Vaut le detour?

Everything happens for a reason, they say. 

I'm beginning to wonder whether all the multiple problems and difficulties I'm experiencing in my attempt to buy a house in France might be the universe's way of telling me I'm making a dreadful mistake. 

I thought I wanted to be here. I love it here. I thought I would be calm here, and centred. I thought I would be able to relax, write, be myself. 

But now I think perhaps this is not my place. I will have to rely on other people to help me - all the time.  I will be a drain on their time and a drag on their goodwill. I'll just be getting in the way of other people's lives. I don't have anything useful to contribute. All the skills and competences I have developed are pointless here, they will be of no value or use to me, and of no interest to anyone else. I will be an outsider.  I will be an interloper. I will be a laughing stock. 

I was brimful of ideas about the house, the garden, the things I might do here. But it turns out these are all wrong. There are all sorts of sensible reasons why they won't work out - and it just makes me realise I will be out of my depth and making a mess of everything. 

At least in the UK I seem to be able to muddle through the car-crash of my life, pulling it off most of the time with a reasonable amount of dignity and sometimes even with panache.  Here I will be a novice at everything. I might be able to appreciate the finer points of French poetry but I don't even know how to ask for my cheque book in the bank or explain my own mortgage. 

I think perhaps I am too old to make a fresh start. What is the point? It's not as if there's anything to head towards, any meaningful milestones along the way.  

I thought that a place in France would help me improve my writing: but I don't seem to have anything to say. 

Absence

When you were ill in hospital, you said you didn't want any visitors. You said you would be home soon, getting ready to re-book the holiday in Cuba that you missed. You were healthier than the rest of us, with your badminton and your pilates, your diet of fruit and veg, your breezy walks with the dogs every day.  

You had a great life. You travelled the world, trekked in the heat of the Sahara, the cold of Everest base camp and all the spaces between. You loved animals and the beauty of nature. You played CDs in the office that ranged from the Stones to Amy Winehouse to birdsong. 

But if I had known I wasn't going to see you again - ever again  -  I'd have visited you anyway. Just for two minutes. Just to thank you for everything you did in the 15 years you worked for me. Thank you for all your hard work, your loyalty and discretion, your tact and diplomacy. Thank you for helping me to build my business while I was raising my family: I couldn't have juggled like that without you behind me every step of the journey to pick up the things that slipped through my fingers. 

You were probably the only person who really understood the full picture that makes up the crazy mess of my life. I can't believe you're not going to be here any more. I wouldn't have made it through these last few years without your hugs, your calm words of wisdom, your confidence in me. 

I hope wherever you are now, there is birdsong and sunshine, mountains to climb, dogs to walk, cats to stroke and some great music on the radio. Rest in peace, you lovely lady. You will always be missed.

Pandoratory

Repel Boarders

“You need to try and work out”, she said, “why you feel so uncomfortable about expressing your emotions”.  It’s the boxes again. I don’t like leakage; I don’t like stuff coming out.  Everything has to stay inside, where it’s supposed to be. All sealed in, watertight. The kitten in the submarine.

I wonder, though, whether the reason I don’t like leakage is not because I don’t want things to come out – but because it’s a sign that the surface has been broken, the defences have been breached, the structure is not watertight. If something can get out, that might mean something can get in.

It’s a Donald Trump-style Mexican border. It’s the Berlin Wall. It’s the 13 foot high welcome we’re extending to refugees at Calais.

Interesting images that sprung to mind there.  I’m not sure the writing part of my brain likes the idea of defences.  Perhaps they are not a good thing. 

Who’s that Trip Trapping Across My Bridge?

I have a vivid memory of my childhood Ladybird book The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  All these fairy tales have been changed now, watered down and sanitised. Red Riding Hood’s 21^st century wolf does not kill grandma, she hides under the bed. And the woodcutter, sans axe, chases him away – probably to a wolf sanctuary.  But in my early Sixties story, the troll ate the billy goats, and then when he was asleep, the littlest billy goat cut open his stomach, the goats jumped out. They filled the troll with stones and stitched him back up. Then when he woke up and paddled in the river, he sank to the bottom and drowned horribly. This was all illustrated in finely-executed water colours.

Which takes me directly to Virginia Woolf – because this is how our fascinating brains work.  She longed for a room of her own and financial independence, so she could write. She was an amazing writer, but she had an unhappy ending, walking into a river with her pockets full of stones.

