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Why I left.

06 Saturday Jan 2018

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I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a while; it seems important to note the reason why I finally left; especially because I wrote a blog about few years ago talking about why I stayed.

Domestic abuse and violence is something that we rarely talk about. It’s kept hidden by both the perpetrator and also the victim, as well as family members and friends who know about it. It’s a shameful secret that feels in no one’s interests to uncover. The abuser will go to extraordinary lengths to hide it and the abused is so scared of the consequences in terms of further abuse, of telling people that they often become complicit in covering up and excusing their abuse. That’s what I did; I explained away the bruises through a variety of accidents that even to the most naive listener must have seemed less and less plausible; tripping down the stairs; walking into a door; shutting my leg in a car door you name the accident, I’d probably used it as an excuse to explain away the broken nose, the cuts and the times I winced in pain from hidden injuries.

And no one ever really questioned it. Like no one ever questioned the way I no longer could come and go as I pleased or the way I never had any cash. My abuser had an excuse for everything; I couldn’t be trusted with money, I’d lost my purse, I would disappear for hours with the car if I went out alone. He even picked my clothes out for me on a daily basis. I had to wear whatever he wanted me to, even if it was filthy or inappropriate for the day ahead. I wore it or I was punished. And punishment could take many forms.

If I was lucky it would just be a punch to the side of the head. There were times when I was kicked down the stairs to our flat, beaten with the hoover pipe in the stomach whilst pregnant. Others when he would act as if everything was OK, but I knew it wasn’t. The tension in the air would be palpable. He would just be waiting for the time when I least expected it, to pounce; to dish out whatever form of punishment he felt I deserved that day. It might be as simple as withholding the cash for sanitary products so that I was forced to roll up wads of tissue into makeshift sanitary towels. Anything really to make me feel so humiliated and grateful when he showed a tiny sliver of humanity to me when he eventually gave me the money to buy some tampons.

Other times the punishment might be to lock me out of the house half naked when there was snow outside; getting enjoyment from my begging to be let in.

Sometimes I didn’t need to actually do anything to have a storm of torture unleashed on me. I could have done everything asked of me and think that everything was fine. I’d trod on eggshells all day and managed to not break any of them, but someone would piss him off in the pub and so I’d have to pay the price for some perceived slight. Sometimes I would know it was coming, so I’d run myself ragged trying to stop what in reality was inevitable; I’d bend over backwards to be perfect, to do the right thing that would shift his mindset and stop the hell that I could feel was intended for me when we got home, but it would very rarely work. I would be forced to leave the pub with him knowing that the beating was coming. Preparing myself for it. Being ready.

Other times it would come from absolutely nowhere. I might be cooking dinner, and he’d come into the kitchen and decide that I was cooking wrong and the next thing I’d know the pot of potatoes cooking on the stove would be flying at my head, boiling water and all.

And there was never any apology. Never even any acceptance that he had done anything; let alone done anything wrong. He broke my nose twice and would ask the next day how it happened. Denying any knowledge when I tried to remind him that he’d punched me; saying if he’d done that I’d have worse injuries than a black eye or a broken nose or fingers.

He also abused me sexually. In ways that 16 years later I am too full of shame and disgust to speak about publicly.

And yet despite all this I still thought I loved him. That he loved me. Somehow I deserved this. And in reality he was all I had. He had isolated me from all of the people who could have helped me. Either by stopping me seeing them or by turning their thoughts about me against me. He continually told people what a terrible person I was, how untrustworthy and sneaky I was and eventually they believed him.

He would play little mind games with me. He would give me money to buy things in a pub full of people and then take it back when no one was looking. He’d then berate me for asking for money for baby food or nappies; getting all the people in the pub to agree they’d seen him give me money. “What had I spent it on? More drugs? Fucking junkie bitch.” Other peoples perceptions of me changed. They saw him as a good man trying to help someone who just abused his good nature.

And I put up with it. I put up with the physical abuse and the sexual abuse. Its not that I didn’t try to stop it; however anytime I tried to seek help it didn’t end up being help at all. Like the time I called the police after he had pushed a full filing cabinet down the stairs on top of me and the officer turned up and saw that I was a raging mess and couldn’t talk coherently due to fear and panic. And my abuser, who was now calm and friendly explained that I was crazy; a drug addict who had called the police for attention, and in the face of an officer of the law who was clearly unsympathetic and thought the worst, I couldn’t speak up. I couldn’t articulate in a rational way the way I was being treated. I just kept raging that he tried to kill me and the police needed to do something. So the police officer helped to carry the filing cabinet back up the stairs and told me to calm down else he’d arrest me. And then he left. He left me with the man who’d tried to kill me. He left me to face the wrath of a mad man.

