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.

My own prison

There is nothing to say not really.  There's everything to say.  Words seem impotent at times and repetitive yet the meaning has been swallowed.  I'm trying to translate these thoughts but they're all vowels and jagged shapes.

Everything's grey.  Again.

So grey.

There's nothing I haven't said before.  There's everything I haven't said before.  It's all so rigid and pointless.

A perpetual state of drowning.

I wasn't waving.

Yet there was nothing to see here so it was inevitable that you essentially saw, nothing.

Look right through me, see right through me.

There's days when a crack of light seeps through making the shadows dance their truths.  My soul contorts and knots as it twists towards it, hungry for it's touch.  Guzzling the light so fast and so deeply it chokes.

Because it knows.  The inevitable.  The crack of light is but a crack and it's transient.  

This solitude is excruciating

& with the departure of the light, so goes the warmth.

Because it's not just grey.  It's cold.  Stone cold.  A coldness that paralyses.  A coldness that drains.

I'm afraid to start thinking in case I can't stop.  I'm afraid to stop thinking in case the thoughts freeze.  What if that's all I have?  All I am?  Thoughts.

& what if some of us simply have to be nothing?  What if without the nobodies the somebodies would cease to exist for everything needs it's opposite to anchor it's existence.

It’s like I’m spinning

or maybe it’s the world that’s spinning

and I’m unable to spin with it

So I shake myself by the proverbial shoulders and with angry inflections I impress upon myself the I have's in the hope it will eradicate lack of I am's. 

At times the drowning is violent, a fornication of the shadows and the light as they fight to dominate the other, yet I am the darkness, or the darkness is me.  It's exhausting, and essentially futile.

Other times there's an element of peace, when you give in to it for a while.  At first you float and then the sinking starts.  Without the struggle it's almost pretty, it always was the pretty things that kill us.  It's like gentle hands pulling and luring you downwards.  You belong here, they whisper.  They want you, they impress. The hard angles and rigid edges melt away, into shades of fluid grey welcoming you home.  You are the mermaid of this ocean, you're not drowning you're a part of it.  Don't speak, they can't hear you from here.  Shhh.  Don't struggle, it'll only exhaust you.  

Fingers smudge through the shades of grey as you read through the notes you wrote yourself upon the wall the last time you were here.  

everything blurs

and life is just 50 shades of grey

and yet I dream in colour

I sometimes wonder

if I found my voice

and used it to scream

would it shatter the grey

if I clawed at it

is there colour underneath

somewhere?

Trying to breath out without

breathing in

the grey turns to black

if you swallow

it swallows right back.

& then you remember, you can't scream under water.  As you choke upon the vowels.  Not all peace is peaceful.  This silence is terrifying.

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.

Woe is me navel gazing

Now the shit has finally got real, with an impending appointment with for want of a better term, the shrink team, I find myself questioning everything.  The depression first started to manifest when I was around ten years old.  I first hinted at problems to a doctor a whole fifteen years later.  In the past 8 years I have spent 1.5 of them pregnant and on and off a total of around four years on anti-depressants.

I'm thinking back to un-medicated times when I was most happiest, in my late teens and early twenties.  It was easy to dismiss the depression as typical teenage goth crap, yet it's not the depression, the self harm and the suicidal tendencies that I find myself questioning, it's the other parts.  The times when I was mischievous, hyper, bouncy, creative, flirty.  The times when I was incensed and incandescent with rage and vitriol.  These were the times I always thought were real, as they punctuated through the suffocating dark yet now, well now I'm beginning to wonder if there was ever anything remotely normal about them at all and if they were just as alarming as the depression.

There's things I did that aren't necessarily out there by any means yet when compared to the rest of my life back then, looking back they seem a little, to be frank, wtf-ish.

I'm beginning to wonder if I've ever truly known who I am and if the me I miss, was just the flip side to the me I am now.

