The end is in sight.  Or so I'm told.  Although many places still cite 37+0 onwards as term, many specialists are now saying that needs redefining and that true term isn't until at least 39 weeks.

I've never spontaneously gone into labour, it's always followed a sweep.  My waters have never broken on their own, they've always been broken in labour by a Midwife.  The only time i've ever given birth before my due date was with The Preschooler at 39+4 after a sweep the day before due to BP and pain.

Yet despite all that, you start to feel like a ticking time bomb at this stage.

Rationally you know you have several weeks yet.  You know from your own history that the chances of anything happening a)early or b) spontaneously are minuscule.  Yet your mind still plays that dastardly game of 'what if's' because no matter how small the chance is it's still there.  You live in a spasm of hope and of fear that things will start.  You brick yourself at the thought it could happen then scowl in misery when another day goes by without so much as a twinge.

I want her to have as long as she needs.

But I've had enough.

I know all woman say that at this stage but I have genuinely had enough.

I spend most of my time at home on the birthing ball or in bed because of the pain.  I only really leave the house once a week.  It's been like this for months.  Pelvic pain.  Hip pain. Back pain. Sciatica.  Pain. Pain. Pain.  It hurts to sit, it hurts to stand, it hurts to walk.  Turning over in bed feels like my body is breaking into pieces.

It doesn't stop there.  Then there's the Insomnia, i'm averaging around 4 hours sleep a night.  Not good for anyone, especially for a pregnant woman.  Throw into the mix that the person also has M.E.

My emotions and thoughts are unpredictable and unreigned due to my depression and anxiety and lack of medication whilst pregnant.  I swing from harrowing black holes of moods to number grey and the occasional break in the clouds.

Then there's the headaches.  I have had headaches for the past 12 days.  Constant in the background headaches that dull with paracetamol yet never disappear.  Every few hours they'll flare and the right side of my head and behind my right eye will throb vehemently.  Having avoided analgesics for the other pains I'm having to take paracetamol every 4-6 hours daily and it still doesn't cure the headaches.  My GP said I could have codeine but we agreed it would be best not to as it can slow baby's movements and seeing as I have anxiety and panic issues and an anterior placenta this would probably tip me over the edge.

My blood pressure did rise, but then lowered again.  My GP doesn't think the headaches are pre-eclampsia yet does however think they'll unfortunately have permanent residence with me until I give birth.

I'm officially useless.  I can hardly do anything with the kids.  I'm miserable.  The Husband is having to do everything.  I'm missing out on the trips to the park, Thing One's first trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, The Preschooler's first trip bowling.

In 14 years I think The Husband has seen me cry a handful of times, if that.  Yet two of those have been in the past month or so.  I'm finding it incredibly difficult to cope; to exist.

I feel cheated out of cherishing this final pregnancy.  I can't enjoy it.  I know i'm lucky and blessed.  I do appreciate being pregnant.  I don't even possess the words to describe how much it means to me to be having a fourth baby after being told by The Husband that it would never be.  She had other ideas though.  our little surprise.  She obviously wouldn't take no for an answer.

I know the end is in sight,  but the thought of several more weeks of this is overwhelming.

I'm taking EPO as with my other pregnancies, I'm convinced this is what ensured the success of my previous sweeps.  My Midwife has agreed to attempt an early sweep at 39+5 and that was before the headaches.  I'm torn between breaking down into pieces and begging for one now but a) I know she'd say no b) as horrific as I feel, I wouldn't be comfortable trying to 'make' her come this early as if she was ready I'd be in labour, though technically, a sweep would only work if she was ready anyway.  (EPO and RLT prep you for labour but will not trigger it hence why despite popular misunderstood belief neither are natural induction techniques)

I have an inkling she's back to back just like The Preschooler was, nobody realised until he was sliding out.  Sure as hell explained the intensity of labour though,

Still have things to do, I still go to bed and wake up with The Preschooler next to me.  Not looking forwards to evicting him but I need the bedside cot as it provides extra room for co-sleeping.  I think it will be harder for me than for him.  He's terribly enamored with his Sonic The Hedgehog bedding for his big boy bed.

Tick.

Tock.

These final weeks are so precious.

I just wish I could cherish them.

I'll miss pregnancy when it's over.  It's impossible to describe the magic of it.  The feeling of being connected.  Feeling her grow and move.

Tick.

Tock.

Panic Room.

The problem with anxiety is it's irrationality, at times.  You worry about things that have happened and about things that haven't.  You worry about things that are happening and things that aren't.  You worry about things that might happen, or will happen, or won't ever happen or even are happening. It's the past.  The present.  The future. It's little things.  It's insignificant things. It's petty things. It's big things.  It's about you.  About them.  About nobody.  And you can't make it stop.  Ever.  It doesn't matter that the things don't matter because the anxiety ties them into knots until they do. Matter. Until they matter too much.  Until it's all that matters.  You can't stop thinking (and thinking and thinking and thinking) you can't make it shut up or go away.  You can't sleep.  You can't concentrate.  Your brain is riddled with these writhing anxieties until it's crippled and stuttering.  They're snowballing. The worry turns into panic.  You're forgetting to breath. It's like an approaching Apocalypse and you can't run or hide.  It's a film of car crashes that you can't pause, happening before your eyes.  It's the frantic birds with razorblade wings trying to escape.  Trapped in your chest.  Trapped in your head. You can't close your eyes to it.  It's inside you.  You can't get off this ride.  You try to talk about it but it all sounds so silly and your words are ineffective.  They reassure you that it's pointless and you're worrying over nothing.  That it's silly.  That it'll never happen.  That so what if it had happened. They tell you just to stop thinking about it.  To stop worrying about it.  That's the problem though.  That's what they don't get.  You can't.  Stop. You can't make it stop.  Don't they think you would if you could?  That's just it though.  You can't control it.  It controls you.