Or there was the time that I told a friend and they told me to stop taking drugs and it would be OK. Only I knew this wasn’t about drugs. It was about control and power and I had none. Or the time I contacted Women’s Aid and all they did was give me a key worker who wanted to meet once a week for a chat, something that’s difficult to do when your abuser won’t let you go anywhere without them.

And when I had the baby that my abuser had tried to ensure would never be born; had tried to kick out of my stomach when I was 20 weeks pregnant. The baby that not once had he ever acknowledged or cared about or wanted. Despite this, he managed to keep up the show that he cared by organising a limousine to pick me up from the hospital. So that everyone told me how lucky I was to have a partner who cared so much.

The violence escalated. In ways I’d never imagined. He’d beat me whilst I was breastfeeding the baby. He put a cigarette out on my chest whilst I was breastfeeding so that the ember dropped onto my sons eyelid and burnt him. And it was around that time that he started to strangle me.

He’d strangle me whilst I was holding the baby; something would annoy him and he’d grab my throat and he would squeeze, sometimes stopping just long enough to allow me to remain conscious; occasionally until I collapsed completely. And I’d wake up in a heap on the floor with my son screaming underneath me and it was after a time that this happened that I had an epiphany. I had been strangled, beaten and abused until I didn’t know what to do and he had left the house to go to the pub. I walked into the kitchen and I saw a small but very sharp knife and I knew I was going to kill him; it wasn’t even a decision I made. It was just an acknowledgement of a fact.

Goodness knows why it took so long to happen but I suddenly realised that this relationship was heading only one way; he was going to kill me or I was going to kill him. And I wouldn’t be killing him in the heat of the moment; no, I was going to wait until he was passed out drunk and I was going to push this knife into his chest, into his heart. And I was going to repeat it; time and time again until he was dead. More than dead. Until the rage I felt from his continual abuse subsided.

And so that’s why I left. Something about that moment of clarity changed me somewhere deep inside. It terrified me. I was calmly and seriously considering murder and I actually could see myself doing it. And it wouldn’t be self defence; not in the conventional sense; I wouldn’t be doing it to protect myself in the heat of the moment. It would be planned and cold blooded and it would be self defence but only to stop him killing me; either by design or by accident, at some undefined point in the future it was going to happen. Because in that moment I knew with certainty that he would kill me if I didn’t kill him first and I wasn’t going to let that happen.

And it took many more months to get away from him. It took planning and returning to him once I’d left and it took every ounce of my depleted strength to finally break away. And the only reason I left was because it I was terrified. Not of what he would do to me, because I’d accepted my own death a long time before that, but because I was terrified of the person that he had turned me into. I was terrified that I could and would commit murder. That he had made me want to do this;I didn’t recognise the person that I had become. So that’s why I left; not to protect myself from the violence, but because I was terrified of what I’d become capable of.

My story into abuse can be read here: https://themadnessthatismylife.com/2015/01/23/imperceptible/

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Lingering around.

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Body image, kids, Life, Motherhood, Uncategorized

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I ran into an acquaintance the other day who had recently delivered a baby. She looked phenomenal, with no remnants whatsoever of the baby weight lingering around.
“How the hell do you look like that?” I asked, not even attempting to mask my utter annoyance.
“Oh, you know,” she explained. “Since I had a baby plus a toddler, I just spend all of my time running after them so the weight fell off. Plus, I just never seem to remember to eat!”
That was not the response I wanted to hear.
I’ve seen countless celebrities singing the same tune and it always makes me crazy. I have three kids and I have never once found myself running after them. Maybe I’ll dash over if I hear a loud thud followed by silence, but certainly not often enough to break a sweat. Sure, I’m with them constantly, but my normal pace is more like a saunter. My heart rate is steady and you could never call gently pushing a kid on a swing an aerobic workout.
And, how does one forget how to eat? Like, ever? The only time I ever came remotely close to not eating three square meals plus snacks daily was when I had bad morning sickness! Babies eat regularly. Kids are constantly asking for snacks and meals and treats. Never mind, that their plates constantly need to be “cleaned/finished”. As a mother you are surrounded by food– how on earth is it forgettable?!
If you’re rocking a post-baby body and I ask how you got it, please give me a response like:
“I’m starving and miserable, but I really wanted to get in these freaking jeans again”
“I work my ass off at the gym 24/7.”
“Genetics. You should see my mom.”
“Honestly, I have no idea how the hell it came off so fast.”
Or, even the dreaded, “I’m eating less and moving more.”
Those I can understand. I can’t relate to them, but I can live with them.
But, please don’t give me the running around and forgetting to eat bullshit.
I’ve been there. I know better.
   

