life

And through light, darkness is clearer

It's life Jim, but not as we know it, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

First things first, this photo is actually from the previous holiday in which I started to feel that the black dog was starting to gnaw upon my doors once more.  I’ve known for a while that the signs of depression were creeping ever closer but I have been in utter denial.  Partially because I’ve been in the metaphorical hole so many times that I was sure that falling back in was impossible and partially, in all honesty, because I’m stubborn as fuck.  I have a tendency towards depression.  Always have.  Just writing those words makes me want to punish myself somehow but it’s true and always will be, no matter how many times I pretend to the contrary.  It’s a part of my make-up, these misfiring neural pathways and somehow I’m trying to own them.

I’m just back from a joyous few days in Portugal with an old friend who I knew I could trust with a bit of a meltdown and who wouldn’t judge.  I flew out with my daughter and was greeted with warm hugs and understanding and for the first time in over two years was able to fall asleep in someone’s arms.  It was so beautiful and relaxing and emotional to actually allow myself to just be held and sleep.  And that’s how the rest of the days progressed; playing with my daughter and beach trips galore followed by friend therapy, hugs and wine in the evening.  It took me all of 12 hours to start crying on him.  Sometimes, when you’re low, kindness is the thing that tips you over the edge…

Anyway, I must have known that this was coming as at some point, about a week ago, I got back in touch with my therapist who saw me through an extremely tough few years a long while ago.  In these times of black, she is almost the only person I trust and certainly the only person I feel I can legitimately sob to for an hour.  And that’s what I did today, on full moon, on Beltane on this turn of seasons and pagan festival of yore, I bawled my wee eyes out until we had a mini action plan and we had laughed that basically all I need to do for a modicum of sanity is plant some lettuce.  Sometimes what you need is really fucking simple.

Not that I’m saying lettuce is the answer to all psychological problems because you know, that would be ridiculous but actually, is there any situation that isn’t at least a little improved by getting your hands in earth and growing something?…  The thing is, I’m really happy as a mother.  I love my daughter, I love being able to spend this part of her early life with her and I’m grateful for every giggle and every snuggle.  I’ve just lost myself as an individual and have somehow allowed all of my tendencies to expect failure as standard to re-permeate my existence.  I have no job, I have no lover and I can’t even grow a fucking lettuce!

So, today, I see in Beltane with a whisky in hand and a tear in my eye and I pray that the blossoms of spring will carry me with them as they turn to the light and radiate it from within.  I search for surety within this flux, to know that I can reroute these neural pathways once again and to believe that I am worthy and I am enough and to run with the dreams I have and to believe that they too, are enough.  So for now, I’m taking all the Bach remedies that seem appropriate, sitting in lotus and drinking my national spirit and trying to access the strengths of ages past.  I do believe that recovery is entirely possible, perhaps it’s just time to accept that I need to balance potential relapse into my future.

Darkness is just the other side of light, it’s what comes before dreams…

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The end of an era?

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My daughter hasn’t breastfed all day.  She refused this mornings feed although, she still wanted to sit with my nipple in her mouth and the same has happened this evening.  I’m both heartbroken and hopeful.  Why does parenting always seem to result in such a dichotomy of emotions?  No wonder we’re all a wee bit barmy!

I mean, for anyone who has practised baby led breastfeeding and gentle parenting, self-weaning is the dream we hope for.  It’s the thing that many people tell you is impossible… ‘Oh, you’ll still be feeding her when she’s at school’ and ‘she’ll never stop by herself’ and ‘you’re babying her’ and other such choice parenting titbits from the wankers who always proclaim to know better.  Well, my just turned 2 year old seems to have decided that she’s done.  She clearly still wants the closeness and was insistent upon cuddling up to my naked torso.

5 days further in and she now calls them boob snuggles.  Still no actual feeding though.  I do wonder if this is one of those ‘feeding strikes’ that one reads about and in a few days she’ll want to restart.  I guess time will tell.  I’d have thought the milk will remain for a while.  From my perspective, I’m finding parenting a wee bit of a struggle without the defined 20 minutes of breastfeeding that used to bookend my day.  I miss the closeness and the warmth and the feeling of her relaxing into my body as she nursed.  I miss knowing that I could settle her from trauma with my breasts.  Like the time she fell down the stairs and was pale and scared and I just breastfed her for a few minutes and it was as if it had never happened.  Magic boobs!

I miss my baby.  I love my toddler.  She’s getting so grown up already.

If I had a husband, I’d be trying for another baby right about now.

Wanting to breastfeed again can’t be the worst reason anyone has ever had another kid, surely?