When I choke down emotions, it feels like swallowing stones.  It’s a physical sensation I’m talking about, not a metaphor. I feel them stuck under my breastbone and sometimes I have so many stones sitting there that I can’t swallow anything else at all. Food gets that far and then I have to sick it back like a colicky baby.  Life can be too hard to stomach, sometimes. 

Better Out Than In?

I was talking to a friend of mine about my inability to express my emotions. He’s a sensible person and he’s known me a long time.  “You have to make a choice,“  he said. “You can get these things out – or you can learn to live with them inside you. If you’re keeping them in, you’ll have to accept them, make them a part of you”.

I instinctively didn’t like the sound of this.  I knew he was right – and I felt that the idea of keeping these things inside, incorporating them permanently, would not be good. So the quest continues. How to get it out? Maybe it will be like lancing a boil. Squeezing a spot. Vomiting cherry stones like the Witches of Eastwick. 

You’ve got to wonder what’s in there, the metaphors that come to mind.  Doesn’t sound like anything good, does it?  (Not too depressed to slip in a photo of Susan... there is still hope for me).

Disorderly

When my sister was a social worker, she had a client who could not let go of any part of his body. He kept his toenail clippings in jars. He kept all the cotton buds he used to clean his ears. He had jam jars of bogies and scabs.  I wondered what happened when he went to the toilet, or when he was sick, or when he got his hair cut. Turns out he never got his hair cut. I don’t know about the other stuff.

There is a man called Richard Gibson in Lafayette who has kept all his nail clipping in a jar since 1978. There is a photo in the Huffington Post. It’s vile.

I expect there is a name for this, I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a recognised disorder. Holding on to stuff can seem very, very wrong. 

Everybody Hurts

So another teenager in our little Smallville circle has taken an overdose.

She decided the first thing to do after she’d taken the tablets was to text my daughter (yes, the one who did this herself a couple of years ago) and say goodbye. Daughter, in huge distress, rushes round to her house. Teenager is hysterical and explains to daughter what she has done.  Daughter calls an ambulance, teenager is rushed to hospital. Daughter has gone home distraught. I am rushing home from the city to see what I can do to console daughter.

I can’t tell her everything will be ok, because maybe this time it won’t be. The teenager in question is very troubled and has tried this a few times before.  Even if it’s a calculated gamble that she’ll pull through, I imagine that repeatedly putting your system, your kidneys, your liver through this poison and its equally toxic antidote, must weaken it over time – so your calculation might be few points wrong, and then… flatline.

As a parent, I’ve done the frantic dash to the hospital. I’ve sat and waited for the bloods to come back every half an hour to see whether she’s going to make it (paracetamol has a progressive effect so you can feel ok at first, but it’s doing irreparable damage to your liver, and so no-one knows at first whether the antidote is too little to late).  I’ve sat through the night in the adolescent psych ward and it was the most terrified I’ve ever been.

So I was pretty surprised that in all of this, the teenager’s mum has found the time to track down my number and ring me to complain about my daughter interfering in their private family concerns.

I explained that she felt she had no choice. She was told about the overdose and she immediately dialled 999 because time is of the essence.  She knows this from bitter experience. She loves her friend, perhaps she has saved her life.  The fact that the parents were downstairs in the house watching TV and the teenager did not talk to them but contacted my daughter instead is not our fault.

What is the world coming to? So much pain and so much anger everywhere. 

Impending

Oh shit - it's coming. I can feel it coming. I can feel it in my bones.  

This morning when I woke up, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for 45 minutes. I had to run an all-day workshop for a client so this was not supposed to happen.  

I made it to the workshop (of course). I ran the workshop and it went really well (of course).  But I can feel it massing up behind me.

There are things I should do to stave it off. I should be downstairs right now pedalling it out on the bike. I should be out for a walk, a run, a swim. But already I can't.  I have seen friends, as many as I can - but my stress is at the house, in the place that should be home.  
A house stops being a home when any one of these things happens:

• You come home to find your husband fucking your friend in the house
• Your work is based at your house so work-people come in and out all the time with their own keys
• Your work is based at your house so when it's time to go home, your work is still there, blinking reproachfully in the office
• Your work is based at your house, so when it's time to go to work, your housework is still there, the Cyclops eye of the washing machine staring balefully at you over the piles of laundry
• You have already decided to sell the house so it's on the market and looks like a showhome with all signs of actual inhabitants removed
• You have already decided to get divorced and have allocated each piece of furniture in a horrible game of His'n'Hers

Since all of these things have happened in the house, it doesn't feel much like a safe haven. 