Like record baby, right right, round round.

I hear the silence.  I try to fill it but the words went away.

So instead I'll post something from, my personal journal that pretty much sums it up.

I’ve not written for a while and yet it was not intentional.  What to write with when the words, they went away? These fingers twitched and this heart stuttered, yet you can’t talk in punctuation.  You need the words.

I feel irrevocably broken.  It’s no clean snap nor delicate fracture.  It’s pieces.  Mainly bits.

I can’t control this.

Yet it’s controlling me.

I’m swinging violently through moods that cycle rapidly.

There’s the incandescent rage, it’s burning my veins and giving my breaths teeth.  My eyes are looking through lens’ made with malice and my thoughts are dripping with vitriol; thick and bitter.  I find myself wanting to break things, to destroy everything with my hands and teeth.  I want to make life bleed.  I’m snapping at everyone, my poor babies have a monster for a mum.  My tolerance levels are reaching none existent.  I’m a lit fuse that can’t be extinguished. I’m on fire.  I’m burning.  I’ll burn you.

Until I’m falling.  Like a stone. Plummeting.

It’s dark, so fucking dark.  I can’t see you.  I can’t see me.

There is no me.

It starts with explosive distress.  The white noise is screaming.  The black dog; he’s howling.  I watch it shred my remains into ribbons and the ribbons, they fray.

Make it stop.  Make it stop.  Make it stop.

Everything is black and red.  Why won’t this noise stop?

& then it’s raining.

It’s raining and I’m drowning.

Violent sobs that choke me.  (Can’t breath. Can’t breath.  Can’t breath)

You can only fall for so long.  Eventually you land.  You hit the bottom.  With a thud, or a splat.  Inelegant and messy.

Into the grey.

Breaths are slow and thick; chunks of misery that stick in your throat.

This is the despair.

Utter despondency.

There is no hope.  No light.  Just the silence and the white noise in sloppy competition.

You can’t see through this.

You can barely move.

This is the harrowing.

Most things pass, eventually.  The wheel turns.  The world tilts.

& then you’re numb.

Life is the grey cat that’s claimed your lap.  It’s going nowhere.  It barely acknowledges you and yet it’s preventing you moving.

You’re inanimate.

The apathy is a new skin, this skin is heavy.

Yet there is a peace here.

Hear no evil.

See no evil.

Think no evil.

Speak no evil.

Do no evil.

You just are, and yet also so dreadfully not.  Anything.  Anyone.

There’s no anger here.  No fear. No distress. No despair.

& no joy.

Until the wheel moves again.

Hell: Soft Play

Something Dark & Evil lurks within.....

Due to various mental issues, yes this girl has issues, it's rare that i leave the house on my own let alone avec l'enfants.  So imagine the grand masochistic mood I must have been in when last week, whilst The Husband was away, I decided to afflict the torturous idea of going to soft play.  If there is a hell on earth, it looks like soft play.

Granted it took several hours for me to fortify the little mental reserve I possess to leave the house then once at the cash machine, the urge to return home was overwhelming.

Once the game was up and The Spawn realised where we were headed there really was no turning back, resistance would have been futile not to mention bloody noisy.

Now before you all go accusing me of being a judgmental old cow, I'll do two things.  First, i'll agree.  We all judge people be it internally via our sardonic little internal narrators or externally through a bloody big gob.   Secondly, i'll judge myself first.  Yes, I was the nervous weirdo who looked like i'd a) escaped from a mental ward b) like I was insanely and indescribably  uncomfortable.  I was the woman who met nobodies gaze and picked out a table at the edge with my back to all other tables and the play frame in front of me.  I'm the weirdo who looked like she could vomit up a pharmacy worth of Zoloft at any given moment and gouge out her own eyeballs with a ball, from the ball pool.  I was the woman with no partner nor friends.  I was the woman who's lifeline was her phone and her crochet, yes I took my fucking crochet with me.  For distraction.  I was the woman who's heart was going like the clappers and was chewing her inner cheeks to shreds.

So now that's out of the way, there's everyone else.

The place appeared to be soley run by teenagers, all of which still looked terrifically hung over from the night before or perhaps even that morning.  Lucky Bastards.

Glancing around the general female population appeared to have more makeup than actual face who's primary reason for being there appeared to be soley to posture and pose.  Duck lips a-go-go I felt like I was trapped in some vile alternate reality of the bogs and expected them to take selfies every few seconds.

Dads were few and far between taking a similar escape route as mine yet choosing to hide at the very back of the venue, with laptops.  Genius!.  The kids will never find them there!

The place was packed, ridiculously packed with at least one party going on.  This however didn't deter some of the parents allowing babies to crawl through the large play frame area.  I mean really?  There's a baby area for them, the place is literally exploding with sweaty little beasts running rampant and they put babies in their paths?  Needless to say it wouldn't possibly be their fault if the poor little sods got trampled on.

Then there's the 'children' who look like they should be at work, breaking all the rules, squishing the smalls as they cause absolute havoc taking over the place.

You get the parents who appear to forget that they have to actually parent as their little darlings push, shove and force their way through the play frames and then decide to take over the baby and toddler area too which they are clearly too large to be in.  As a parent it's your job to accept the rules of the place and bloody well ensure your little gits are abiding by them.  Other people shouldn't have to tell your children to get out of the baby area.  If your cretins appear to forget how to behave around others, trust me, you really don't want other people like me to remind them.  I will eat your children if they piss me off.  Be a parent, remind them of basic bloody manners around others.