Part of me fears a further diagnosis yet another part of me craves the relief to know that maybe none of this is truly me, the reason I'm so many mismatched parts is because not all the parts are me.  That maybe I can be fixed.  That it's not my fault I'm broken. Yet the other fear is, what if there isn't an explanation and this really is just who I am.  I can't bare the possibility that this is it.  Forever.

Sometimes I feel like a ball of nothingness that inhabits a body it doesn't even like trying on the skin and personalities of people that don't really exist hoping that one day I'll find one that fits and has my name inside.

I have two names yet I don't feel like either of them.  The medication flatlines my personality.  There's no spark.  Nobody is home.  I just exist.  Sometimes I crave to come off them again, just to feel yet I'm afraid of what I'll feel.  Afraid of what I'll do or say.  Petrified that the faux clarity will pull the pin of the hand grenade that's in my mouth and I'll do or say things that can never be reversed.  Things that will blow my life apart just to feel something.  Just to do something.  Just to try and be someone new, again.

World Mental Health Awareness: Suicide.

This post may be triggering for some.  

The first time I wanted to die I was a child.  I ate nearly a whole tube of Bonjela because it said to not exceed stated dose.   I thought it would kill me.  I loved the taste and figured that would be a nice way to die.  I didn't even puke.  I was disappointed.

I once took a lot of painkillers.  I didn't die.  I didn't pass out.  I didn't vomit.  I didn't go to hospital.  I just slept, longer than usual.  I couldn't understand it.

I never wrote a note.  I never told anyone before of after.

Suicide. We've all heard of it, perhaps our lives have been forever changed because of it.  I'm not going to talk about the people who commit suicide nor the whys.  I'm going to talk about the not so often spoke about people, the forever suicidal.  To feel like you want to die yet to not act upon it.  Not because you're weaker then those who do or even braver.  They're entirely different.  One is fatally suicidal and the other is terminally suicidal.  To be terminally suicidal is to not want to die necessarily but a desire to not exist or to even stop existing.  Essentially you don't want to 'be' any more.  Death seems the only logical path to this.  Sometimes you're terrified of death, other times the fear disappears and you flirt with death.  You envisage ways of dying.  Ways of making sure you die. You fantasise about doing it.  You want it. Yet, you do nothing.

You close your eyes in the bath and imagine drowning,  you may even go under the water and hold your breath.  You look at the bathroom tiles and wonder what pattern your blood would make if you smashed your head into them hard enough.  You image falling down the stairs and the strange lifeless angle you create at the bottom.  You stare across the motorway bridge for just a few seconds longer than necessary as you wonder what it would feel like to jump off it.  You're waiting for the traffic to stop and for just a second or two you imagine yourself walking out into it.  You're taking your medication and you imagine taking them all.  You accidentally cut your finger when cooking and briefly consider running it quick, hard and deep up your wrist.

Yet you do nothing.

In some perverse way not doing anything becomes your punishment.  To disallow yourself the exit you desire.  You imagine the ones you'd love would be better off without you because you're bad, at everything.  You can't change.  You're broken to the core.  Things will never get better. They deserve better, so much better.  You don't want to leave them.  You realise that no matter how much better of they'd be, it would break them.  They're too young to hate you and you don't want to be the reason for their despair.  So you forbid yourself to go.  You don't deserve to make it stop.  You might be empty yet they love you, and you want to stay with them more then you want to leave them.  It's not them you want to leave.  It's you that you want to leave.  There lies the crux of it.

You don't want to die.  You just want to make it all stop. To make it stop.  To make it stop.

You can't be someone different or someone new so you'd rather be nothing at all.

So rather than living to die, you remain dying to live.  Holding on instead of holding in.

It's hard to describe how you can be suicidal yet categorically state you won't kill yourself.

My children saved my life.  The only reason I'm here is because whether they want me or not, I refuse to leave them.  They will do beautiful things that I can't and never will.  I want to watch them be beautiful.