Battle call. 

29 Sunday Jan 2017

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I am a mother of three children. 

I am a wife. My husband lives abroad. 

I work full time in a stressful job that requires me travel a lot. 

I have a part time job. 

I am a school governor. 

I am learning a foreign language. 

I am writing a book. 

I am all these things and I am also, today, struggling with my mental wellbeing. 

I am tired. I am anxious and I am feeling miserable. I am also making life miserable for those around me. 

I know why I am anxious, and tired and stressed; I only have to look at the list above to see why I feel like this, only I can’t seem to stop it. I take too much on. I can’t relax. I don’t even think I know how to anymore. It’s got to the point where I don’t even know what relaxing is. 

Take today for example. Today is my only day off. I work 6 days a week and today, I don’t work. So what have I done today? 

Well; 7am I was up and off to my Bulgarian lesson which is 30 minutes away and started at 8am. I then drove back to pick up the kids from Paul’s where I stopped for a coffee and took the boys  clothes shopping.

 I then did shoe shopping for the eldest before buying birthday presents and doing the weeks food shop. 

Back home, I put the shopping away, made snacks, put a load of washing on. Did the kids homework (with them, not for them!), then put washing on dryer.

 I baked a birthday cake. Wrapped 6 presents (3 grandparents birthdays in 2 weeks!), put a load of washing on, cooked a roast dinner. Put washing in dryer, got kids school uniforms ready, ironed uniforms, sorted out piles of socks. 

I then Hoovered and steam cleaned the floor (never get shiny white floor tiles, you will live to regret it). Put another load of washing on, emptied dishwasher and finished cooking the roast. 
I then changed sheets and bathed kids and put on another wash. I still need to do so many things, but my mind is buzzing and I’m finding it hard to cope. 

I slept for 4.5 hours last night. About 5 the night before. I’m a terrible insomniac, who struggles to sleep then wakes up constantly. 

I feel guilty because I haven’t visited any family, especially my elderly aunt, who will definitely have noticed that I didn’t go see her. I feel guilty because I want to go see my sisters but I cannot summon up the energy. 

I feel guilty because I have 4 unanswered emails regarding school governor stuff that I really should look at and that’s without mentioning the other 263 that require attention. 

I feel guilty that I have reports to write for tomorrow that I haven’t had time to do. 

I feel guilty that I haven’t spent enough time with my children.

 I feel guilty that I am doing my full time jobs far less than perfectly because I’m trying to cover the jobs of 3 people. I feel that I am letting people down left right and centre and half the time I don’t even know why I am doing it or how not to. 

I feel guilty that I actually hoped that a patient would die so that I could go home and not have to stay late to deal with her. And that’s when I knew that I am on the edge. Because, that is not me. I am not that type of person and yet last night that was the type of person that I was. 

And so I am writing this very jumbled blog, because I know that I cannot go on like this. I need to take a breath. I need to surrender stop trying to do everything and I need to cut down my commitments. But then I look at the list and I can’t see what to give up. I care passionately about all of it and my mind is too confused to be rational. 

But I need to reexert some control in my life. I need to rebalance, to stop reacting and start preparing. Start setting realistic goals rather than think I am superwoman. 

My mental health is not great right now; Today. Tomorrow it might be different and I will have regained my equilibrium. But for today it is ok to be overwhelmed. And it is ok to say that I am not coping. Because I am not, and there shouldn’t be any shame in saying that. 

And this is not a cry for help. I do not need people to offer their help or say I am doing great etc etc. Because this is a battle call; to myself. And it’s a battle I’m going to win. 

Completely unblemished. 

