Musings

Wrong in the head.

April 8, 2016 by Merry 1 Comment

This is not a post about my physical health (which is good, so far as I know) but about my mental health, which has not been. If you’ve wondered where I’ve been for a year, I’ve been locked in my head, or fighting to get back, latterly at any rate.

It starts though, with my body and what went wrong with it. A curious spiral of events that perhaps began a year before with a breast lump scare and triggered every “the next thing is just waiting to destroy us” circuits. And last summer a whole set of things came to a head in a row that sent me into a spin I simply couldn’t get out of. For the first time in my life I just couldn’t write about it; some combination of a need for privacy, the girls being able to read and online life now clashing with real life made it impossible – without that release and with a desperate need to appear normal and functioning, I completely lost it.

It started with a run where I lost my breath half way round and simply couldn’t get it back. it didn’t come back for days and I found myself struggling to feel ‘full’ of oxygen and with a pain under my right ribs. Eventually I went to the doctor, got a trainee who told me it was asthma and tried to send me away. Luckily another doctor came in, took my blood pressure which was sky high and sent me for an scan while looking rather horrified I’d ignored a nagging pain in my side for 2 years. I was a bit shocked by my blood pressure which was well into ‘deal with it’ levels and terrified when the scan came through in 3 days. by the time I got there, I’d developed a second horrible and constant gnawing pain in my left too, undoubtedly linked to the horrible burpiness and upset stomach that I’d been struggling with. i tried to summon the courage to ask the scanner to look there too, but couldn’t and anyway she was busy checking out my other bits.

Unsurprisingly I had gallstones, a nice healthy pancreas and rather unnervingly a ‘growth’ in my liver. “It’s not an uncommon thing,2 she told me. “I think it’s a haemangioma, but it’s bigger than typical and it needs checking out with a different scan. We’ll be in touch.” The follow up call told me that I had to have an MRi as sometimes these are all through you, including in the brain.

Well. So much for my blood pressure.

I’d already convinced myself I had stomach cancer (and I really believed it) and that wasn’t helped by going back to the doctor and being sent for an ovarian cancer blood test. I was falling apart quite fast. I couldn’t impact my blood pressure and I was non-functioning to the point I couldn’t have a conversation, not even with the husband, any more.

Luckily I got myself to the doctor and happened upon an amazing one who got me on to antidepressants for anxiety, worked out I had an ulcer, booked me for CBT and agreed to do a whole raft of blood tests to calm me down about EVERYTHING, one of which revealed my iron levels were too low. (Turns out so were 2 of the daughters.)

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe how dark those months were. I was really, horribly, properly mentally ill. I know it. I lost myself utterly. If the girls ached I thought it was bone cancer, if I twitched, I thought it was a heart attack. I couldn’t look at DH for fear I would see an oncoming train of destruction – illness, betrayal, loathing. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t write, I didn’t function, I didn’t work, crochet, tidy or even really parent.

By the time the CBT happened, chemicals (not least the iron I suspect) had begun to take effect and I was better, though still struggling. After the first appointment I was given a diagnosis of OCD, not the helpful house tidying variety (I’m being ironic, I know it controls live just as badly) but a form of ‘thought OCD’ – compulsive thinking, intrusive thoughts, habits and patterns in ways of doing things. After I stopped laughing, I realised it was true.

All my life I’ve chewed and rechewed conversations, obsessed about what people think or said or did to slight me. I’ve controlled little bits of my life utterly and been made anxious by small changes. I’ve assumed things will happen because I can see them in my head as if they are happening and life has rather led along the path of us being the ‘1 in xxx’ part of statistics, which re-enforced that. I had, for example, to buy secret stashes of face masks and gloves because I just assumed that ebola would get here and I needed to do something to feel like I was prepared. I always feel like I have to worry and have a plan for disaster or it will be my fault if it goes wrong.

Getting that diagnosis was like a light bulb came on. Suddenly I could see that all my little habits I used to control life and turned on me and were controlling me, that I was ruining my life fearing death instead of living it until I do die. And the relief as I began to realise that in fact not everyone lives like this, that the reason I often felt so misunderstood was because so many people just couldn’t understand, was amazing. I thought everyone lived like I did. I thought it was only DH who didn’t and he was weird.