I have a rule.  Under no circumstances will I enter the play frame.  None.  As a child I didn't even like slides. Not to mention i'm fat and also pregnant.  The Spawn for told that as this was The Preschoolers first time on the main equipment they were to stick to him like glue.  This naturally  resulted in The Preschooler brandishing an unnatural brand of courage and trying to 'lose' them so that Thing Two had a full on emotional breakdown thinking she'd lost him.

The other reason I don't go in there is the ball pool, who only knows which kids have had a sneaky piss or a quick mouthful of vomit erupt in there. Grim.

Despite it having been years since we last went (yes, The Spawn are that deprived)  they still have failed to install adequate air conditioning so that the rampant hoards of wilderkinder in their over excited exuberant state all look close to a) vomiting en masse b) passing out or c) entering full bezerker mode.

Looking around you see random little children in floods of tears as their parents issue a backhanded 'you'll be fine, now fuck off and play so I can continue my adult conversation, cup of tea and a danish without you' kind of response when all their child wants is to be reassured that their arm isn't broken or their eye isn't really bleeding.

Other children get rescued from being trampled on, their parents rightfully rant about it to their possee of other adults who accompanied them before once again hurling the little victim right back into the thick of it without sticking around to see they're okay.

I'm trying not to sock watch as I idly wonder if verrucas crunch.  I go to my happy place (Hello Mr Northman, why yes I will lick that Gin off of your....) as I try to ignore the extra shine on the equipment that is actually copious amounts of snot.

I bought a jug of juice as it was the only thing I didn't need to take out a loan to purchase and tried to ignore how the cups were all still wet and avoided sniffing them.  I should have brought Gin.

You disappear to the loo, holding your breath as the stench rises like a miasma threatening to consume you armed with a pack of tissues, because there will be no bog roll.  This you know.

To top it off, to really ensure you realise that this is indeed hell.  You were bad in a past life.  This is your punishment. They turn the music up, so that you can't hear your child cry or scream.  It's not even music.  It's fucking Abba.  Kill me now.  Please.

Thankfully the husband on his shiny steed arrived eventually and thirty minutes later the torturous two hours was up, my purse was so empty it was writing bad poetry to me whilst growing a fringe, we were free!  I could breath again.

I did it.  I took the kids out on my own.  You probably do this everyday.  For me however this is an epic achievement.  I did something normal.  Despite the shaking and the panic, I went and I stayed.

Grenade under her tongue

The problem when you are afflicted by several things at once is that you're never quite sure which is the culprit of how you're currently coping or as the case may be not coping.  The lines blur between what is normal and that which is not until you have to ask yourself are you okay?  Or more often than not, how not okay are you.

It’s not the words that 

I need to share

It’s the silences

that I wish you could hear.

The world is flat and grey.  A thick impressionable grey that begs to be reached through, smudged or drawn upon yet you can't even touch it.

The emptiness is overwhelming, it's not around you, it's within you.  Sometimes you exist stupefied within it as it spreads like some vacant barren expanse that you're never quite sure if you're on the precipice of waiting to fall into it or else simply in the midst of it, lost.  Other times it's those million shivering holes, vicious and paralysing.  Carniverous and invisible.

 & I can’t remember if I’m the holes

or the remains.

It's hard to explain why you don't do that which needs doing, the laundry has been ready to put away for days, the pots ready to put away too and they're right in front of you yet you're exhausted mentally because you got dressed today.  You brushed your hair. You may have even had a bath in the last few days. You're remembering to provide answers, of a sort, when spoken to.   You're lazy, they say so you obviously don't give a shit and to an extent they're right.  It's not that you don't care it's that you can't.  You have lost the capacity to care about everyday things.  There's no room to think about them when your thoughts are consumed by breathing in and breathing out.

You're overeating, again.  It's not even like you're hungry.  You don't need this food, hell you don't even want it.  Yet you're eating it.  It's like a compulsion.  You're not even sure why, is it some physical attempt to fill that void inside?  Is it just another form of self destruction, to become the hideous that you feel.

You can't control this.

You lie in bed for hours in agonising silence as you feel yourself suffocate from the inside out.  What is that noise?  That strangulated noise?  Then you realise.  It's you.  It's been so long since you cried, the sound is alien and you can't breath.

You're angry.  You're distraught. You're empty.

Your apathy is deconstructing life around you, demolishing it bit by bit.  It's no dramatic explosion it's mere crumbling through neglect.  There's a handgrenade in your mouth, you're tonguing the pin, it's all the things you can't say.  the things that would blow apart your world.

& I can’t decide the greater evil

The inability to feel

 Or the possibility of feeling

I’m terrified by the allure of

Loaded thoughts

As words poise unspoken

With the potential to blow

Apart

My world

I’m afraid to ask myself questions

In case I discover how to answer them

Everything feels wrong

I am a hand grenade

And the pin is decaying

What would happen if your life was reduced to rubble?  Sometimes you're tempted to pull the pin, just to feel something.  To destroy everything.

Some days I’m desperate for something violently radical to happen, just to check i’m still here.  Underneath all this. That somewhere somebody sees me.  Maybe in time, they’ll hear me.  

I’d introduce myself but I don’t know who I am.

Anymore.

Then there's a small break, a mere crack in the clouds and you're clambering to it on all fours attempting to drink the light in hungry gasps.  For this short time you're breathing. .  You're feeling in colours and thinking in shapes.  Everything is so vivid and bright as you stare at the most inconsequential things in exquisite awe.  There's a fluidity in your movements, an unstoppable stream of words that need to be spoken.  It's like the world's in some subtle dance against your body willing it to move as you see revelations in the clouds.  The energy is electric, you need to go here, go there, do this, so that and you're laughing.....the sensation of laughter is ripping apart your veins in it's insanity.  It feels good. You're laughing in air to empty hungry lungs.  It's like the kiss of sunlight on dead flesh, you just want to feel this for a bit longer, just a little while just a ...