World Mental Health Day: Self Harm

***This post may be triggering.

You've probably seen the deather children, swathed in shining black as they profess black roses and doom or the radically fringed emo's who's tears are star shaped and coated with gel.  Their scars are part of their uniform.  I remember in my youth, walking into pub toilets, all fishnets and pvc to touch up my armour of black kohl.  A young waif of a girl stood in a wisp of latex, her pale arms fully exposed, on show even, proudly advertising her ruby scars as accessories as a cruel smile twisted upon her lips.  Even a neon arrow couldn't have made them more obvious.  Her outfit appeared designed to showcase them.

I never showed mine. I didn't want people to see. Long sleeves and a wrist full of bangles.  Should they slip, a nervous laugh and a roll of the eyes as I cursed my frisky pet rabbits for having scratched me.  It was plausible.  People didn't suspect a thing.  They were hidden.  They were mine.  My secret.  My shame.  My release.

Self harm can take many forms be it blood letting, starvation, burns, alcohol abuse, drug abuse etc they're all a form of inflicting harm upon oneself.  I was a blood letter.  It started when I was barely a teenager.  I wasn't even aware it had a name nor that other people did it.  It started with nail scissors, jabbing them into my wrist and dragging them, again and again.  Sometimes it would be my thigh or my stomach. Often methodically and slowly.  Other times frenzied slashing.

It isn't about suicide.  You're not trying to slit your wrists.  You're not trying to die

It's about control.  An attempt to externalise everything that's within.  To make something visible out of an illness that is invisible.  To try and release the poison that's within you.  Sometimes it's a punishment, for being stupid or ugly or fat or disgusting.  Other times it's cathartic.

Physical pain is infinitely easier to deal with and to understand than mental pain.  So you try and make the pain in your head physical instead.  To extract the venom.  To cleanse.

I started at about age 11 and didn't stop until I was 23.  As I got older, scissors were often traded for razor blades.  It became a ritual, the removal of the bangles, the attack then the aftermath, that eerie silence as you watch the blood flow.  Then come the tears.  The sobs.  You're near convulsing with them.  You only stop because you run out.  Your head feels about to explode pain from the sheer strength of crying.  You clean up, hide your tool of choice.....back on go the bangles and down go the sleeves.  It's like it never happened apart from the reminding sting.  It feels good.  It feels real.  It's something to focus on.  You feel in control for a while. You feel alive for a while.

It didn't get better as I got older, it got worse.  More vicious.  The insatiable need to do it increased, it was like some throbbing in my veins begging to be released.  A white noise in my head that needed silencing.  Yet throughout it, there was control.  I never went too far.  Never needed medical attention.  Nobody had to know.  It was something I could finally do right.Even at work, I'd sneak to the toilets with scissors from my desk tucked under my sleeve, sat on the closed toilet lid, shaking.  Choking on silenced sobs. Everything was spinning and only this would make it stop, for a while.

Other times it was near daily ingestion of painkillers in some futile attempt to kill this inner pain.  To try and make it stop.

The thing that finally stopped me was having children.  I made a vow.  I couldn't let them see how vile I was.  How much I repulsed myself.  How faulty I am.  I haven't done it since.  That was ten years ago.  The urge is still there, it never went away.  It's worse, without an exit.  There's no way to let any of it out and it's filled me to the brim.  I'm drowning in it.  Poisoned.

I recently got a tattoo, to cover the scars.  The tattoo is representative of The Husband and The Spawn.  The very people who made it stop.  It's beautiful.  They're beautiful.  It's beauty ensures I can't go back.  It isn't my arm any more it's theirs, and I can't ruin that.

World Mental Health Day: Depression

It seems criminal to not write about mental health on world mental health day so here goes, the first of three short posts dedicated to various depression related things.