I was looking forward to getting a new house. 

Happy Anniversary

There wasn't anything much to celebrate about today. He forgot. But then again he always did anyway, so that was nothing new. 

I went for lunch with my daughter, I went out for tea with my friends. The sun shone - and I tried not to think about the fact that no-one wants to buy our house (or any house) at the moment because of the Brexit and so we are still glued-together in a situation that goes from benign indifference to thinly-veiled resentment to shouting and crying. Actually I'm the only one who cries, even though I think overall it's the right thing. 

So why am I crying? I cry for the wasted opportunity. We had such a great life. We had everything going for us. We had fun together, we had a lovely family. A lot of effort went into making that possible.  And therein lies the problem. 

Our fundamental disagreement is that he thinks I let him down - at home, in the business, in bed. Basically I drove him into the arms of other women. Few women are likely to be able to provide the full 5* service offering that I did, but hey good luck with that one mate. Strangely enough I disagree with his view of the situation. 

So on we trudge, still shackled unwillingly together. I am now facing the prospect that all the plans I made will come unstuck and I'll be back to square one. I am really struggling with this. I see a cloudbank of despair on the horizon and I am doing everything I can to outrun it.  Let's hope the wind will change. 

Token of Affection

I went to the Foundling Museum yesterday. It's the place where the orphans, the abandoned children were taken.  When mothers took their illegitimate babies to be cared for, they were asked to leave a token to identify the child in case their circumstances changed and they were able to reclaim them later.  They left coins and keys, hairpins and pebbles. When they had nothing to leave as a token, they snipped a piece of fabric from their skirt or from the baby's robe. So many babies were taken here that the Museum's squares of everyday dress material now comprise the largest collection of 18th century fabrics in the world. 

The displays of these small, poor items are heart-wrenching. So little, yet covering every meaning of their word. 

Noun: a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality or feeling.
Noun: a voucher that can be exchanged for goods or services. 
Adj:  done as a symbolic gesture.

A token is an item that stands for something else. Once you know what it stands for, the item can be anything at all. In this way, shells or small discs of metal become a currency, a slip of paper can be exchanged in store for a gift, a small white stone is a declaration of love. 

We all wind up as orphans sooner or later - this is the way of the world. We are of an age now where, one by one of us, we are losing then burying our parents. As adults, as parents ourselves, we are wise enough and weary enough to know how this is done.  The phone calls, the paperwork, the practical tasks, the triage of items that made up a life. The tokens we choose to keep are not the important things, the valuable things. They are chosen not for merit but for meaning - a meaning that we have created for ourselves. 

And although we are wise enough, and weary enough, and old enough and adult enough now to haul ourselves through this time - we are still children, their children. Whether they leave us at 5 months or 5 years old or 50, no one is quite ready to be an orphan, to hold that token and know it can't swap back for the person who is gone. 

All There Is

Sometimes small things happen, and they get blown up out of all proportion. And sometimes big things happen - but they feel really underwhelming.  Big news comes, and all you can think is - "is that it?"  

Perhaps it comes with age, this ability to incorporate tough stuff and make into the new-normal with barely a flicker of the eye. Is it a skill, a competence, a gift, to be able to recalibrate, just like that? Or does it make me a psychopath, a nihilist, a deadhead? 

I'm pretty certain I might have posted this before, but anyhow here's my take on it all.

https://youtu.be/LCRZZC-DH7M?list=RDLCRZZC-DH7M

Lemon

Once upon a time, I was sad if life served me lemons. Then I learned to make lemonade and that was fine. Just dandy in fact.  

So if on a day that deals you lemons, it dishes you a late-night grand finale of salt to rub into your wounds, I guess the right thing to do, maybe the only thing to do is SLAM. 

Slam around the house. Slam the door of the dishwasher with a resounding ring of glasses chipping against each other. Slam your bare fist into the punch-bag when you pass it on your way to the utility room. Slam out your bitterest version of The Way You Look Tonight on those poor neglected piano keys. Slam your hand in the lid of the piano - on purpose, just so that something else hurts more than the thing that is hurting you inside. 

Comeback

Then suddenly, after a long, cold absence, it's here again.  

