Monthly Archives: January 2015

Imperceptibly insidious.

23 Friday Jan 2015

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It starts off as something good. It’s nigh on perfect. The phoning to check you got home safely, asking if you have enough money, wanting to spend every waking moment together. All proof, as if you need it, that they care, this might even be “it”

At some undefinable point the balance shifts. It’s almost imperceptible. The phone call you used to get to check that you got home safely changes. The question “are you home ok?” Changes to “are you home?”, that in turn changes to “where are you?” Or “why aren’t you home?” Almost the same words, completely different question.

You don’t notice. It’s imperceptible.

Their concern that you have enough cash, might somehow turn into “how much money do you have?”, and then it may turn one of two ways; either asking what you have done with your money, or possibly requests to borrow cash, most likely small amounts at first, perhaps getting larger. There may be believable excuses as to why they need this money, the excuses may be increasingly unbelievable, as may the excuses they give for failing to pay you back. It doesn’t really matter, you love them, you can’t say no. Anyway, if you say no they may not ever pay you back the money, and you can’t afford to lose that. Or you don’t want to say no. You love them.

At first you spend all your time together. It’s intense, you can’t stand being apart. You cancel plans with friends and family because you’d rather spend time together, it’s a choice you make freely. Gradually you realise you haven’t seen friends for a while. You want to show off this new person in your life, show off the perfectness of it. You make plans. You meet with friends, your friends and family may be just as enthralled by your new relationship, they may be as charmed as you are. Your partner, on the other hand, may not be as enthralled by them. They pick up on things which seemed perfectly innocent to you and with the twist they put on them, things that family or friends say seem like insults and slights. You may begin to think perhaps your friends aren’t as good as you thought, or maybe you don’t believe it; either way the amount of hassle you have to go through to see friends or family means that you start to not bother. After all you have each other, that’s all you need. It is worth it. The other person is like an addiction, all you need.

Imperceptibly, your relationship with even your closest friends has changed.

One day, you realise that you are not your own person. Your world revolves around this other person. They are the sun to your earth, only like the sun, you only see the light occasionally. Unlike the sun, there is no way of predicting when that will be, or how long it will stay.

They may or may not become physically or sexually violent with you. It doesn’t matter; you suddenly realise you are walking on egg shells around this person. Your happiness, indeed your entire state of mind and self esteem depends entirely on them and the mood they may or may not be in. It was insidious. You can’t pin point a moment in time. It just happened, along the way, without you realising. Seemingly harmless, but ultimately cruel, and harmful. And because of the insidious nature of it, you have lost the resources (money, friends, family, self esteem), that you need to escape.

That’s when you need support the most, and somehow, the abuser has managed to remove every support mechanism from you. You are literally isolated; socially and emotionally. Every escape route blocked and secured with amazing vigilance by the abuser. You probably feel like you don’t deserve to be treated any better. That without this person you are alone. They may have even convinced you that this is your fault, that there is something wrong with you.

This is why I think it’s so important to discuss abuse. I have seen friends of mine getting dragged into unhealthy relationships and I always try to broach the subject with them. It’s a difficult conversation to have and I’ve lost a few friends afterwards, but hopefully, when the time comes that they find themselves creeping around on eggshells not knowing where to turn, they will remember that conversation and it may give them a route out. Hopefully they will know that no matter how long ago I last saw them, no matter what has happened in between, they can reach out to me for help. There will be no judgement. There should be no shame. At the very least I know that I have tried, I have tried to leave them a door to escape from, and sometimes that is all that we can do.

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Concentric Circles.

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

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I work too much. There ok I’ve said it out loud. In many ways it is not a problem, I love my work, I get great satisfaction from doing it and I get paid at the same time. Sometimes. I even welcome the break from wife/mother. I relish the moments when I feel competent and capable, something which as a parent/wife I often feel the the complete opposite.

The problem with that is that it is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. You see the more I work, the more competent and capable I feel at work, but the more incompetent I feel at home! If I work long hours, I feel guilt because I’ve hardly seen the children, or my house is a mess. If I work less, I start to feel concerned that I am losing my professionalism and capability at work. I also strongly care about my clients and genuinely want to do my best for them.

