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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When I said those words almost 15 years ago I truly believed the promise I was making would be an unbreakable bond. I looked forward, like most other brides, to a life of making memories and growing old together. We have weathered sickness, changes in our fortunes and circumstances, been blessed with two wonderful children, but what has broken us is the death of love… the one thing I thought would never happen.

I am still inordinately fond of my husband, despite his still very raw and understandable anger. I appreciate his strengths and I know all his weaknesses. He is still the most wonderful father – the same one who sped from Bristol to Scotland to see his first son minutes after he was born, the same one who was called in from combining in the middle of harvest to meet his second son. The issue is that I do not love him as I want to love a man.

There is no-one else involved. There may never be another man for me to love, but I cannot live without the hope of that spark, the possibility of finding that missing piece from the jigsaw puzzle of my life. We have tried actively for the last 3 years to fan the dying embers back to life: we have been responsible parents and done our very best to maintain the ideal nuclear family unit – but I am spent: I have nothing left to give.

I do not want my children growing up with a mother without verve; watching a marriage without affection – they and I deserve more than that.

The practicalities will be difficult – we have little disposable income and no capital. I am looking for a job (doing anything) which will enable me to save up enough to put down the deposit on a small flat big enough for me and for the children. My husband will remain in the family home: the decision to leave was mine so it seems only right that I should be the one to find a new home. We will share custody and I believe that once the hurt has subsided we can recreate the great parenting team that we were – albeit under separate roofs.

In the meantime we will try to rub along, tease apart finances and chattels and remind ourselves that to conduct ourselves in anything other than a civilised and amicable manner would be a travesty, not only for our children, but for the 18 years we have spent together.

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I am hugely, almost obsessively, interested in the history of my country. I look at castles, abbeys and palaces and wonder at the lives which must have been lived therein; at costumes and jewels and who designed them, who chose them and who gifted them; at weapons and the thoughts of sons lost and at the everyday pots and bric-a-brac which survive against all the odds.

Melrose Abbey

My wonderment turned into embarrassment whilst playing ping-pong one day: as the scores were called out, an important date from history was married to them. “Anne Boleyn beheaded! Ah yes, Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”. I knew none of this detail – my education was rooted from an early age (a drawback of our education system) firmly in two disciplines: science and language. History, geography, art and philosophy belonged to other people. The family I married into were those “other people”.

The easiest way to begin my education seemed to be through the well-documented lives of our monarchs. I think that I can say, without too much controvercy, that the most interesting monarch who springs to mind is Henry VIII. I read voraciously, first biographies of the king himself then his wives and then back a little and forward a little. As I got a grasp of the era I became mesmerised by the politics, the courtiers, those who risked life, reputation and fortune on the whim of one person…

Henry VIII - Holbein

I read fact and fiction, learning (as with newspapers) to sniff out and disregard bias and supposition. I placed people on maps, marvelling at distances travelled on horseback, and went to those places where great people stopped to stretch their aching limbs and plunge the unfortunate hosts into debt we would be proud of today.

Every so often I make myself move forwards (or back) from the comfort of my nucleus: but then trip up from lack of material – currently I am stuck on James VI/I. Why is there not a plethora of material on this boy-king who united two kingdoms? Alternatively I am sucked (most enjoyably) out on a tangent to seek out texts on the players, rather than the stars: a big fat biography of Sir Walter Raleigh awaits me (a man whose pickled head was kept by his wife!).

What I have found is that there is almost an equal amount of gems to dross, and I would welcome any comments on which you think falls into either camp. I list a small selection here:

Alison Weir
Henry VIII King and Court; The Six Wives of Henry VIII; The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn; Innocent Traitor (fiction/fact)

Phillipa Gregory (fiction)
The Other Boleyn Girl; The Constant Princess; The Queen’s Fool

CJ Sanson (fiction)
Dissolution;  Dark Fire; Sovereign; Revelation

Hilary Mantel (fiction)
Wolf Hall

Jane Dunn
Elizabeth & Mary

Raleigh Trevelyan
Sir Walter Raleigh

I have italicized those books which I felt had little merit or added little to my knowledge.

There are also, of course, the works of David Starkey and Lady Antonia Fraser – but I would be very interested to hear of those you have read which will widen my comfort zone.