It took a good few sessions but I started to test and push myself, a trip to London, letting the girls go places without texting me, pushing myself to wait out poorliness before needing to check with a doctor, learning to make rational judgements again, not hyper-vigilant ones. And the high point was when the 2 big girls went to London on their own for the day and I didn’t worry all day, not once.

I hold that moment like a glass ball of reality in my hands, my bubble of knowing how it feels inside other peoples’ heads. I think of myself, sat waiting for them in a sunny carpark and suddenly knowing I could handle life again, maybe better than ever before.

I’ve always struggled with depression, I can remember depression at 7 years old, at 11, at 14. What I never really got to the bottom of was how much of that was anxiety. I understand now that much more of my difficulties stem from that, crippling, horrific, incapacitating anxiety, of a level I can only really cope with by maintaining an internal dialogue against it and taking pills alongside that. I’m accepting that now, with the tools to combat it beginning to lodge themselves inside my head.

It’s been quite a journey but, as they say, at least I’ve got my health. (I hope!)

The Ouch.

April 24, 2015 by Merry 3 Comments

I spend a lot of my life managing someone who is strong on the outside and as soft as water underneath. I often describe her as an uncooked egg; she seems hard and perfect and impenetrable but drop her and she shatters. For my brashest child she has the least reserves for dealing with enmity of all my kids. That’s difficult for me to understand because she’s the very epitome of what intimidated me as a kid: pretty, talented, cocky, smart, physically confident and able to scamper with the crowd, toss out banter and volley with the pissartists.

I was none of that and I’m still not. I have always seen myself as small, dull, plain, average. And I was all of those things with the core of internal confidence that others of my children seem to have; 2 at least are quiet but confident, with a sense of self and belief that makes them resilient to harm. Not all the time, of course, but less battered by social bullying and pressure than I was.

These days I build my world among people I believe value me. My husband, first and foremost who is my honest, faithful friend and has made me far stronger than I ever once was. My children who do, it seems, think I rock. My sister who has glued herself to my side these last 5 years and kept me upright when no one else could. Friends of 15 or more years standing. More recently some newer friends who I found myself working alongside to save a club. Bloggers I’ve come to know and love – only a few of them, because I’m not a numbers person and I like to keep to knowing people I connect emotionally with better than knowing everyone not at all.

I know that some or most of those people value me. In my heart I know it. It’s just that if you’ve grown up battling depression, or being the fat one people didn’t go out with because their friends would laugh, or being the person too boring to invite to parties, you never really learn to believe it. I rate myself by who rejects me, not by who welcomes me. I have to self correct that every time. It’s an internal monologue that’s exhausting: ‘you are worthless, pointless, tedious’ alongside ‘he is dead, he is dead, he is dead,’ that requires constant resistant pressure to turn the wheels of thought against it.

Last week a curious turn of events required me to sit in a room while I listened to someone vent their utter loathing of me. It’s not something that happens often; I’m the boss of my business and work alone and tend to absent myself from situations personally that are confrontational or painful. It was the other side of the coin for me, I’m not normally the underling and rarely does anyone really dislike me openly so much they want to take me down. I tend to have relationships that build over time with a few battling corner rubs to start with and then better friendship develops later. Generally people like me more when they know me better, even if they found me hard to take at first. Because I can be hard, I know. I’m intolerant, temperamental and easily frustrated at times.

But it happens. I don’t believe it was deserved on this occasion, so while irritating, I almost feel better for it. It gave me a better understanding about a lot of things,not least the aforementioned daughter who has recently experienced being cut out of a group and taunted with the power that gave them over her. It’s not nice and it is damaging, even if you know they are the ones with the problem, not you. I can do rational when I know someone is being horrid, unkind or responding to feeling threatened by me with vile behaviour.

Far harder to cope with are types of pain that come from realising that a place you thought was safe is not quite what you thought. It’s painful when it’s someone you like and value and believed reciprocated that. I’ve not had the misery of my marriage fall apart but I’m all too aware I might if time and effort isn’t put in, it could. That rejection potential terrifies me. I’ve lived a lesser life because rejection is too hard to contemplate or risk.