It's hard to explain how you know when it's back.  First of all it's just a feeling, a kind of inner shift like a loosening of the bowels, an itch, a hum at the back of the mind.

It starts to build and will not be resisted. Words are sprouting everywhere and cannot be held back.  They take up all the headspace and start spilling out onto scraps of paper, the notepad on the phone, demanding to get onto the page. Insistent, relentless.

I am beginning to think that I understand why this happens. I hold myself tightly closed so much of the time. Safe. Nothing can get in that way. Romping around inside my submarine, closed away in the dark depths.  You can't see in, you can't get to me.

But nothing inside can get out, either. 

So now I am uncoiling again, opening up. What was a fist, fingernails cutting tight into palms, is uncurling. It's been taking a while, but it's here now. Sunshine helped, and some other things.  I'm welling up in a surge of turquoise waves, a breaking of buds, a crescendo. 

Blaze

I am furious. 

I worked for 20 years to make a good life for the family.  All those moments I missed with the girls growing up, so that I could secure their future. All those hours I worked, so that I could pay off the mortgage. All that time I put into...

Hey, you know what? 

I have made a good life for the family. The girls will soon be at college, and I despite all the obstacles thrown in my way, it looks like they will finish school without having to move.  How lucky I was, after all, to grow up poor. I knew how to cut back, make do, and I have got through the worst of the recession without having to sell the house or forgo the private education. I have got them on the right track towards the futures they think they want at the moment, and they are doing pretty well, all things considered. 

Sure I've missed some moments, but I have a good relationship with the girls.  We're close, the love is there, strong and pure. They are good people - I am proud of them. Maybe they will make it through ok. 

I've lost myself in all of this - but I reckon I can find myself again.  I was so full of energy and ideas, there was so much life in me. Perhaps that's still there, like the sun behind the clouds, like the moon below the horizon. 

Maybe I haven't done such a bad job after all. 

Monilophyte

Okay, okay. I admit that was probably not a helpful image, the one I invoked in my last post. I can see how evoking that situation when I'm trying to unravel my feelings probably isn't going to help me.  Here's a nicer one - a fresh green fern. This could be me - small, hard and tightly wound, about to uncurl gently into a fan of soft fronds. Why not?

However the whole "feelings" business is still making me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I tried to come out of my shell, be more authentically Me, say what I thought, behave in a way that allowed me to be myself rather than someone who other people thought I ought to be. I wanted to get my life back to a place where I did not feel so alienated and detached from it. And now look what's happened. 

I was looking back over this blog and it made me cry. I started writing it five years ago, when I had so much hope that I could make things better for myself, even perhaps by the very act of writing.  It builds early to some touching optimism, then plummets fast to the greyness of depression, interspersed with some desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to talk myself up.  It feels like a catalogue of failure: resolutions not acted upon, plans not delivered, aims not achieved, dreams that turned into a nightmare. 

Are things getting better? 

Well I guess they must be, relatively speaking. This time last year I was approaching a desperate rock-bottom. Now I longer feel that I want to disappear into oblivion. I think I am slowly rediscovering a direction, and formulated a medium-term plan. 

So how do I feel? How do I feel? How do I feel? I'm trying, really I am.  I feel sad that I got married for practical reasons, because my head told me to, even though my heart (and my friends) were screaming that it was a mistake, that I was selling myself short. And I feel angry with myself that I missed my cue to walk out of this particular doll's house when I had an open door three years ago. I feel ashamed that I am not showing my girls by example how to insist that a partner will treat you with consideration, kindness and respect. 

I am not The Very Thing. For anyone. That makes me feel like Nothing.  I want to be loved, and to make someone smile when I walk in the room.  I feel that I'm the inverse of this, that I'm on the flip-side of life. Spreading my misery like a disease to the people I get close to, and being too hard to love. 

The Empty Chair

Having said I was in a writing group but not submitting, I then found myself posting a poem after all. Funny how things work out like that. 

The prompt was about writing a letter  -  I was astonished at the number of women who wrote to their miscarried children. It's an experience that is explained away by statistics: the miscarriage rate for women over 35 is 25%, and for women over 40, one in three pregnancies won't make it to full term.  So, yeah, pretty much anyone has been through this experience and it's supposed to be like getting a flat tyre or being gazumped. A bit of a pisser at the time, but hey that could happen to anyone, move on, get over it. 

it struck me that there a lot of women pretending to be ok. 