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Body image, Friends, Life, Relationships

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I think today is a safe day to post this. I can’t be sure, as I’ve not really had any time to go on social media to check but here goes anyway, because if I did actually check no doubt it would be another day that passes without me being able to post this for fear of upsetting someone. For fear of someone, anyone, on my friends list thinking it is directed at them. To be clear; it isn’t. 

Anyway, I really need somebody to explain it to me because I’m not really understanding the attractiveness,  in more ways than one! What is this obsession with putting effects on every picture that people seem to take? 

Above: an alien, below: a filtered me. Spot the similarities!


When did it become acceptable or even desired to make your face look like that of an alien  just visiting from out of space? You know; over large eyes, small pointy chin (slimmed, I believe they call it). Slimmed my arse, it’s weird. And it’s not as if anyone believes that that is you, do they? Because it’s not. It’s an exaggeration of a person. You are making yourself look more like a cartoon than a person. 

Am I being overly critical to think that anyone you meet for the first time after having seen a photo of you is highly likely to be disappointed!  Because no one actually looks like that. If you did, you would probably be ostracised and bullied by the very people you seek approval from.  

Am I the only person who looks at someone’s filtered photo on Facebook or twitter and just feel slightly sad for them? What is wrong with their faces that they feel the need to filter out any true reflection of them? Because every single one of my social network that I have seen posting these doctored images are pretty outstanding people in their own right. They are beautiful inside and out, and yet they insist on posting images that don’t resemble them. 

So I have a message to all of you who can’t post a photo on social media without editing it and filtering it within an inch of its life and turning it into an imaginary image: 

There is nothing ugly about being you. Naturally you,  with no editing or filtering or slimming needed. You don’t need to change. 

In 5 years, or 10 or 15 years time you will not be able to look back on photos of yourself and see how you really were, because you no longer exist. You wiped the real image of you from existence and you are comparing a computer generated image to a real one. And do you know what, you are going to feel bad; because you will be comparing yourself to an image that never really existed. Because that is not you!! 

You are a beautiful individual, whose beauty doesn’t just exist on the surface. Your face is a reflection of a tiny part of you, and it’s not even your best part. Your wit, empathy and understanding. Your big heart and terrible singing. Your clumsiness, your messiness. They are the things that make you beautiful and attractive; not larger than life eyes, completely unblemished faces and abnormally small chins!

So please; stop filling up my news feeds and home pages with imaginary pictures, especially if you are not admitting that you’ve used a filter or six!! Everyone of my friends has blemishes and spots and imperfections. Because we are human. 
If I’d wanted alien friends I’d have joined a space program!

The magic of Christmas

01 Thursday Dec 2016

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I love Christmas. I’m the one who has a minimum of 15 guests for dinner, cooking for hours in the kitchen so that we can sit; parents, brothers, sisters, children, ex husband and current husband, on borrowed tables and over eat together. I save up for Christmas presents every month throughout the year no matter how skint I am, because I know I’ll be more skint at christmas. I start buying presents and decorations on January. As I said; I love Christmas.

As a kid Christmas was a magical time. It was looked forward to pretty much all year. It was the reason that the cold and dark evenings of winter didn’t matter as much as it should have. Christmas was always a time where we were all together, I remember it as happy; snuggles in the house and warm.
Advent calendars were exciting. I remember back before we had chocolate ones; the excitement of not knowing what would be behind that thin scrap of paper. What picture would be revealed? Then came the chocolate ones which, for the first year at least was so exciting; chocolate? Everyday? Yes please. However advent calendars somehow lost their charm; they became about a piece of chocolate and not about the unknown.

And more recently, in addition to this piece of chocolate we have the addition of a new count down, I’m not sure what they are called, it seems to be different in every house. Some call it Ernie, others it’s Pixie or Twinkle, it’s elf on the bloody shelf. And I just do not get it; so some elf, misbehaves making a mess in your house every day, in some houses bringing a gift each day in the run up to Christmas? WTF? Why?
Yes yes I know that all my Elf on the Shelf loving friends will be shouting at me right now that it’s about the magic, it’s the anticipation, it’s exciting and you will see their little faces light up as they go seek him out each day, but why? Why do we feel the need to make something that when I was a kid was the most exciting day of the year even more exciting? Surely it’s exciting enough?

