Thursday, 28 November 2013

Floods



I cried from 4pm Monday all the way through until 4am. Woke up about 6am and cried all day Tuesday. Cried much of the night Tuesday, apart from when I was watching a school show, and when I had recurring nightmares for a couple of hours. Cried all day Wednesday, including half of a very important appointment with my child and various experts.

I wouldn't have thought it was physically possible to cry that much  - especially for me, as I never used to be much good at the whole crying thing.

I look terrible, and not just because of the crying. I went to the hairdresser (my local recessionista hairdresser) and asked for the white strip that developed down my parting (apparently from the shock) to be coloured to match the rest of my hair. I thought this was a clear instruction, but now all my hair is the colour of merlot wine. It's kind of cool, in a plum-ish, purple-ish way, but it's not my colour. Every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I see this plum haired, puffy faced old woman and think "who the hell is that?"

So now I look as shit and weird as I feel. 

Tuesday, 26 November 2013

30 Words for Snow


People talk about "heartache" and it sounds so Jane Austen, so manageable. Nice walk in a meadow, cup of tea with a handsome chap and it's all right as rain again.

There should be a different word for the feeling of someone whacking your chest open with an axe, then ripping a chunk out of your heart with their bare hands. The feeling of your sanity being torn apart by dogs. The feeling of your life being held under a murky pond until your lungs fill with water and weeds, and you gasp your drowning on the bitter choking silt of despair. 

I don't know the words for that kind of pain. 

Under My Skin


Endlessly fascinated by the photos of abandoned Detroit. It's a catalogue of my inner landscape. 

Last night I drove back from Colchester. And when I arrived outside the house I didn't want to go in. I didn't feel like I belonged there, it didn't feel like home. So I drove some more. I drove to Bristol and I walked around in the city in the night. Then I drove back. I have been instructed not to talk to friends. Tonight I will go see a play at the school and then I will drive again.


Saturday, 23 November 2013

Loop


If your child doesn't want to be alive, there is no worse failure you can have as a mother, I reckon. Everything here is still the same on the outside, but I feel like I have died inside. 

I should have known. I should have been more available to listen. I should have asked. I should have guessed. I shouldn't have gone out. I should have gone and taken her with me. I should glue her hand to mine. 

I should roll back time until this would not happen. How far back? How long ago? I can't work out when it went wrong. Rewinding and rewinding, I am like a broken cassette tape with all my insides spooled out and chewed up. You can wind me back into the plastic case but my music won't come out right. 



Thursday, 14 November 2013

Stony


You cannot count a mother's pain by the number of tears you see her shed. 

It might be that she is busy sorting things out to help her child. It might be that she needs to be brave and strong, so that her child can feel certain there is something firm to cling to. It might be that she needs to have serious conversations, to talk and listen calmly, and to work out what to do for the best. 

It might be that if she started crying she would not be able to stop. Ever.


Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Ordinary Day


Normality is elastic. One-off situations, they can sit beyond the edge of it. Once they repeat themselves, normality expands to encompass them – however extreme they might be.

The first time my daughter tried to commit suicide, the world turned upside down. When she tried it again last weekend, it was shocking, terrifying, devastating. But this time it still felt like a part of my life – a horrible, dreadful part, but a part of my life just the same. I knew this wasn’t happening to someone else. It was happening to me, to her, to us. Again. 

This time, she took an enormous overdose. She was very fortunate to survive. She could not explain why she did it, or why she later decided to call an ambulance. At the hospital, they said they have a dozen girls a week admitted like this. A dozen a week.

The adolescent psychiatric ward is a very frightening place to spend the night. It scared the hell out of me, and I was already pretty scared when I got there, what with my panicked journey back from London and not knowing whether our daughter would still be alive when arrived. Fortunately it seemed to scare the hell out of her too, so perhaps it will deter her for a while. 

And she won’t be on her own for a while, although in the end we will have to go about our family business, and in the end she will be left alone again, first for ten minutes at a time and eventually for longer. We can’t do anything else but try to go back to normal, and that is the advice we have been given to help her with her recovery. She was already back at school today.

We will try to go back to normal, but normal has changed for us. Living with this level of fear is now becoming the new normal, and I guess in the end it will feel like normal too, and I will stop having to hold myself in at every moment so I don’t scream and howl and claw my own face to shreds wondering where I went wrong as a mother. 

Monday, 4 November 2013

How To Look After Your Husband #4

(I wish)

Feeding

Fresh water must be provided daily from a bottle with a metal spout. Feed good quality husband-mix along with small pieces of fresh fruit and vegetables. Only give small amounts of food at a time, as husbands will hoard excess food in their bed where it can go rotten. Uneaten food should be removed daily and fresh food should be provided.

Gnawing is important to wear down the teeth. Nuts in their shells, such as monkey nuts and unsalted pistachio nuts, are good for gnawing, as are dog biscuits (based on egg and oatmeal without meat derivatives). Husbands also like to gnaw carrots and hard baked bread crusts.

Encourage your husband to forage by hiding food in cardboard tubes and under pots.

Sunday, 3 November 2013

Time Lapse


On a weekend, I have so many things that must be done, anything that isn't a household task or mum-taxi journey needs to fit around the edges.  Now I have no weekly cleaners, much of my Saturdays and Sundays to come will be spent cleaning an enormous house we don't need, cluttered with stuff no-one uses but no-one will chuck out. 

Sometimes there is a rhythm and a soothing in the repetition of the routine tasks, the swoosh of the dishwasher, the slide of duster over the lid of the dark wood chest where women's hands have polished two hundred years before mine.

This weekend was different though. This weekend was set aside so I could write a piece for a new literary magazine. This is an exciting opportunity for me. It was important and it needed to be done properly, to an exacting standard. I made it very clear I would be unavailable for the carrying out of menial household tasks and ferrying about.

How fascinating it was to see that when I had an important commitment, it wasn't as important as anyone else's commitments. If I wasn't determined to take this as a life lesson, I'd have walked straight out of here this evening. 

As it is, my article is written and it feels as if it's good enough (just at the moment - I don't rule out the possibility of waking up in the night and fiddling with it or indeed rewriting big chunks).  I am breathing normally, nice and calm. 

Because there is a bigger picture. Soon it will not be like this.  Soon I will be able to make more time for the things that are important. For living, for breathing, for the girls, for my friends, for my family. And for writing. 

Saturday, 2 November 2013

How to Look After Your Husband #3


Exercise

It is essential that husbands get plenty of exercise in order to relieve boredom and to keep them fit and healthy. Use your imagination to make their cage more interesting. Husbands like to climb so it is a good idea to provide different levels. They like gnawing, running through and hiding in cardboard tubing. They like to climb on and hide in plastic yoghurt pots or flower pots. Some cages come with plastic tubing for husbands to run through but be careful as some of the bigger Syrian husbands may get stuck.

Husband wheels should be solid and wide. Wheels with spokes can trap limbs and cause injury. The wheel should be big enough that the husband's back doesn't bend. Only allow your husband to run in the wheel for 3 to 4 hours at a time to prevent exhaustion. Husband exercise balls without any means of escape can cause exhaustion, and the husband should never be left unsupervised.