And maybe it’s arrogance or a lack of self awareness but I’m not used to people deciding I’m of no value to them, or not something they want to see or have in their daily life or occasional life. And it hurts. It’s not rational to be hurt by that, it’s not even rational to mind really. We all have our baggage and our right to live our life as we want. But it does hurt. It keys into that deep sense of worthless and unlikeable-ness that I have to ride like a wave each day. It awakens the devil that says ‘you always get it wrong, you always fail, we don’t want you ‘ that is at the heart of depression.

That sinking feeling, stomach deep, that turns the world grey while you battle the knowledge you are already failing by even minding.

That sinking feeling that leaves you lying awake at night wondering why you alone are not invited and failing to think ‘sod you then’.

That waft of sad, stale air that says – again – ‘you suck’. And knowing that so low are you on their list to care about, that they won’t even know you minded. Knowing that that wasn’t in their mind, that they didn’t consider the impact because you don’t make it into their list of important people with feelings to guard. It’s not rational, but it leaves a mark.

How I wish I only ever felt the colour and not the creeping suck of grey.

The Gallery – Colour

April 23, 2015 by Merry 4 Comments

This is a hard project to stop. It's been very therapeutic. Part of me wants to square it (but how?) and another part just wants to keep going. I adore it. #ZenMandalaProject #crochet #crochetmandala #FrithaMandala — This is a hard project to stop. It’s been very therapeutic. Part of me wants to square it (but how?) and another part just wants to keep going. I adore it. #ZenMandalaProject #crochet #crochetmandala #FrithaMandala

I’m entirely artistically inept, with no ability to put pen to paper or paint on canvas and conjure up a world of sensory delight.

If my art lies anywhere, it is probably in words.

When it comes to colour, the theory isn’t in my head – at least no further than that half completed colour wheel I failed to hand in on time in 2nd year. Orange and Blue, Red and Green, Purple and Yellow.

And design is perhaps not my strong point either; I’m impatient, hurried, a botcher of work and a shover in of ends. Completer finisher has never been my strength

But making, learning to wind colour together using simple stitches, now that has opened up a world of colour magic possibilities to me. My under bedside is stuffed full of boxes bursting our with balls of colour waiting to be turned into something beautiful – or beautiful enough for me. I’ve taken to having baskets of yarn I like and colours that might suit a project soon scattered around the house – and it is funny how much even a basket of potential project can turn into something that lifts and room and adds a spot of jazz.

The husband calls it crochet mess. I call it installation art 😉

I’ve always been rather staid in colour choices, overly tasteful for fear I’ll overdo it (as previous attempted dramatic decor has had a tendency towards) but learning to let go in small and recoverable makes has unleashed such delight in colour.

It’s unleashed the artist in me, just a little. I’m rather nervous of her and keep expecting her to get laughed at. Ever since the wild sanity blanket, I’ve tended to stick with muted shades and grown up designs. And funnily enough, it’s even teaching me to finish what I start. I still tend towards throwing colour together in an artless jumbled but these days, more often, I’m pleased with the result. I’m even starting to have the nerve to work out my patterns properly and share them. The riot of colour in this mandala is the biggest ‘let go’ I’ve ever done and the first time I’ve ever had the confidence in my design to get people to try out something I’ve made.

The Fritha Mandala is currently in testing with some friends. It’s almost like having a baby. A very colourful one.

This post was written for The Gallery.

The Gallery – Green.

March 20, 2015 by Merry 2 Comments

I don’t have enough green in my life. I don’t get out enough, I forget to put plants in my house (and they aren’t much fun if small boys tend to pull them over anyway) and there isn’t the budget for cut flowers either. I’m so grumpy that I don’t live somewhere lovelier that I probably do lose out on the outside I do have.

There isn’t a green room in my house. There is a sage green, but I forget to go in it and I’m about to turn it sunshine yellow.

So when I looked around my – blue – bedroom yesterday, I wasn’t expecting to find inspiration for green.

What does green even mean to me?

It’s a garden I haven’t made beautiful.

A Dartmoor I don’t live in.

Trees that sometimes make me smile, but it is always a wistful smile.

This week it is also a yarn I have run out of.

