Is it depression or is it just me?

Is it depression or is it just me? I don’t know anymore. I am not sure if I ever knew. For with depression you are never quite sure what is reality and what is not. I am not saying that people with depression are all hallucinating or living in a different dimension to everyone else (though of course it helps) I am trying to work out where the one ends and where normal life resumes.

It’s not like a cold which is pretty obvious when it ends; I mean suddenly you can breathe again and you no longer  have a dripping nose or sore throat. With depression it arrives with a bang, or so it seems, even though actually it arrives by stealth in exactly the same way it leaves. A silent mental ghost, though of course you are never sure if it will come back again to haunt you.

I get tired. Very tired. I don’t seem to have the stamina I once did or even the stamina of my peers. And when I get tired, I get impatient, my fuse gets shorter and I have to get away from it all, or else put those I love from me until I am less tired and able to cope. Now is that a legacy of depression? Is it depression? Or am I teetering on the brink of a depressive episode though I don’t know it? Or is it in fact all psychosomatic and merely a reaction to something that normal people have – called tiredness and the way I handle it is in fact normal.

Problem is I don’t know so I blame it on my depression.

Because this I do know I can be pushed into a depressive episode when I am tired. It is something I realise I will live with for the entirety of my life. I try not to think of it as a life sentence but I fear that it is.

It pisses me off not knowing.

Maybe I am behaving normally. I mean loads of people who have traumatic illnesses push themselves harder than those who have not had the experience. Testing themselves, their stamina, and their very existence to prove that they still do have a life.

I don’t know if I do the same, I am not sure for you see I don’t know what “normal” is, I have been “abnormal” for more than half my life now.

Red Nose Day? BAH HUMBUG!

“Mum, mum we have to bring money into school…”

Oh how the portent of the words rocks my world. We are ALWAYS forking out money for things happening at school and after a while it really begins to grate.

Yesterday I was informed it was Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day tomorrow (Today), something I have tried not to notice, bar rummage around in my purse for the requisite £2 per boy so they can wear home clothes for the day, over the past couple of years.

In fact if I am honest I have become rather bored of giving especially when it involves making cakes for cake sales or else signing up to endless sponsored walks that never seem to raise more than £10. It seems so pointless. As if £10 is going to help!

I used to be very enthusiastic but I think I got giving fatigue. There seemed to be endless sponsored this and that or fundraisers for the other. And then I am not all that sure I actually want to give to certain charities either for political reasons, for reasons of a private nature or else because I just don’t agree with it.

You might think reading the words above that I don’t give to charity but I do. I regularly give to people I know personally doing things like sponsored hikes, running marathons, climbing mountains or whatever and to our favourite charities all through the year. Like everyone else I could possibly do a lot more.

And I get cross about the expectation that you MUST support the given charity or fund raiser because EVERYONE else is and if you do not you are a bad person and this is especially the ones that take place at school. There are plenty of times when I just want to shout: BAH HUMBUG to it all.

BUT this year I have been taken aback by the enthusiasm my boys are showing about giving; the fun they are having and it is infectious. It is a revelation for me and I am actually beginning to enjoy myself.

After groaning inwardly at the thought of having to fork out, yet again, I stopped and actually listened to what both my boys were babbling about:

“You see Mum we have to bring in as many coins as possible, loads of them and make this great big nose for Red Nose Day and it’s got to be huge! We’re going to get all the coins from our piggy banks, so can we? Can we?

I was stunned, they were so excited about the prospect of giving away all their money and they looked at me so eagerly and with such great big smiles that I couldn’t help but grin back and agree.

“We’d better raid mine as well then,” I said.

And so this morning we went round the whole house emptying out cupboards and drawers and raiding every piggy bank in sight and had an absolute ball. Getting the coins out of some piggy banks, which were bequeathed by my grandparents, was a bit tricky but I remembered doing this with Granny and how she’d used a flat knife to get the coins out. It was brilliant watching the boys scrabbling about on the carpet picking up everything they could find as Mum made it rain money. Would that I could do that every day!

We took in all the coppers, weighing in at roughly 4kgs – no idea how much it was, in the great scheme of things probably not very much but the fun we had was priceless! And we’ve decided to save all the coppers and loose change again for next year in a great big bottle – all for charity.

So it’s not about how much per se we give, it is about enjoying the process and feeling good about it and encouraging the boys to feel that they can make a difference rather than just Mum and Dad writing a cheque or else going on line to sponsor through Just Giving, this type of charitable giving is personal and fun and actually I think I prefer it.

So look out school, I’m getting my baking hat on and I expect all my (burnt) offerings to be sold!

Just how cringe worthy were you in the 80s (or 90s)?

I have a small blue book in which I wrote poetry when I was at college – bad poetry in fact so bad I just had to share it with you. Seriously cringe making some of this and other bits well… I’ll leave that for you to decide…

 

I’m living in a land of make believe

It’s been built for me

It’s been built for you

When you find it you will never want to leave

It’s where your dreams come true

Living in this land of fantasy

Letting all my dreams come true

Never knew what love could be

Until my thoughts found you.