And the stinger here is that I want to work hard, so that I can provide my children with all of the opportunities that I think will provide them with a good stable home environment and the best possible start in life. However I’m also aware that having their Mum there is also an important piece of the growing up puzzle.

The other thing with working a number of jobs and long hours is that it leaves me with very little time to relax, and so socialising with friends has become something which I treasure. I look forward to it, however at the same time I feel guilt as its time I could be a) spending with the kids, b) spending time with my husband or c) working. I am a nightmare to book a social event with as due to work and other commitments it may be we suggest meeting up today, and by the time I can actually fit in a couple of hours of uninterrupted time, it is 3 months away! Not great when you want your friends to know that you care about them. That they matter too.

And my poor husband. To be honest I’m amazed he puts up with me. I’m lucky, I suppose that he can see why I work and the benefits of it and is pretty relaxed about it most of the time. To be fair, he’d probably have to diarise an argument even if he did mind!

It’s interesting to me though that I feel this unending guilt about working and my children, when it’s actually pretty normal for Dad’s to work long hours and no one really comments too much on it. Im forever being told that I work too much, what about your kids? I don’t think I can remember a time I’ve heard it said to a male.

If kids need their Mum, isn’t a Dad as important too? Are my kids missing out, on having a Mum at home with them after school etc? Possibly. Are they benefitting from having their Dad there as a constant, stable and reliable role model in their lives? Definitely. Although, their nutritional intake would likely be much better if I was the one feeding them at weekends!

Life is a balance and, I’ve definitely not managed to balance those scales yet. However, I’m certain that sometime soon, I’ll work it out. The concentric circles of guilt have me spinning at the moment, I’m aware that it wouldn’t take a lot to topple me.

The interweb.

17 Saturday Jan 2015

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I had to pop round a friends house today to pick up a package that I’d had delivered there way before Christmas, but kept forgetting to collect. On the way there I was thinking about the complete randomness that made me friends with her and more importantly, why we are still friends. Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t close friends, but I know her and her sisters well enough to be invited to important life occasions, such as birthdays and weddings.

The thing is I only know her because I met her sister a few times at the local children’s centre when I was on maternity leave. We have no other link, and likely never would have. Ten years ago that would have been that. I’d have met this girl, probably promised to carry on meeting up once I’d gone back to work and then, as these things happen, we would both find ourselves back in the madness that is our lives, and that would have been that. Perhaps we’d see each other occasionally in the street and say hello. Perhaps it might have been too awkward to do even that.

So what was it that made me not only stay in touch with her, but also then become friends with her Mum, and sisters? It was something that we all take for granted today: the Internet, or to be specific; Facebook. We sat in the children’s centre one day and added each other as friends. We then saw each other’s lives carry on, we commented, commiserated and laughed at things together. I virtually met her family and made friends with them. A friendship which would, previously have been a fleeting thing was prolonged and enhanced. Fascinating really.

I then started to think about other circles of friendships that I have, which in all probability wouldn’t exist without the means of social media. My marriage being the first. I met my husband in a chat room, spoke for a month, met, then moved in together all in a few short days. That was 9.5 years ago. Obviously we now communicate outside of the medium of the Internet (occasionally), but without it we would never have met. I’ve not ever asked him, he might possibly say that was a good thing!

I have a group of friends who I have never met, but who I have had support me, and I have supported them through some of the most traumatic experiences of our lives. We know, on occasion, the details of each other’s bodily functions, we know who’s marriage is happy, who’s struggling with depression who have just been promoted at work, and we have celebrated and laughed together more than I have with some of the friends I see everyday. These people are people who I met on a message board over 5 years ago.

I have old school friends I’m in contact with purely because of the ease of socialising through electronic means. I mean seriously, I’d never have found the time or possibly inclination to keep in touch with these people otherwise. It is good to keep in touch with your youth. The internet is the web that holds us together.