I've written about this before, although I don't really talk about it - no-one does, do they? Didn't that happen ages ago? Haven't you got two beautiful children now? Do you think it helps to keep on thinking about it? What an awkward topic. It will make everyone feel uncomfortable.  Keep calm and carry on. 

I'm going to lose the last stanza, which is fitting since a 33% loss is in line with my age group.   But now it is floating about like a spirit without a resting place, so I'm going to let it anchor here in the clean white empty space. 

Your growing up marked by

No lines on the door frame

And unlit birthday candles

Write Now

Anyway, my counsellor pointed out that if not-writing makes me feel as if I don't exist, it might be a good idea to consider writing.

It's quite a bold assumption - do I want to acknowledge that I do indeed still exist? I suppose I can't float around in limbo forever, physically vital, heart beating, head aching whilst my mind is a dead, flat fog. 

So here I am. 

I'm trying. The rest of my life still ahead of me, dammit. There it is in the picture: a blank page. 

I had better write myself better, write myself a better story.  Keep your fingers crossed for me. 

Monkey's Wedding

Have you ever wondered what happens to the good time girls when they stumble haplessly into the bad times?

Speaking from personal experience, the first thing I noticed was that the phone stopped ringing.  No invites to meals, drinks, parties, outings from that extended group of friends who formed my wide and lively social circle.

Then I thought – hang on. The phone never rang at this end anyway. This was me, organising all this stuff, jollying everyone along, booking up the holidays, sorting out the picnics, throwing the parties, buying the cinema tickets, phoning out for the takeaways, firing up the barbecue.  After 15 years of being the life and soul for a group of local mums and dads, you’d think I could live off the return matches for a good few years, wouldn’t you.

Not a bit of it. Of the dozens of people who attended all our last 10 years of New Year parties, not a single one of them invited us to them this time, when we didn’t feel like organising one.  I thought about it a bit harder and counted up quite a few couples who had been over to ours for supper five or ten times, and never so much as invited us back for tea and biscuits.

And that’s not even counting the person I formerly counted as good friend who thought that our family difficulties would present the perfect opportunity to make a play for my husband – in my own kitchen while I was serving them dinner! It would be funny if it wasn’t so disappointing. Whatever happened to the sisterhood?

The second thing I noticed was that people who specifically wanted to hang out with a good time girl have no idea what to say when they ask you how things are and you actually tell them. Blimey they didn’t sign up for all this heavy shit. So who can blame them for quietly slinking off to hang out with someone chirpier, cheerier? All this angst and suicide and depression was never part of the deal.

The most important thing, though, is that a time like this sorts the wheat from the chaff.  There’s that tiny handful, the Golden People, who are the ones that do keep ringing. And texting. And emailing. And coming round, or dragging me outdoors.  Who drove us to hospital. Who had us over for New Year. Who drove over from France. Who have looked after my darling but oh-so-troubled daughter, even though it scares the bejesus out of them to shoulder that responsibility.  It wasn’t a surprise – I knew these people would be the ones to do this. They are my four corners, they hold me up, make sure I don’t fall when I need to stay standing.  I wonder why I ever spent time with anyone else. 

And there have been surprises too. People who I thought were business contacts rather than personal friends, who noticed I was not myself, and wrote notes, sent flowers, took me out for coffee and lunch and offered support – without prying, without even asking what the trouble was, just seeing I could do with some support. Bear in mind I put on a damn good show, so it wouldn’t have been easy to spot that I was drowning not waving.  And people I thought were acquaintances at the other end of a flirt or a tweet, who reached out a hand of friendship, totally unexpectedly.

I guess it has to be raining before you can see rainbows.

Not Waving

I tried so hard last week – and for a while it worked, I think. I put on a good show all round. I saw people and did things that made me smile. I felt human, I felt as if I had a life of my own outside this cage.

This week I feel as if that was all the energy I had, putting on the good face just for those few days.  The anniversary of my little one’s first attempted suicide is approaching this weekend and I have such a sense of impending horror I am being stifled by it. 

I am overwhelmed by my life, the heaviness of it, the sucking heavy mud pulling pulling pulling me down.  I can’t remember what you’re supposed to do. Struggling, fighting, that sinks you down, doesn’t it? Staying still and keeping calm, that doesn’t stop the inexorable dragging under either.  There doesn’t seem to be anything to hold on to, nothing solid to anchor me.