But, as a 38 year old very single parent, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that this may be it for me.  I’m so grateful for how easy it was for us and for every moment of special bonding that we got to enjoy together and for the feelings of overwhelming love when she made her little happy dinosaur noises as she fed, which way surpassed the pain of engorgement in those early days.  The frozen cabbage leaves were still vital and I did remain topless for 2 weeks (my postie still can’t look me in the eye!). I’ll tell her all about it when she’s older and hopefully one day, this will be a joy that she can experience with her own children and I will reminisce with pride.

Exposed

It's life Jim, but not as we know it, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s been a long time since I’ve been held by anyone.  Just held and stroked and allowed to relax into a warm body and strong pair of arms.  And yesterday, it finally happened for me again.  I allowed myself to be held, to snuggle, to give and receive reassurance, to murmur whatever the semi-platonic version of sweet nothings are and it was so lovely.

The last time someone held me was when my daughter was around 2 weeks old. She’s just turned 2. The last person to hold me was my daughter’s father before he decided he really couldn’t bear to be around us any more.  So it’s been nearly 2 years in which I have been the giver of many hugs, have held and soothed and reassured and loved my daughter over and over again.

I wouldn’t change those years but the truth that remains is that I haven’t been able to let go in that time.  I’m never off duty.  Always there, always listening, always loving and at the end of the day it’s still just me, alone, listening to her breathe over the baby monitor as I watch netflix until I feel myself pass again into a numbness from which I could potentially sleep.

And always accepting that loneliness was a part of single parenting but never really allowing myself to feel it as a burden or indeed engaging with it in any way other than in passing. But after yesterdays cuddles with a man of whom I think highly, today has been filled with tears and longing and a real sense of exactly what it is that I’m missing and with no real idea of whether this will ever change.

So this evening for me is about watching a sad movie and doing the ugly crying and allowing myself to feel as utterly alone as I am.  Then I’ll wash my face, get some sleep and wake with gratitude for my daughter, I’ll resume pretending to myself that I’m not lonely and the show will go on.  And maybe, hopefully, someday soon, I’ll be lucky enough again to have a moment or three with someone who can throw light into the darkest corners and remind me where my edges are.

 

Still me, still standing

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Sometimes, being a single mother is gut-wrenchingly lonely.

I sit here, alone of course,  with face dripping as I finally release and let the tears flow.

Mostly, I just don’t find the space in which I can allow myself to fall into sadness, I have a baby to take care of and her needs come first and I don’t have the time to indulge in my own emotions.  But today, today has been different.  Today I realised that I was developing feelings for a man who has been messaging me daily for a matter of months.  Real feelings, real hopes, real me, real future.

So, the question that I have been avoiding because I didn’t want to pop the bubble, ‘how is tinder life going?’ I asked and he replied ‘Well, I went on a date last night and she’s still messaging me so I must have done ok’, I nearly threw up on the floor in Waitrose.  Spontaneous physical response to emotion is not a sensation I have experienced for a long time.  And despite the sensation of my insides heaving, even then, I found gratitude for experiencing such a real feeling that was just mine to breathe through.

Thing is, having a baby rips down all your barriers.  You are so in love with this little person that everywhere you go and in everything you do there is love emanating from you and you are free.  Free in the oddest sense really as on a daily basis my routine completely revolves around my child.  But free in the sense that there is a little person who needs you so completely and whose needs you fulfil so completely, that there is no need for the sort of barriers and walls that we all tend to create around ourselves when it comes to fully experiencing love.

And yes, obviously, the love one has for their child is of a different sort to the kind that one might experience with a significant other but there is a commonality.  And I found that I let this man in, which is not something I do as a general rule, in my entire adult life I can only think of one relationship in which I ever allowed myself to need.  It ended horribly.  Anyway, the point being is that I’m finding myself to be more open than ever before, because of the depth and nuance of the relationship with my child.  And what that means is that my barriers seem to be gone.

And so I’m hurt, a little deflated and lonely again.  But actually, I’m still happy, I still have an amazing child and somehow, I’m still able to experience all the joys and all the heartache involved in letting someone in.  I’m so unbelievably grateful for that.

I am grateful that I met this amazing guy who ticks so many of my boxes and I am grateful that he has let me down somewhat and I am grateful that I still miss him and I am grateful that this journey has led me to crying in my meditation practise on the living room floor.

I know that I’m alive.  I’m fucking buzzing with life.  And I’m excited to know which sensations this new me can experience next.

It’s now the next night and yes, I’m still fucking grateful for this experience.  I do, however, feel as if I’ve experienced a break up and so duly got round one of my oldest friends and drank two and a half beers and smoked three whole cigarettes.  Which was also fucking amazing.

I guess what’s really happened is that I’ve realised that I do still have feelings that are just mine and that don’t relate to my child.  I’m still me.

And that’s just the best revelation I could have asked for.