Depressed is one of those words that is overused and not truly understood by so many rather like the words love, hate, starving etc.  You love your child yet you really like ice cream.  You may hate homophobia, yet you only really dislike Brussel sprouts.  You're probably not starving and hopefully never have been you're just rather hungry.  See where I'm going with this?  How many times have you heard people dramatically declare 'Oh I'm so depressed today' the chances are if someone says this then they're one of the incredibly lucky people to have never actually experienced depression.  They may have had a shit day or two, they may jolly well be a little sad yet they're not actually depressed and it's highly likely that within hours or maybe a day or two they're not even a little sad anymore let alone despondent.  It's because of the throwaway nature of the word and it's misuse that there is so much stigma and misunderstanding surrounding depression.

Depressed isn't an adjective, it's a serious health condition.  It's not fashionable nor is it as transient as people believe.  Depression doesn't merely taint your day a little grey for an hour, it paints it black and within that blackness it attempts to destroy you.  You can't see out and nobody can see in.  You're screaming without a voice. You're drowning yet people just see you waving.

There doesn't have to be a reason for depression.  Often it's resultant of an incident or trauma in ones life and can with help be overcome through addressing the reasons behind it. A few lucky people genuinely can overcome it eventually and move on.

Then there's the other type.  It's just faulty chemistry.  It feels like your brain is faulty and wired up wrong.  Nothing happened.  There is no event to come to terms with. There is no reason nor cause.  It's just inside you, a parasite that feeds upon your very soul until you're unsure as to what is you and what is the depression.  It controls you as it devours you.  It's spiky black and angry.  It's fiery and vicious.  It's a thick grey smog that you can't see through.  It's the bleached out nothingness that expands within you.

It would be great to just be able to pull your socks up, to get over it, to stop wallowing, to move on.  You have no idea how much we would love for that to happen; for it to be that easy.  To be that simple.

It's like a carnivorous tumour that you can't cut out as it's entwined around your entire being.

Even if you have depression yourself, you can empathise with another yet you can't ever truly understand it nor them understand your depression.  Everyone's depression is a unique beast that manifests and torments in different ways.

Yet, it won't rain all the time.

So should you see someone who suffers from clinical depression smile or laugh.  Don't think them cured.  Don't use it to trivialise their depression.  Sometimes we laugh or smile because we have to, it doesn't mean we feel it just means we recognise it's the desired or appropriate reaction.  Sometimes it's the only way to stop ourselves crying.  Sometimes it's merely a short respite as the world lightens from black to shades of grey and we're making the most of it whilst we can, treading water until that proverbial hand snatches around our ankle and pulls us under again to drown.

Here inside my head.

At first I wasn't going to post this and then when I did post it I was thinking of deleting it  Yet no matter how difficult it is to leave it here, it will stay because although people often mention mental illness such as depression and anxiety, how often do we actually talk about it? as in really talk about what it's actually like?  Hopefully you won't be able to relate to this entry but if you do, even a little at least now you know you're not alone.


How to explain to your children, why you're so crap?
They don't understand and I don't know how to explain it to them, The Husband pretends to understand depending on his mood and yet even I don't fully understand the clusterfuck tangle that is essentially me.  It's so hard to separate and dissect what is illness and what is me.  Often I fear, what if the me has in fact been devoured and beneath it all, there's nothing left.

I lost myself somewhere and I can feel her waiting for me to find her only I don't know where she is and everything is so blurry and everyday her voice fades.  Some days I can't hear her at all.

I rarely ever take my kids anywhere on my own.  I rarely take myself anywhere on my own.  It's not that I can't be arsed or that I don't want to.  I'd love to.  I just can't.

I once spent nearly four months barely leaving the house.