It's gone again.

I'm gone again.

Trying to breath out without

breathing in

the grey turns to black

if you swallow

it swallows right back.

Running After The Rain

At the sound of your 

giggles, falling like

soft rain upon the wall

of fog i’m trapped behind

I can’t get out yet

I feel you

and for a while

the world becomes a lighter shade of grey

my heart takes a gulp

and you’re

like the sunshine

running after the rain.

Tick Tock

According to my dates I'm 11+2 today, according to the wheel of conformity I'm 11+6.  Either way I'm ever nearing the end of the first trimester.  Friday is my first scan.

I'm not a very good anything at the moment, I'm a piss poor wife, mother, person and an absolutely piss poor blogger.  There's not even a half decent singular excuse I can pinpoint.  It's more a general yet crippling malaise of existence.  There's the incredible exhaustion coupled with insomnia that isn't helping, there's the absolute and infinite retreat into self that comes with the removal of medication and the instability of hormonal disruption that comes with pregnancy.

I'm unaffected and ineffective.  I don't know where I've retreated to only that you can't find me and neither can I.  I'm unmotivated and stagnant.  The bubble is grey and impenetrable and admittedly lonely.

I have no words and my lips have stopped moving to find them.

I'm immersing myself obsessively into television series watching them back to back, for in them I don't exist.  I don't have to exist.  Reality dissipates and nothing else matters.  It's another world.

I'm angry and sad.  I'm nothing.

I want to be excited and in a small inaccessible corner of myself, I am excited.  Very much so.  The thought of one more final newborn is simply beyond words.  My heart spasms and swells when I let the thoughts out.  I'm having a baby! It's a gift I thought I'd been denied yet the first trimester is not one that I enjoy.  You have the first positive test and then after that you're winging it on a proverbial prayer until that first scan.  Waiting for everything to be okay.  Waiting for everything to all apart.  There is no proof that everything is okay or will be.  There's no reason for it not to be okay.  The first scan is the next piece of proof, of validity, of hope. After that the bump will grow, movements will eventually be felt, the heartbeat can be heard....all the little signs that prove your womb dweller is there.  Yet right now, right here....you're a castaway within the sea of hope and fear.

It's like you're holding a breath, yet in reverse.  To hold your breath there is a giddy sense of adrenalin. you feel alive.  In reverse, you're waiting to take a breath as opposed to letting one go.  You're deflated and empty.

I am excited.

& petrified.

Empty.

What happens when you have no idea who you really are?  We’re not talking basics such as name, address, history etc we’re talking the inside part, the part that makes you, you.  What do you do when you stare into the abyss that is self only to see, nothing?  Imagine you’re introducing yourself to someone yet you genuinely have nothing to say about yourself.  Nothing to offer anyone.  Empty.

It can be exhausting trying to be somebody, anybody, trying to fill this cold void inside.  You try on different you’s hanging in a ‘to rent’ closet yet they’re uncomfortable and none of them ever quite fit yet it’s imperceptible to anyone other than you.  After a while they become grossly uncomfortable, cumbersome and so hard to wear.  You try and shed the layers yet it’s so cold when there’s nothing underneath them.

So when the energy runs out, you retreat.  Somewhere where you don’t exist and nor do you have to. 

For me this is when my obsessions take over, insignificant obsessions that temporarily consume me, such as reading an entire series of books in a few days or watching several series of the same programme back to back over a few days.  A different world, where you cease to have to exist, where you can disappear.  Sleep becomes overrated as the next fix needs to be had then the feeling of being absolutely bereft when it ends and there’s simply….no more.  The emptiness is overwhelming.  

You need to fill up the soul vacancy again…with something.  You need to try and be someone again.

& the white noise inside my head is deafening.

Promised myself I wouldn't weep.

The thing with having long term invisible illness' is that you're either written off or else people assume that you're over it.  It's the ongoing part that people struggle to digest.  That and the general gross misunderstanding of mental illness.

If you have a migraine or a broken leg, you suffer and then it gets better.  If you have a terminal disease you either recover or you die.

If you're slashing at your wrists, having hallucinations and delusional whilst crying 24/7, you're depressed enough to warrant being depressed. The depression is visible and thus real. If you have situation or event triggered depression, people will molly coddle you for a while then it's a 'there, there dear. You'll be okay soon' which translates roughly as 'Oh gosh, how terrible! I don't know how you cope.' which then turns to a 'pull your socks up' after they deem you've had long enough to 'get over it'.

Yet, If you suffer from long term depression, anxiety or personality disorders that was triggered by nothing other than faulty wiring or genes, people rarely know what to do.  They understand neither the longevity nor the peak and troughs that accompany it. You're not seen as ill, you're just flaky and mercurial. You obviously can't have Social Anxiety because they saw you say hello to someone last week.  You're obviously not depressed because a few days ago they saw you smile and Egads, laugh. You, you faker you!

The thing with invisible illness' is, people only accept them in their most visible moments.  They only see the mask.

Mental illness isn't just about the darkness, It's the torturous rays of light that momentarily blind and panic you too.  It isn't just about the blackness, it's the fifty shades of choking grey in-between.  It's not just the drowning, it's the unexpected hard slaps that put you off balance.

It's not that you're okay or even not okay, it's the varied struggle of trying to be okay.  It's the soul cracking realisation that you may never be okay enough, again.

& the mask keeps slipping.