I am cold. I am sinking.

Circus

And so, my darlings, the show must go on. 

Every day I get up, I get ready, I go about my business. Smile and jolly everyone along. Put my game-face on and pretend everything is ok.

For what else is there to be done? I go to the concerts at school, and nod a smile at the other parents. I go to meetings and say yes, I'm all ready for Christmas, looking forward to it, lovely, having a quiet one this year. No kidding.

This year isn't like other years. I always ordered all my Christmas food a few weeks in advance, got all the presents ready way ahead of time. Feels like bad luck, tempting fate now. I'm waiting until Christmas Eve.

Can you save someone that might not want to be saved? 

All I can do is try, and hope that in time she will feel better. Perhaps she will grow out of it. Perhaps she will discover something to make her feel like she wants to spring out of bed every morning - calculus, or masturbation, or Greenpeace. 

Or perhaps this is the start of her troubles, the part where we dance along the knife-edge before we tumble into the dark abyss, or move evermore in the grey fog of uncertainty.  Perhaps the rest of my days will be like this now - one breath away from a panic attack, one lip-tremble away from a howl. 

But I'm putting on a damn good show.  Perhaps if we all behave as if things are getting better, that's as likely to work as anything else? Life is one long confidence-trick, after all. 

Whatever

I know that the universe is indifferent to its ants.

But I still want to think I matter  -  to some people, at least. When I feel that my absence would be like taking a beaker of water from the Atlantic, I wonder whether the superhuman effort of clinging on is really worth the trouble.

What am I for? Would it make any difference at all if I wasn't here? The sun would still rise and set, all the wheels would still turn, the trees would grow and drop and grow and drop their leaves. The world would not notice if I were gone, the sound of my voice would not be missed in the clamour and babel hubbub.

The people who would notice my absence could be counted on my fingers. And their wheels would still turn and churn and move them on. Nothing we do makes any difference. Nothing we say makes any difference. Acts of kindness leave no impression. Love leaves no marks.

An ant leaves no footprints.

Sleeper

Sometimes it takes all my effort not to lie down on the railway line. 

I mean all my effort, every fibre of my being intensely concentrated on clinging on to clinging on. I did not want to get up and face the day, go to work. Then when I was at work I did not want to go home. I did not want to be anywhere. I did not want to be.

After those boys got killed in the miners strike, coal picking on the spoil tip, I used to dream about their death, rattling black rushing down and pinning them under its dark weight until the dust stopped their breath. This part of my life feels like that dream. One wave after another of black dirt piling down, heavier and heavier until I can hardly urge my chest to rise and fall under its burden.

I always wondered whether, when it was time, I might be able to simply let go of the will to carry on -  and find that I just gently slid over the edge of the sunset. I thought this might be when I was ninety or so.  Now I can vouch for the fact that wishing you weren't here doesn't make it so. 

Death by my own hand holds a terrible allure like the urge to approach the edge of a waterfall. Two problems though. Firstly, the children. Secondly, the life insurance doesn't pay out. I'm resigned to crashing my car and making it look like an accident, although this also has two problems. Firstly, I might injure someone else. Secondly, I might not die but be horribly injured, trapped in mangled wreckage being cut free for hours then permanently maimed but still alive. So, yes, I guess life could be even worse than this. And interesting that I am much more afraid of being injured than being killed, more scared of living than of dying.

Lack of real imminent possibility (this evening at least) does not prevent me from having a list in my head of favorite spots.

1. Drop off the back of the ferry in the dead of night.

2. The viaduct at the port.

3. In the sea with stones in my pocket.

4. Beachy Head.

All of these places are far enough from home, far enough from anywhere I normally am,  to give me time to reconsider. Perhaps that's no coincidence. Not tonight, Josephine. 

Desolate

So finally we have a diagnosis for my nephew, five years after he lost the ability to walk, then to speak, then to swallow, then to move at all.  We were hoping for...... I'm not sure what we were hoping for exactly, other than we were hoping for some hope.

What we are offered is a scenario devoid of hope, and yet also devoid of certainty (bar the eventual outcome). What will happen next? And when? And how fast? And how long might it all take? Will he live until his next birthday? Will he make to 10, to 18? And with what sort of quality of life will he have?

I'm the oldest child of the three of us. I'm supposed to sort things out, support everyone else. And there is nothing I can do to fix things, nor to console.

We are inconsolable.