The Husband virtually goes everywhere with me. He keeps me focused.  I just have to follow. Often when I'm out my mind wanders; I become confused.  I become disorientated.  Sometimes I just have this nameless tangible panic; a feeling of utter dread.  Yet it's all inside, invisible.  I can feel it stretch and swell until it's choking me and yet something prohibits me from showing it, from having a voice. Just keep on walking.  I usually remember to smile and nod in the right places whilst I try to remember why and how to breath.  I've spent decades faking it, appearing to be okay.  It's like I inhaled this despicable smog and can't exhale. It's like you're drowning and everyone else around you is breathing.

At times I'll get these sudden random impulses to do something or go somewhere without knowing why or how or even if I'll stop.  Sometimes it's the beach or simply into the distance other times it's to the left or into traffic or off a bridge, just because.  So once again, I follow him.  He knows where we're going.  He knows how to get back. In the silence I'm concentrating on banishing the impulses.  Only the silence has voices, my own.  To not think, I'll talk.  And talk.  Blathering and mithering the poor Husband to death, just to stay in the here and in the now.  Just to stay grounded. I have no sense of direction.  The thought of going somewhere alone leaves be frigid and frantic.  I may never get home.  My ankles may collapse on me (again).  I may lose a child somewhere.  I might forget to go home.  I might get on a wrong bus. I might run away.

Because everything is blurring.  I'm in some bubble, that renders me unable to connect with anything or anyone.  I am neither affecting nor affected.  It's so hard to breath in here.  It's so hard to be in here. A ghost of a ghost of a ghost of someone I used to be.  I feel so numb.

I'm awkward and petrified.  Actively avoiding social interaction.  Painfully panicked when it's deemed necessary.  I lose track of conversation, I have nothing to say. I have no voice.  My name is Nobody. I drift away. Yet occasionally there's a spark and for a minute or two I remember how to talk.  I'm starving for conversation. It's like I'm given 120 seconds of air and to hide the greedy gulping gasps of it I talk...and talk....and talk. I talk too much and talk too fast. I'm smelling colours and hearing shapes  For a minute or two I'm somebody, I don't know her name yet but she's on fire.

When did everything get so bright and colourful? It's clear and beautiful and I feel like skipping.  I can feel my blood literally fizzing in my veins.  I'm fucking superwoman.  I'm a frickin' fairy.  I want to dance.  I want to fly.  I want to learn to sew and crochet and knit and make jewellery.  I want to start up eight businesses.  I  want to meet all the people I adore yet am usually too petrified to meet.  I want to go here.  I want to go there.  Throw open the windows, I'm breathing.  Turn on the lights, you can't see I'm glowing. Turn on the music, turn it up! I'm dancing, I'm singing.  Come twirl with me.  I'm naughty and flirty, i'm obsessing over house moves and holidays that will never happen. I'm writing and thinking.  I'm feeling and smiling.  My is my blood fizzing? I want to talk to everyone.   I can't sleep. My thoughts are racing until it's just a mass of never ending white noise.  I cut my hair at 2am.  I spend days bleaching it.  I know who I am.  I know who i'm going to be.  It will be awesome. It's all so fucking clear now! I take an identity off a rack and try to make it fit.  I'm awake though the night.  I need to buy these things.  I need to.  Why did I stop smoking? I want to get drunk! I'm wearing makeup!
.
I am a stone.  I'm falling. Why did she go away? why is everything so grey?  I'm about to hit the ground.  The joyful fizzing is now sparks.  I'm an inferno.  I'm raging.  I punctuate the silence with snapping.  I'm vicious and shouting.  I hate you.  I hate everything.  I'm hypersensitive to smells and sound and they send me into a simmering homicidal rage. I want to destroy everything and take it all apart. I don't deserve this!