But it is also the colour I assigned to Bene back when he was a hope of a bump called Marmite and it is a colour my husband always chooses when we play games.

And, so it turns out, it was the dominant colour in the heap of tat that is on my chest of drawers, dumped in passing by children, picked up off the floor to save sleepy midnight feet.

Random asdortment of green from my chest of drawers — Random assortment of green from my chest of drawers.

The yarn is ready for an April peace mandala crochet project, the pens come from a rep who has become a friend and who I love like an uncle, the thread I wound on to that card when I was pregnant with Freddie. The bracelet I made on a holiday with friends when I was pregnant with Freddie. The bottle was sent by a kindly brand after I lost my CybHer bag.The bookmark comes from my dad in Egypt. The cold remedies and tissues sum up the last few weeks, the tree is Josie’s and there is a faded out bottle of fabric blue, a deodorant that I altered to from spray after my breast lump scare last year.

And a little green car, one of the most precious possessions of one small boy.

I quite like green.

This post is for The Gallery, on the Sticky Fingers blog.

Motherhood – it’s written in my stars.

March 13, 2015 by Merry 1 Comment

“Can you just write a note in my log book?”

“Is there anything for our lunches?”

“Need milk.”

“Have you booked my blood test yet?

“Will you be back to spend the day with me or are you at work all day?”

“Have you paid for my trip deposit?”

“When am I going to the dentist?”

“Neeeeeeeeeeeed milk!!!!”

Most of this – and probably 20 other questions, demands or queries – had happened before 8am this morning, while I was trying to justify myself in a text conversation to some one else, get 4 people and myself ready to leave the house, find my purse and laptop and not cry about the death of my favourite author.

By 10am I had delivered a sobbing toddler to nursery (cue enormous guilt), taken 2 to one school and 1 for a blood test and then to school, had a fairly serious and significant conversation to a governing body, been to work, rescued 50% of my laptop from somewhere I had left it and cried 3 times.

And that’s after a decent night of sleep, not something I get very often. Not something I’ve HAD very often in the last 17 years.

If I could have read my future way back then, I’m sorry to say I might have seen the current state of affairs and been a large step beyond daunted. I think we might have stopped several children earlier. Most days are an assault course of issues to be managed and problems to be solved, challenges that require a hugely speedy gear change from ‘older teen with quiet common sense’ to ‘younger teen with no sense at all’ to ‘toddler tantrum’ mode, time and time again. Most days I get to 10pm and I’m simply exhausted, mentally more than physically. This week I had 31 things on my to do list on Wednesday, mostly work but perhaps 12 or 13 small but time consuming things that needed doing to keep my not so small family running.

One lesson I’ve learned is that while a crowd of small children is physically wearing, teens are much more mentally exhausting, even if, by and large, they are good kids. And all of ours are. The pressures on them build up into pressures at home and mothering it is hard going, a mental agility game with regular hormonal sideswipes coming at you unexpectedly.

It leaves very little time for other concerns; one skill I’ve learned is to think on my feet quickly and try to make the best possible compromise decision that I can but I have to accept that a) that means I won’t always have a spot on perfect answer and b) I have very little tolerance for people with lots of time to ruminate and chew the cud.

I often tell people that I was truly hopeless as a parent when I first became one. My heart was in the right place but my skills were severely lacking. I’ve had to learn to control a temper that is fiery at best and an emotional side that requires me to learn to breathe in and out a lot. I’ve had to learn to be less selfish (and consistently too… 17 years of putting other people first and 15 still to go) and more flexible. I’ve had to learn not to live my life through my kids and let them take their own path and I’ve had to grow considerably in terms of my ability to lead by example and accept they might go a different way. And I’d say I still have a fair way to go.

I’d say I’ve learned most of the selflessness that mothering requires at the side of hospital beds. It’s then that you truly find yourself confronted with what unconditional love is. It strips away everything and leaves you stood opposite Death and all his potential and it strips you naked too. I’d bargain my soul for the life of one of my children and that isn’t something I understood until the moment I first held a child in my arms.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t give £50 for them all to go away and stop asking me things at 7.32am 😉 But the times that are great, watching them grow and achieve and mature, the times we have fun and laugh and love the moment? They make it all worth while.

This is a collaborative post.