One of the groups of friends that I am most proud to stay connected to are a random group of people who, like me are in recovery. I call them a group of friends, however, very few of them actually know each other or even realise that I connect them in my head to other random people in my friends lists. Some of them are relatively new to this journey, others have walked the path longer, some have faltered and yet all of them are hanging on. Despite the odds. I am honoured to be able to follow their progress and offer support where I can through the medium of the internet.

All that said, I am fairly cautious in my approach to Facebook statues or tweets. I often get friend requests that I ignore or block. I try my hardest not to argue with people online or write statuses designed to enrage or offend. It is often tempting to berate someone who you feel has wronged you in someway, by updating your status or tweeting about it. But the problem with social media is that once you have pressed the send button, there is no taking it back. Not only may you regret saying it an hour later, you may have irretrievably broken a relationship in the process. That thing you said in jest that you didn’t actually mean can hurt and rip apart lives.

The Internet means I can cultivate relationships that in the past would never have existed, I can settle arguments with a few words typed into Google. I’d never have finished my degree without it, however we should all pause and think; Social media has the power to enhance, change and destroy our lives. Every single person using it should consider that before they post.

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Good enough.

10 Saturday Jan 2015

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I kind of look back on my early childhood as being idyllic. When I was growing up, my Mum was extremely ill. Sometimes she would be in hospital for months at a time, leaving us in the care of my Dad, and when he was at work, my Nan. However when she wasn’t in hospital (and even when she was) she was the perfect Mum. She didn’t work and was a stay at home Mum, which meant that she was always there for us. She walked is to school, she picked us up (and there are a lot of us). She would even have hot orange and hot chocolate ready for us on cold winter days. She always had time for us.

My Dad worked shifts and so worked irregular patterns, we’d never know when he would be home, but when he was he was great fun. He’d play tricks on us, like the time my brother and I were in the bath upstairs and it was snowing outside so he climbed a ladder up to the bathroom window and threw snowballs at us in the bath. One Christmas he made santa’s foot prints all across the front room. He built us a house in the garden. Life was good. Life was fun.

So when I had my eldest, despite all of the odds, I decided that my son would have the best childhood ever. I was going to be supermum. He would never want for anything. I would fulfil his every need. High expectations, even for someone who isn’t an addict, but as I was one it was nigh on impossible.

In my plan of me as a parent, I was going to give my son all the attention in the world, I would take him to the park, I would play cars with him on the floor, I’d build forts, Lego, do painting. Only, it soon became clear that I really wasn’t that type of mother; I am terrible at playing make believe games in which the rules change constantly. I don’t have the patience to build Lego cities, and even if I did I’ve not got a creative bone in my body. Basically. I sucked at being Mum. I was left with an unending feeling of guilt. I was failing at something that I should be perfect at.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love him or do my best for him, I just couldn’t live up to my own expectations. I had set the bar too high. Life got in the way. My need to go out and earn money, to clean the house or cook dinner interrupted my perfect Mum plans and the guilt of my failure got in the way. My patience failed me.

Roll forward a few years, I’ve now got 3 beautiful boys, each and every one I adore and love with all my heart. I am still not the supermum I always imagined myself to be. I don’t hit my own expectations of a perfect parent. I shout when I shouldn’t. I snap at them and get annoyed if they interrupt me doing something. Sometimes, I send them to bed early just so I can get some peace. I don’t always read them a bedtime story. I have missed school plays and “first” moments, because I’ve had to work. I use the TV as a babysitter. I moan when they make a mess.

I beat myself up about it. I wish I could enjoy those make believe games, ignore the chaos they leave in their wake, but I don’t. It’s just not me. I can’t play computer games, I’m rubbish at them, I get frustrated and irritable, I’m not good at this parenting malarkey!

However I have learned something in the last few years. I don’t need to be supermum. I don’t need to be perfect. If I talk to my parents, they tell me of things they did when I was a child that made them feel failures. And do you know what? I don’t remember any of them. The times they got parenting wrong, I don’t even remember! I just remember the good stuff. The times they got it right. I talk to my eldest and he remembers the day trips we took, not the time I shouted at him because I was feeling ill and he wouldn’t leave me alone. The time I didn’t turn up to the school nativity play is forgotten but he does remember the harvest festival that I took the day off work to see. The good kind of outweighs the bad. Nothing I have done has been so bad that it has overshadowed the good.