It's dark.  So dark.  I've forgotten how to speak.  Everything is so fucked up.  Nothing will ever get any better.  I can't even cry.  I'm disgusting and stupid and ugly and fat and irritating and dirty and empty.  I'm empty.  I can barely move.  I lie awake for hours terrified and alone.  It hurts.  Everywhere.  My limbs feel like lead, my veins feel empty and bruised. I am Nothing.  Everything I've ever done was wrong.  I'm not where I'm supposed to be.  I've failed.  I'm failing.  I'm invisible.  I smile imagining the pattern the blood would make on the white bathroom tiles if I banged my head hard enough....just to make it stop.  Just for a little while.  I'm holding my breath beneath the water, just to let the silence consume me.  Just for some stolen peace. I'm not good enough.  They all deserve more.  They all deserve better.  I am a canker; I'm rotting.  The clothes don't fit.  My hair is a mess. I don't know who I am.  Why did I think this would work? Why did I think I could be someone? I don't deserve these second hand clothes or pretty shoes.  Oh god, the guilt.  Sell, why won't these things sell? Take them away from me.  I'm so alone.  I'm so scared.  The itch to externalise is overwhelming me.  Old scars throbbing. Shut up.  Shut up.  Make it all shut up. Help me disappear. I deserve this. I'm slipping.  Falling.  I'm not waving, I'm drowning.  I'm dissecting and analysing everything I said, everything I did.  I'm such a twat.  Everybody thinks it.  Everybody knows it.  They must have laughed when I walked away.  I'm just a joke.  I'm not even funny.  They're glad I walked away.  They're wondering the best way to avoid me in future.  Freak.  Freak.  She's a freak. My head hurts, it's so full. So loud in there.  It won't shut up.  God damn this voice inside my head.  Goddamn this voice it wants me dead.  I am the voice.  The voice is me.  Make it stop.  Make it stop.  I am hollow.  Things will only get worse.  There is no happy ever after.  I can't see through this misery.  It's devouring me.  I have no voice. It's so dark and I can't see. Everything is wrong.  It'll only get worse. I'm broken and I'm breaking. I deserve this.  It serves me right.  Can't breath. Why am I still here. I can't do this.  Make the pain go away.  Make it stop.

I'm numb.  I'm back in the bubble.  Disconnected and disassociated. Just keep moving.  It's just another day.  I know when to laugh and when to frown.  I don't have to feel it to do it.  I'm watching myself from the outside.  Everything is stable again.  Everything is shades of grey. Not up nor down, I just am.  For now.  I'll follow him outside for a while.  I'll try to stay focused.  I'll try to smile. I'm only a little petrified. I'll avoid you and you and you.  It's really not you, it's me.

Circles and circles and circles again.

How do you tell your children you're mental?  How do you explain to them why you're often so crap? Why Daddy takes them to the park on his own yet Mummy never does?

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.

Well hello

Did you miss me?  Even a little, even at all?  Could you be terribly kind and lie a little and say you did?

So, in the proverbial post coital of Chrimbogasm, how was it for you?

I must admit it was a somewhat eerily calm event here, remarkably unsettling.  Obviously The Spawn had a ghastly good time yet I can't help shake the feeling that Christmas didn't really reach inside me this year.  Sure I cooked the food, and ahh'ed at the lights yet felt terribly empty as I sat lamenting the sorry sight of our battered tree yet unable to even gather the spirit to fix it.  Granted in part my parting of ways with a bittersweet dear john letter to Mr Zoloft mayhaps have had some hand in this as that lonely little flame reignited and tried to melt the barren wasteland that had smothered it.  I should probably stick to experimenting with my hair rather then my medication.

I must have blown the right elf this year for under my Christmas Tree was a kindle! (Thanks Mothership)

I was however struck with the temporary lurgy of doom, yes utter DOOM I tell you which had me wallowing in the confines of stumpy the bed for several days.  You know your husband loves you when he empties a potty of your vomit for you whilst you shiver and wibble in bed.

We're not really New Year kind of people what with us being agonisingly anti-social yet even we surpassed ourselves seeing as The Husband and I spent the entirety of it not speaking.

My children will never know how much  of their christmas chocolate I've stolen and consequently scoffed when they weren't looking I truly love them.

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.