 

Hardly Girl Power there in the Summer of 1986… now what other little gems have I got here…Actually some in here are so bad that even now decades later I cannot let them see the light of day. In fact if anyone got hold of my Little Blue Book I’d die of shame. Just reading it is making me want to curl up, it is so well…badly written, overt, cloying, so full of teenage angst that it makes my eyes water.

Oh good god I even tried to write sexy poetry…I’d definitely be had by for the The Literary Review's Bad Sex Awards on that!

As an innocent I find you

As the man you become

As the woman you make me

So the moon follows the sun

An entity without one

So one they become…

Grief! You’d have to persuade me seriously hard before I ever even allude to THAT one!

OK this is not so bad…

Complexions of a darker shade

Turn bright green to sharper jade

And confusions still

Bring ought but ill

Till all I can see

Is brooding jealousy.

OK. Obviously thinking about the little tart who nicked my boyfriend when I wrote that one…lovely! Ooohhhh!!!! Now a revenge one, absolute cracker this!

Why do we have to be

Just good friends

I needed you more

Now my heart won’t mend

One day I’ll find you

It won’t hurt no more

And I’ll be free to settle the score

I won’t give up

Not without a fight

So you’d better watch out

I’ll do what’s right

It broke my heart to see you go

I’ll do what’s best

Though it hurts me so

I’ll see you broken and on your knees

I’ll look at you as you beg and plead

But I’ll not help you

And you’ll remember….

Very Goth! Or is it Tammy Wynette?

Screaming!

It has just happened.

It came from nowhere and I feel foul.

I screamed at the boys just now because I couldn’t get The Boy’s medicine out of the bottle properly because I was trying to use a make-do syringe rather than trying to find the proper one among all the mess, as I have the kitchen repainted, and it spilt everywhere. A sticky mess dripping all over the kitchen cupboards, all over my hands and all over the floor, so I screamed in frustration. I threw back my head and screamed. I screamed until I had no more breath left, till I felt my fingers tingle and my throat grow raw.

The boys covered their ears and after I snapped at them to eat their supper and go to bed and leave me alone I holed myself up here, in the hope that I won’t do it again. I hate losing it with my boys and I know I have been treading a fine line lately. I had hoped, as I always do, that I might get away with it but foiled again (it should be my catch phrase).

I’ve been tired lately and fussed and doing too much. Book club and dinner out and The Boy’s birthday, a sleepover and taking on the veggie patch. Not to mention that fact that I have had the builders in since January and now it really is time for them to leave.

I cannot cope with the mess and not being able to put things away and be calm and sorted. I cannot cope anymore with being smiley and happy when I have work deadlines to meet and answering endless very important questions about all the minutiae. I long to scream at them: “Just do it! And stop bothering me!” but I can’t and so the boys land up taking the brunt.

And all the time I feel I am getting more and more out of control and I get angry, so very, very, angry and tired, so very, very, tired with it all.

The boys keep putting their heads round the door to ask me questions and I snarl at them. I am trying to warn them away until I am calm enough to cope with putting them to bed and reading a bedtime story. I know when I venture out of my hole it will be difficult not to blow a fuse again but I must get myself under control. I must be able to say sorry and to smile and to reassure them that everything is OK and that it is not them.

You know it's so very exhausting.

Bringing up boys: I’ll either be visiting him in his penthouse suite or else while he awaits Her Majesty’s pleasure…

Bog Boy is incorrigible, utterly, utterly, incorrigible. But as I always say when describing my youngest I will in the future be visiting him in his penthouse suite or else while he awaits her Majesty’s pleasure. I just hope I won’t be doing both!

He is not a boy who accepts No as an answer especially if he thinks he can get one that is more favourable.

Take yesterday for example as we drove home form The Boy’s Birthday Party.

Bog Boy: Mum? Mum? MUUUUMMMMM?

Me: Yes Bog Boy?

Bog Boy: Can I ask you a question?

Me: You just have.

Bog Boy: Mum? Can I ask you a question?

Me: Yes what is it Bog Boy

Bog Boy: “Can we have the music on?”

Me: No Bog Boy not now Mummy and daddy are talking.

Bog Boy: But I want the music on

Me: No Bog Boy. NOT now

Bog Boy is silent.

Bog Boy: Daaaaaad

Me: No Bog Boy! No music!

Bog Boy, matter of factly: I am asking \Daddy not you

Me: Bog Boy! The answer will be No I said No music

Bog Boy: But I am asking daddy a question.

Me: As long as it’s quick you may ask Daddy a question

Bog Boy: Daddy can I ask you a question

Daddy: Yes Bog Boy you may ask me a question

Bog Boy: Can I have the music on?

Daddy: What did Mummy say?

Bog Boy: She said No

Daddy: What do you think I should answer then?

Bog Boy, hopefully: Yes?