Please Mr Postman

It feels like a lifetime has passed since I had the appointment.  It's almost as if it never really happened at all, all that bravery to finally face things head on, face to face seemingly wasted.  Everything is still stagnant.  Every day I wonder if the postman will drop that letter through my letterbox.  The letter that's a copy of what will be sent to others, about me. That she thinks I have many traits suggesting Borderline Personality as well as some traits of Bi-Polar II and III in conjunction with the depression and social anxiety. The letter that will say I'm too broken or maybe not broken enough.

I need this thing to be named, to know that it isn't me nor even a part of me.  To know that there still is a me, somewhere.

I don't even know who I am any more.  It sounds so dramatic and verging on the ridiculous yet it's true.  It's painfully obvious that I'm not just severely depressed.  That there's some disorder within my personality.  Every day I awaken thinking that today will be the day when I'll find myself again.  When I'll be myself again.  Yet what if there is no self?  what if the past is just different versions of the present.  Different suits that this emptiness tries on desperate to be someone, to feel something.  I have no sense of 'self'.  Who am I? what do I like? I just don't know.  I've tried to be so many different things and so many different people and nothing fits.  Beyond the obvious physical, I have no idea how to describe myself.  How to relate who I am.

I'm tired of shutting things off and shutting things out.

What if there is nothing in the centre?  take everything else away only to find there is nothing left?

It's not merely a  case of wanting to reinvent myself, the minor and rapid reinventions is just the confused fast paced searching for self, that never stabilises.

I'm running out of places to look.  Of people to be.  Nothing feels right.  Nothing feels like me.

The Birds.

It would appear that I no longer have a concept of normality or indeed abnormality.  Upon the topic of death fantasies The Shrink assured me that it's absolutely normal to lie in the bath and imagine drowning, to cross the road and imagine just stopping...mid road, to stare at the motorway bridge and imagining jumping.  Apparently everybody does it.  It's an act of challenging mortality and people find it exhilarating, almost daring as it makes them feel alive.  She asked me how I felt when these fantasies struck.  I told the truth.  Peaceful. Excruciatingly so.

The window is raining again, as in onto my window sil.  Again.  No it's not leaking, the paddling pool that is there each morning is apparently normal condensation, so normal that it only appears to happen in one room in the entire house despite every room having the same double glazing.  With it it brings it's friends to breed so that my current role in life is no longer merely chief scooper of cat shit, it's now extended to mould removal.  Who said glamour is dead?

The Husband had a chest infection so I had to do the school run in the morning, on my own. Pissflaps. It was marvellously uneventful, if you discount the fact a man ahead of me kept morphing into Death. Later in the week as we returned from town on the bus, I saw a man at a bus stop eating a sandwich .... that kept visually morphing into a huge block of cheese.

Having eventually succeeded in making him go to the doctors, The Husband that is, not the cheese man, whilst waiting in the chemist for his prescription I predictably begin to browse the hair dyes when I turn around only to see neither The Husband nor The Toddler.  Logic would suggest they'd just gone elsewhere yet when has logic ever courted me?  The panic devoured me whole.  They weren't there.  They were gone. Disappeared.  I was alone.  This wasn't planned and I'd had no warning.  Why had they gone?  The world stopped spinning whilst the inside of my head started to spin  instead as I stumbled towards the door.  I could hear my breathing inside my body, it was deafening.  The anxious birds that reside within the chest  started to flap with razor edged wings, as their feathers began to fill my throat. I could feel their frantic beaks piercing my lungs and heart.  I couldn't close my eyes, they were frozen.  You can't cry when your eyes are frozen.  The tears just fall on the inside and rise without bothering to ask if you can swim or not.

The tiny rational part of me listed the places they would probably be yet the rational voice is so small, so tiny that I couldn't concentrate on it.  All I knew is that they'd gone.

It's ridiculous.  I'm a grown woman and yet I was terrified.  I'd been abandoned.  It had been minutes.  It felt like years.

They were only in the charity shop a few doors away, I found out after calling him.  Yet why did I feel so empty?

Sometimes, I fear the worst is yet to come.  That the descent is a continual journey that masticates my brain.  That things will never get better.

I am folded.  I am folding.  I'm unfolding.

World Mental Health Day: Anxiety

The phone is ringing again.  You don't pick it up.  You can't pick it up. You don't even know why. It doesn't matter who it is calling, you can't even say why you can't speak to them.  You just can't.  It's like some frightened bird trapped in your chest thrashing its wings.  You can't breath.  You feel dizzy.  You just can't think.

You're making plans in your head about going somewhere, doing something yet the thought of leaving the house and actually doing it, alone, make you rigid with some sheer and utter panic.  You just can't do it.

Your partner goes out for the evening.  you can't sleep because you can't stop imaging them being run over or mugged.

You stand breathless watching your parents car pull away with your children in the back as they go round for tea and for several minutes all you can imagine is the car crashing.

When travelling in car or bus you constantly have scenarios of a crash in your head until you're convinced you're going to die.

You lie awake obsessed that there is something horrible going to happen to you that you can't control.

You're occasionally paralysed with abject terror.  You don't know what of.  You don't even know why.

There's some all encompassing sense of foreboding.

You spend ages trying to find a way to contact someone by e-mail because you seem absurdly unable to phone them.  If you do psyche yourself up enough to do it you have to do it instantly, before it passes and you become terrified of it.

You can't meet anyones eye.

You  dissect everything you say and do, convinced everyone thinks you're a total twat and they're only tolerating you out of politeness.

So you banish yourself to emotional and social solitary confinement.

You're too scared to say hello.

You can't wait to say goodbye.

One minute you're sat on the bus and the next you feel sick and disorientated, none of the windows are open and you can't breath.