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I am a procrastinator. There I have said it. There are countless web sites, books, mp3s, gurus who promise to teach me how to confront this burden I carry – but not one which will do the one small thing that gets in my way of

perfecting the art of ribbon pleating

http://www.vintagesewing.info/1920s/25-m/m-11.html

making my ideal hat

http://www.hgtv.com/crafting/silk-and-taffeta-hat-and-handbag/index.html

creating a profusion of ruffled delights

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/how-tuesday-pillow-with-rosette-clusters-from-felt-furnishin-5095/

or simply writing for the sheer unbridled joy of it.

There is, in my home a shelf. It is a shelf of little value, tucked in amongst many other shelves. Somewhere upon that shelf sits a row of how-to books. How to identify wild mushrooms; how to fix just about everything; how to sew; how to sew some more; how to be the perfect mother; how to be the perfect wife; how to have the perfect child, how to make the perfect blog website… Unfortunately this shelf is directly behind ‘my’ seat at our dining table.

The dining table in our tiny wee house is also the children’s drawing table; their making table; the laundry sorting and folding table; the ‘I’ll put that in the kitchen in minute’ table. When it comes to mealtimes to which we do, to our credit, always sit down together there is usually something which has not been moved from the table. I am usually the one who picks this errant item up and pops it on the self behind me.

The shelf behind me groans and moans and taunts me with higgledy piggledy abandon. I cannot move until it is conquered. To do so would be the work of 5 minutes. 90% of the pile will be destined for the bin or the recycling basket. 5 minutes work to release me to the joys of creativity.

But, of course, there is always the top of the printer, just behind Mr Dotty’s seat…

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The Best of 2009

I have been tagged in a blog relay of writing the 5 best things of 2009. At first I thought – how could I possibly choose? Then when I had a pen and notebook I chewed my lip and thought “what on Earth did I do/happened to me in 2009”. Now I have a keyboard and all is well…

1^st Best Bit

I funded my purchase of the Little Pink Netbook from the very last dregs of my ‘Running Away Fund’. I have always had a small sum of money stashed away for emergencies. Until about 15 years ago it was £50. Then it became £100. 6 years ago it grew to £200. The fund was there as a safety net – the knowledge that I could always fill a car with enough fuel to go where I wished, hole up in a cheap hotel and just have time to think. Apart from the independence and freedom of expression this tiny machine has given me, I have finally realised I am exactly where I want, and need, to be.

2^nd Best Bit

www.dottymummy.co.uk has been a life-saver for me. I have an outlet of my own. A channel in which to make some kind of sense of the words and thoughts that occupy and sometimes invade my mind. A medium to share my happiness, my day-to-day ordinariness and occasional despair. It has grown from being a few words to being an entity in its own right – which grows in its own way and space. Often I feel I am writing what it wants, rather than what I want – but that is fine: I’m happy.

3^rd Best Bit

www.twitter.com is my coffee morning; luncheon party; afternoon tea; picnic; cocktail party; dinner party; pyjama party – all rolled into one. It is a digital yet organic presence which has changed how I view myself and my community.

4^th Best Bit

Running. I adore running: I started barely able to run for 30 seconds without collapsing in a wheezing puce-faced heap. I ended collapsed in a heap, half-way through an ‘easy’ 5K run the day after a 4 mile run and 4 days of eating nothing: this happened at the beginning of my latest (last?) episode of bipolar illness. I miss my running dreadfully – it gave me air, space and a sense of accomplishment like no other. It gave me music and the right to love Mud’s ‘Tiger Feet’. It gave me common ground to meet up with my Twitter friend Tom. Meeting Tom gave me confidence to run more, meet more and live more. I’m going to run again as soon as I go home.

5^th Best Bit

Maddy. Madeleine was born yesterday at 10.00pm. She is the daughter of my beloved cousin and best friend. She is pink and beautiful and adored like no other pink child before her. She also gives me total licence to ‘make’. I have baby blankets, mini-handbags, sun-hats and more in mind… Welcome to my world, Maddy. I love you xx

And from being lost for words I have missed out all of this:

and much, much, more….

I hand the baton to:

http://sleepisfortheweak.org.uk

http://www.lordlikely.com

http://dragonwheels.wordpress.com

http://megzytred.blogspot.com

http://lbyrne74.blogspot.com

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