I am not a perfect parent, I’m not even a near perfect parent. I will hopefully manage to bring my kids up without doing too much damage to them. I might not be perfect but I am a good enough parent, and sometimes that is all you can do.

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The forgiven and the forgivenots.

08 Thursday Jan 2015

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All this talk in the papers this week regarding Ched Evans and whether he should be allowed to play professional football again after his rape conviction leaves me in a quandary.

It’s difficult. On one hand I think we should believe in rehabilitation, second chances and forgiveness, I wouldn’t be doing the things I do today if that wasn’t the case, however as someone close to me was raped I find it difficult to think objectively about it.

If, as the evidence appears to be no date rape drugs involved then perhaps it was a case of her getting drunk and blacking out. I’ve woken up myself with no memory of the night before, but speaking to friends I was with I definitely knew what I wanted when I was drunk, so I find it difficult to understand how he was convicted in the first place, as it is difficult to say when someone is too drunk to consent. Unless there is going to be a drink sex breathalyser test and accompanying limit brought out soon that is.

If, on the other hand drugs were used and were just out of her system by the time they tested, which, I hasten to add is often the case, he should still be in prison.

At the end of the day, I find it difficult to believe in rehabilitation and forgiveness if we are only going to believe that “righteous” people can be forgiven and or rehabilitated. This leaves us way too open to judge people by different standards depending on our own personal life experiences. Nelson Mandela, for example was forgiven for arguably worse crimes than this, but because he was perceived to have committed them for the greater good, they were acceptable, forgiven?

I’d like to see what treatment this sex offender got in prison, did he attend a rehabilitation programme? What did his probation reports say about his engagement in the programmes? What do they feel is his risk of reoffending? I’ve not seen any of this reported.

All in all I have mixed feelings about it. At least if he plays football and gets paid for it it will keep him off benefits, also perhaps he is less likely to reoffend given that everyone knows him and his reputation.

Is it right that he earns considerably more than the average person? No, but mainly because I find it ridiculous that people who put their lives at risk daily to help others earn less in a month than any sports player does in a day.

If he wants to go out onto a football field in front of 20,000 fans jeering him, perhaps we should let him.

Friends reunited.

04 Sunday Jan 2015

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I went out last night with two friends who, in total, I have seen 4 times in the past 18 years. The last time we met up over 18 months ago, the time before that was 18 years ago. We were sitting there having a drink and it was like we’d only seen each other the week before. It was easy, casual and comfortable. I wondered how we had let this friendship drift for so long.

I like to think that if a friend needs me they know that I’m there for them. I know that in the past I have gone out of my way to be supportive and available when a friend is having a crisis, or just needs to talk. Which is why I can never really understand how some of the people in my life have just somehow, somewhere fallen through the cracks in my life.

In the past few years I have made and lost some really good friends. The reasons that I have lost some are absolutely clear, I am someone who is fiercely opinionated and I “may” sometimes tell them things that they don’t want to hear. Other friends have just either completely cut me off or just drifted away, one month we were together all the time, the next it appeared that something, I’m not sure what, just changed. Other priorities may have got in the way, maybe I said or did something wrong. I don’t know, but last night I realised that that’s ok.

Connecting with people is what is important. Everyone that we associate with becomes inexplicably woven into the fabric of our being. I imagine it very much like a patchwork quilt, with the seams being the constants, in my case my family, running through all of it, then there are colourful patches dotted about in a seemingly random pattern. Sometimes a friend, rather like a patch will come into your life only appear in the quilt once, another patch might appear throughout. They may vanish for a while, then reappear in a different place, at a later stage.

When this happens you will recognise them, maybe you will pick up where you left off, or maybe you will meet up for drinks once in a blue moon and it will feel like you’ve never been apart, and then it may take another year until you meet again. Others it might just feel awkward. You may wonder how you were ever friends at all. Either way, these people have formed your past and may form part of your future.

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