You're walking round the shops when suddenly, everything is spinning.... the lights are too bright...the noise is too loud...you can't think.  Your brain is slamming around your head and your stomach hurts. You can't remember what you're supposed to be doing and for an instant you can't remember where you are.

You did the school run yesterday yet today, you have an indescribable inability to leave the house.

It's all silent.  It's all invisible.  It's all inside. You can't see it and I can't show you.

Woe is indeed me.

Nosewatch: all's quiet on the nose front, insofar as to say there is as yet no red lump of doom, it hasn't been knocked out, pulled or lost and is actually somewhat cute.  Maybe this really will be fourth time lucky, neh? However, it does bring back that niggling affliction of more-itis.  Piercings and tattoos really are terribly addictive. However I've ruled out more tattoos until The Toddler is older as the thought of having him clamber all over me in my sleep with new tattoos in place is quite eye watering not to mention that i'm fast running out of things to sell to fund any such frivolity.  The main problem I have with piercings is that i'm actually awfully unkeen on so many of them, i'm a fussy old bugger.  I'm personally not interested in genital doo-dahs, micro dermals leave me with a huge case of the '..but really, why?' ditto with stretching and with my ghastly crap blood i'd most likely bleed to death if i so much as toyed with the idea of my tongue (however, I must confess to finding the enforced lack of eating somewhat enticing) it really doesn't leave that much left.  I have my wobbly, crepey vile navel done, it was the second attempt and has never been taken out, ever, despite being in there for well over a decade and through three pregnancies.  I have had my lip done for around 12 years, I have four holes in one ear and six in the other and now have my nose done (for the fourth time).  I fear an eyebrow piercing would simply cry out for battle with 'pull me pull me!' to The Toddler et al.  I rather like Tragus piercings yet I have a hideous fear of the sound, I completely agree that it's simply irrational and yet I just image a huge abysmal pop and crackle which induces a need to mentally vomit.  I told you, i'm a fussy bugger.

It's cold, freezing really and despite the intial orgasmic flurry of snow it's now just cold, cold wet and icey.  I know that by now we should be passed the forced civility of discussing the weather but it's cold I tell you! Nipples like bullets. The toddler doesn't know wether to feed upon them or to hang his coat upon them.

I'm sorry for being scattier then usual lately with scant updates few and far between, however I'm awfully consumed by emo-ism lately, I fear if The Husband knew just how far advanced my emo-ism is, he'd rather fancy a divorce.  It's the two edged blade really, medication versus none medication.  Unfeeling versus feeling terribly too much.  Eyes full ice versus eyes flooding with water. Oh and what better way to tackle the fact I've gained nearly a stone, a stone i tell you! then to binge.  Excessively.  Constantly.  I am nought if not my own ruin.

I decided to re-henna my hair due to the ugly site of roots, now don't get me wrong i'm terribly partial to the grotty roots of grunge with every hair colour other then natural ones and black.  As much as I love being ginger, darker shades seem to suit my ghostly pallor and eyes (yes the eyes that I'm still not certain as to their colour having lived the majority of my life with blue/grey eyes that shine green when one cries to having The Husband and The Spawn inform me that they're actually green) So I threw in a cube of CaCa Brun for good luck into the sludge of CaCa Rouge and wha'd'ya know?  I have a rather lovely dark reddy brown that has striking copper highlights in daylight.  Success, what an awfully strange experience.  However, it was bloody irksome washing the bugger out,

Right best be off to make some ridiculously sinful cheesecake, just to keep the blubber company whilst contemplating a mug of mothers ruin, it is Gin O'Clock, right?

There's a hole in my nose, dear blogger, dear blogger, there's a hole in my nose dear blogger a hole.

Doomsday or probably Friday to you.  For a so-called short week (The Spawn didn't return to school until Tuesday) it seems to have somewhat dragged out something quite monstrously long and terribly yawnsome.

Yet along with the undertow something drags me 'neath it all and locks around my ankle tug tug tugging me down in the depths of neverwhere.

It's often hard to choose between knowing you're broken and remaining numb and feeling broken and yet unnervingly alive.  The two staple foods for my soul have returned to nourish it, both music and books yet with it is the raw wound of hopelessness with the bitter itch of lonliness.  Swings and rounabouts, swings and roundabouts.  The Husband would rather I kiss and makeup with Zoloft if only to stop me playing my music, whilst my tastes are eclectic and alternative his are extreme.

The Spawn have seamlessly re-entered school after their Christmas holidays and The Toddler is regaining his  day time territory marking it all over with gargantuan tantrums, still could be worse, at least he's not doing it with piss.  Yet.

