought up with that belief and somewhere, somehow during the last 10 years I have regressed.

I need to believe in myself again and I need to lose the strict contraints I have put around myself to define what makes me a good mother. Before Wee1 was born I believed I could only qualify as a good mother if

1. I used terry nappies (and the old-fashioned squares, not pre-made)
2. I breastfed exclusively
3. I served only wholesome home-cooked food
4. The television was never on
5. I used a real Silvercross pram
6. I enjoyed every moment of my baby’s company
7. I kept a perfect home
8. ….999. I stayed at home

The list goes on and on and on – and of course almost every item on the mile-long convoluting, strangling, suffocating mental list I made  has at one point or another fallen by the wayside. I am still a mother and my children are still fine human beings.

The last hurdle I have to face, and one which I suspect will cause more upset in my family than the thought of me leaving my husband is that I have to return to work.

I love my children – but their sole company is not enough to illuminate me. I will be the first person to acknowledge that this may indeed make me less of a person, but it is the truth. I need more. I need other adults to laugh with, battle with, be challenged by and fire off. I need the focus and adrenaline rush that comes with deadlines, deals closing and targets being hit and busted. I need to be employed outside the home.

As for Mr? I don’t know – I hope that the spark will return and that love will grow into what it should be. I know that we will both try. I know that what I seek is not to be found in the arms of another man (I really truly never thought it was).

I begin February knowing a lot more about myself but paradoxically understanding a lot less. Please bear with me.

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A meme from Careyannie’s Mumma Said

Family

Aunty Mim is 9 years older than me. She lent me her Jackie and gave me the non-David Cassidy posters to put up on my wall. She told me that the henna she put on her hair was cow poo and for years I believed her. I followed her diet fads with fascination (someone could choose what to eat!) and her life outside 9-5 conformity with awe.

Aunty Mim has, since I have been aware of her presence in my life, become a mother and a granny. Both roles she fulfils with a gusto I can only marvel at. She is also a mother-figure to me as well as being a big sister and an aunt – she is so much more than the sum of those parts. Aunty Mim is outspoken, opinionated and feisty and has a heart as big as a hippo. Sometimes we fall out – she doesn’t mince her words, and I retreat quickly when confronted with disapproval and possible rejection – but we make up and are the stronger for it. We even had a heated discussion last week – and parted company closer than before.

Aunty Mim keeps my feet on the ground and lets me have my head in the clouds. She is nobody’s yes-girl, but she rarely utters the word “no”.

I wish the world could have the pleasure of knowing my Aunty Mim.

Friends

I am very lucky to have some fabulous friends. Not very many of them live on my doorstep, and those that do I try not to bother. This can look as though I am not particularly friendly… as much as I am always the one there to lend a shoulder, a hanky, a cup of tea or a gallon of wine:I can rarely be the one to accept the same. So I battle on for the most part behind closed doors, coming out only when the going is good. But to Tom, Fred, Russ, Hilary, Rachel, Annie, Jez, Angela, Wendy, Mona, Jacqui, Emily, Andy, Dawn, Pam, Penny and Joanne – I am profoundly grateful for the fact that I could, if I could, knock on any of your doors and be welcomed in.

The White Coats

The last 4 years have been difficult. I am not quite sure why many of the people I have met in white coats choose to pursue their profession in the mental health field. It doesn’t seem to have been through empathy of either patients or disability. Some are, quite frankly, insulting. However, I do have two bright shining stars: my Community Psychiatric Nurse “K” and my GP, Dr W. Both not only accept that my IQ has not nosedived to double figures with the diagnosis of a disorder, but seem to appreciate the fact that they have an intelligent and articulate patient – and that they too might have something to learn. I respect and applaud them.

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This is a light-hearted departure from my normal musings and a much needed injection of fun into a rather weary time for me.

I read other blogs as and when I see posts flagged up on Twitter or if I happen to be browsing – I’m not a particularly reliable follower… Two posts have recently caught my eye and made me smile, so thank you to Nickie at Typecast for the following idea.

The task is simply to put your iTunes (or similar) library on shuffle and see what it spits out, placing the songs as they appear under the following headings. No cheating, no manipulating – just a giggle and many a wry smile.

Here is my life (today) according to my music library:

Opening Credits
I’m Not At All In Love – Doris Day

Waking Up
Complainte de la Butte – Rufus Wainright

First Day At School
La Boheme (overture) – Puccini

Falling In Love
Lady Marmalade – Christina Aguilera

Losing Virginity
Call the Police – James Morrison

Fight Song
All Fingers & Thumbs – Jools Holland

Breaking Up
I’m Ready – Jools Holland with Steve Winwood

Prom
I Put a Spell on You – Mica Paris & David Gilmour

Life
Got a Lot of Livin’ to Do – Elvis Presley

Mental Breakdown
Call off the Search – Katie Mehlua

Driving
All I Get – The Mavericks

Flashback
Fever – Peggy Lee

Getting Back Together
One Last Chance – James Morrison

Wedding
Shed a Little Light – James Taylor

Birth of Child
Constellations – Jack Johnson

Final Battle
Sweet Hours – Beth Rowley

Death Scene
Garden Star – Our Missing Cat

Funeral Song
Another Nail In My Heart – Squeeze

Credits
Kangaroo – David Gray

I particularly like the Life one – not what I would have chosen at all, but I like it.

The other post (remember? there were two) which made me simply howl with laughter was the Fluffy Bunny challenge. Thank you Josie and Heather

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