Having been literally consumed within the bestial belly of The House for the majority of the past few weeks due to illness and abysmally crap weather I finally ventured out on a mission to get pierced.  Random? I know.  What can I say, i'm one of those people who don't 'do' appointments be it hair  tattoo or piercing, once the idea has germinated within my mind I get incredibly tetchy until I get it done and only NOW is good enough. So at the mere taste of freedom, it was docs on feet and The Toddler on my back and all systems go, irregardless of the fact it was bloody cold.  In the 90's I had my nose pierced three times, yes three.  Once with the despicable gun and twice with a needle.  Unfortunately each time I got the dreaded lump of doom and consequently removed the piercings.  I've missed it. I fear it's yet another little part of the lost me stamping her emo feet demanding to be reclaimed, just like the replacing of the charm i wore around my neck for many years 24/7 yet lost it nearly a decade ago and have felt naked ever since.  Two and a half miles and two large plasters later we reached town.  My docs which had been broken in before Christmas were in a sulk of their own from lack of use and decided to return to their initial petulant state of pretending to be Yorkshire terriers and thus snapping and biting at my heels with ever step.  Naughty boots.  Bad.  So imagine my utter disgruntlement when my chosen piercing parlor informed me that their piercer wasn't working that day.  Really?  Seriously? Then the next choice informed us that their piercer only works Saturdays  are you kidding me?  The third places charged a fiver more and my perky pride refused to go there due to a bad experience in the past.  Patience is not a virtue I possess, I wanted my nose piercing and I wanted i piercing now goddammit (& yes, the inner me did indeed stamp her little feet, she has much smaller feet then me, she's also funnier, more intelligent and prettier too)  Often my own impatience equals my stupidity levels.  Had i possessed an iota of sanity or indeed a modicum of rationality I would have simply ventured back out the next day yet where's the fun in that?  So we wandered to a new place, stepping over and around the portly crack exposing Virgin Media men working there into a small lair behind it where a small young thing with pretty purple hair and far too much time to execute her eyeliner skills agreed to do it.  However, rather then a needle she inserted some strange plastic block up my nose with a stud auto loaded into it and pressed.  Arse.  Bugger.  Usually a piercer worth their salt will explain the process to you, ask your preference in jewelry etc Not this one.  Wham, ow, bang thankyou maam.  Oh dear.  Granted there was no swelling, no blood and virtually no pain but there also appears to be a very long stemmed stud with no bead, screw, L or back of any sort on the end of it inside.  Oh well.  So now it's a waiting game to see if the dreaded lump of doom will arrive uninvited however this time bitch, i'm so ready for you.  I am armed with chamomile tea bags.  Take that.  No doubt it will arrive in time for The Wedding and i'll look like a septic wench of skankyness.  Joy.

Will I ever learn? probably not.

I had a conversion last night with Thing Two whilst making her cry brushing her hair and spritzing it rather obsessively with anti-nit stuff I casually asked her what her favourate animal was and was somewhat surprised when she declared a pig.  A  pig? I asked.  Why a pig?  To which she replied 'Because they give us all the best food' well my little chickadee I can't really dispute that.  I do so wish she'd have picked something more apt for a sweet 6 year old girl like a kitten or a bat.  The day before I asked her what colour hair she'd have if she could have any colour in the world to which she took upon herself a derisive tone and a look that simply said 'oh dear mother. really?' and replied with an awfully haughty 'The colour it already is thankyou very much'  I'm beginning to think she's not mine.

Best go,  The Toddler is being terribly neglected.  I have the fears.

I sense infliction in the air. Help me disappear

It's that time of year again  yet one has to ask when is it really not that time of year of late?  The days are 50 shades of grey swaying between damp, wet and wetter.  The air is heavier then a resolute sigh making one need to chew though it rather then breath through it so that if you breath in you might forget to breath out again.

Even the rain seems heavy, more akin to thumps then drops as they linger longer then is appropriate for a mere aquaintence upon your lashes as if allowing your sorrow to inflate then further.

It's cold.  Cold enough for heating on 24/7.  Cold enough to issue a short sharp slap when you open the window for air, desperate for air as you braille read your way through the grey, as it edits and erases the autobiography of your soul. Trying to clear it away with your finger, to finger paint something (anything) to prove you were here..  Just trying to breath.  Just trying to think and indeed to not think in equal measures.

There's infliction in her eyes.

It gets to half four in the afternoon and the grey disappears and gives way to black.  An all consuming blackness that swallows your thoughts.

& the drugs don't work they just make you worse.

I can't seem to see. I can't seem to breath.  I can't seem to be anymore.  & I can't stop the the thoughts that crawl  and slither out of the gloom. I can't seem to see what's wrong yet the strange days are coming home again.

My head is screaming yet my lips are dry from their silence. The words, they went away.

& she's fading.

Everything feels acutely wrong.  There's a wrongness in the air.

So in the absence of alcohol, and in leau of an increase in medication it's time to break out the Multivits again and in particular Vitamin D.

For those unaware, there has been a suggestion that a deficiency in Vitamin D can contribute significantly to M.E, CFS, Fibromyalgia, depression and a whole host of other health issues.  Don't get me wrong, I'm as sceptical as ever.  I did experiment with supplements in conjunction with my usual medication last year and I can't say I noticed an effect, however it can't hurt right?  We all need a little little light through the dark sometimes.  Maybe this year I'll try one of those nifty spray vitamin d supplements.

Help me find myself., inside myself.

Everything is so grey.  I need a raincoat.  I need a phone call.  I need a big hug.

The strange days are coming.

The sky is an all encompassing grey, thick and sludgy and hungry, devouring both light and colour until everything turns grey.

It's suffocating to the eye and mind alike. I find myself trying to overcompensate through colour, bright tights and shining nails to try and disguise the bruise coloured dress that adorns my thoughts.

Everything feels slower and heavier, even breathing appears slow and insignificant.

The summer is well and truly over yet rather then an exploded paint box of colour heralding the arrival of Autumn the gray has consumed the fire and passion and burning colours.

I can feel the slow tugging hand of yet another m.e slump trying to drag me beneath the undertow.
Time for action.

The Husband is an awful sceptic towards the benefits of MultiVits, then again he remains a sceptic to most things yet when plagued by one of the awful invisible illnesses with no cure and few star players in the arena of treatments, you'll find yourself looking towards working with your body to try and encourage It's own defences knowing that if you can't who the war at least you can win a few of the battles. So the current thinking in some corners of the science world is that a large proportion of the population are deficient in vitamin D especially many sufferers of CFS, depression and Fibromyalgia. To many people this could prove to be a rather significant finding in coping with what are, let's face it, absolute bastards of afflictions. So in the name of science I'll give it a go. Don't get me wrong I'm not expecting miracles but even a small improvement would seriously help. Afterall, what have I got to lose, really? And what better time to experiment then now as blimey, if there's one thing the grey has definately swallowed, It's the sun.

Moo Moo Moo

Rewind to around four months ago and you may recall The Teapot Chronicles . I'm sure you will be immensely relieved to discover that the teapot is still here and even more marvellous is the news that so is It's lid, here that is, unlike my sanity but that is somewhat of a no brainer (a bit like The Husband). I'm still rather plagued with the psychosis of ensuring each evening all pieces are present and accounted for and safely in their carry case where they should be. The carry case that is cruelly partially transparent which only serves to make it all the easier to torment me when pieces go awry. Unfortunately there have been several spoons missing in action, presumed dead, yet the 'there is no spoon'mantra has so far prevented me from clawing at the paintwork and ripping up the carpet to find them. If I try incredibly hard and self medicate with copious amounts of chocolate I can temporarily suspend all belief that four spoons existed let alone any notions that they may be indeed necessary.Temporarily.

Recently Thing Two rediscovered the rather charming farm she received from My Mother several Christmas' ago. It's the rather sweet Rosebud Farm from The Early Learning Centre which I try so very hard to adore yet I can't help but be aggravated  by the shocking lack of pigs, I mean really....a farm without pigs? Not to mention the absurd presence of ducklings yet no duck and a cockeral and no hens! How bloody negligent of them! Then there is the horse that looks suspiciously like a giraffe, Yes, on a farm. Irregardless of It's misdemeanors it is awfully cute and yet I can count on one hand the amount of times Thing Two has bothered with It. She simply doesn't 'do' that kind of play as the ignored dolls house will attest to. She appears utterly appalled by the idea of having to set things up.

Until recently that is, when The Husband gutted tidied her pit room. Suddenly she sparked an interest in it and sneaked the buggery thing downstairs much to The Toddlers sheer delight. You see, The Toddler is a real Toddler who actually plays with such things and remarkably enjoys them too. He is deliriously attached to the two cows and goes on these barmy quaint psychotic rampages with them shouting 'Moo Moo Moo' incessantly.

Yet Houston, we have a problem. The farm consists of pieces. Multiple pieces. Multiple necessary pieces.  Vital pieces that are intrinsic to our very existence and should one go AWOL it would render the play farm experience as we know it ruined for ever more.  Just thinking about this is tumulting me into a twitchy state of panic.

Every night at tidy up time I have to launch a full scale animal search and rescue mission enlisting Thing One and Thing Two who usually find many of the animals in The Toddlers oven, roast beef anyone? I try to remain ambivalent for to reveal the true extent of my frantic anxiety only makes the animals hide harder. Gits.

It doesn't stop there though. Seriously. It gets worse. The level to which my scantily clad sanity stoops knows no bounds. The pieces have to be arranged. Yes. What's worse is that I actually have a small perverse pleasure in doing this, It's immensely satisfying for the soul. Everytime The Toddler or Thing Two desecrate and pillage one of my lovingly arranged scenes a voice inside of me cries. A lot. Because quite frankly It's not bloody fair and really rather mean of them!

I tried changing tactics and tucked all the pieces up safe and sound for the night inside the farm, but it just wasn't the same. It didn't feel right. So I waited until their bath was ready and secretly rearranged them.

The nightly tidy up is about to commence.

The farm and teaset are both strewn across the room.

Be still my beating heart.

Oh shit.

I need gin. Quickly.

Not an Emo. Honest.

Please excuse my somewhat erratic posting, unfortunately I'm still somewhat at the mercy of an illness trough.  I'm one of the slaves of the invisible illness'.  I can walk, talk, cook and generally exist therefore I'm obviously fine. There's nothing to see here, there's no flowing of blood, no burst organs, no crutches nor bandages, neither cuts nor bruises and not a temperature or rash to be seen.  So obviously there's nothing wrong. 

It's all on the inside where you can't see and don't know where to look.  The M.E triggers the depression and the depression triggers the anxiety.  Circles and circles and circles again.  And I'm trapped.  Inside myself.  In this body and this head. They're hungry carnivorous villains that extinguish and devour the very core of who you are.  There's a reason you don't 'know' me, I don't know me anymore.  Maybe there is no 'me' to know.  Or maybe she's in there, somewhere, silent all these years.

& she's lonely.

Here comes the rain again

Finally the rain returned, it smells renewed and fresh outside.  The rain has banished the sickly humidity and the ferocious heat.  The clouds may be grey yet nature is shining.  I don't see beauty in the sun I see it within the contemplation and reflection the grey brings that makes you have to work to focus and fathom. It's calm.  There's an essence of clarity.

Sometimes in retrospection it's the small things we do that are echoic of our state of mind that are meaningless at the time, yet wholly representative of us.

When the depression has a tight grip on my hand and we walk side by side down morbid paths I like the curtains closed, I abhor open windows, my posture is broken and bent huddled in long layers, I forget to turn on lights.  I suffocate in silence and the weight of the air. The small things that always matter yet I fail to notice at the time. I'm alone.

In the moments of clarity and as close to stable as I can get, I have an urge to open windows, to feel the air kiss my flesh, to get inebriated from a gluttony of inhaling it in frigid gasps as if to banish cobwebs from the soul. I stare at the sky as if finally believing my thoughts can touch it and touch upon others.  I sit straighter, walk taller and have an intolerance to layers revelling in air on flesh.  I turn on all the lights and let in the music again. I speak with my voice and not just in silences. I'm only lonely.

If only for today, I'm throwing open the windows for who knows when the rain will fall again.

it's always raining in my head....