What does some cuddly toy making a mess in your house everyday add to that? Can we not keep our kids excited without sprinkling flour all over the place, or spilling milk on the floor and sitting a stuffed toy next to it? My kids make that kind of mess everyday, they don’t need me adding to it and pretending it’s an elf doing it.

And I know that some people will say it’s a way of getting children to behave in December, which does make me kind of think how the hell do they get their kids to behave the rest of the year?
Nope. I just don’t get it. For me the magic of Christmas is built up by the slow drawing in of the nights. It is the Christmas songs on the radio, the plans of families getting together. It is the cold days. It is the wrapping presents. It is the simple things. And that’s how I want Christmas to be for my boys. I don’t want to ruin it with more expectation.
Plus I’d never remember to move the damn elf every night!!!

The most valued. 

01 Tuesday Nov 2016

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When I mention to people that I work on the ambulances, they always assume that we are forever racing around on blue lights, sirens blaring and jumping up and down on people’s chests until they miraculously come back to  life. 
They think of us like heros, dressed in green, saving lives and turning around hopeless situations. And yes, sometimes we do do that. And it is exciting, and challenging. Most people however, would probably be surprised that in my experience that is not usually the case. Yes, on occasions, we do ride in,  like knights in fluorescent yellow ambulances and bring people back from the dead. But, as any ambulance crew will tell you, it’s not the norm. Even if we do somehow, manage to restart that heart, get those lungs full of air again, in all likelihood it’s just so that relatives can come say their farewells to someone that’s not a corpse. The prognosis after Cardiac Arrest simply isn’t great in the majority of cases. 
So I can honestly tell you that those are not the times that were the most sad, or when I feel that I/we, the family in green, have made the most difference. When I look back on the times that I’ve honestly felt I’ve done something, it’s been when I’ve not really been treating an illness or injury at all. 
It’s the time when I chatted to a man, struggling to breathe his last few breaths, who was terrified and didn’t know what to expect, and so  I sat and talked to him, held his hand, and told him I’d got him. That I was there. That he wasn’t alone. 
It was the time that my crew mate and I picked up an old lady who, due to a horrific disease soiled herself in the ambulance, and, knowing how mortified she was, pretenddd it hadn’t happened until we had the opportunity to clean her up and make her comfortable again. 
It’s been the times we have sat and listened; signposted an exhausted carer to support services. It’s the times that we listen to the overwhelmed young mum and didn’t judge her for her panic when her baby snored funny. 
It’s the times when we build a level of trust and understanding in minutes that the same person wouldn’t have with another person even after years. 

 
Because sometimes the only treatment available or needed, even the most valued, is compassion, empathy and a listening ear  (maybe even a cup of tea!) and you don’t need to be dressed in green with a great big ambulance in order to do any of that. 

Going through the motions. 

07 Friday Oct 2016

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Chris has gone away. It’s not permanent, we’ve not split up and it was a decision that we made together. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not been hard. Really hard. In fact, I couldn’t ever have imagined how hard it would be. Perhaps it was the uncertainty about whether it was going to happen, perhaps it was the speed in which it did happen; or perhaps I’ve changed somehow. I don’t really know. The only thing I do know is that at times in the past few weeks, I have been at the edge; of my sanity, of reason, of my ability to cope. 
In honesty I can only admit that I have been a mess. I have cried. I have raged, to myself and to others and then it culminated in an anxiety attack. I was sitting at my desk at work, with a ton of urgent things to do and I could just feel this feeling; it was like a fluttering that kept getting stronger. A feeling that I had to get away. It just got more and more urgent until I couldn’t ignore it any more. And so I got up and I walked out. I went to wash my face, hoping that the cold water would soothe me in a way that I was unable to soothe myself. 

It helped. A little. Enough to get me back to my desk to attempt to carry on. But I couldn’t. The feeling built again and like a child who is overwhelmed I couldn’t hold back the tide of emotion and I fell apart. It started slowly. I could feel silent tears start to drop from my face; then my body started to silently shudder until I couldn’t control it any more and I began to sob. Uncontrollable, violent sobs that baffled me and scared me. 

You see I don’t do falling apart. Well I do, but not in a public way. At home. Alone maybe. Not at work. Not spectacularly.  

But maybe now I do. Because it keeps happening. Nothing is really wrong but nothing is really right either. I have every reason to be happy and for the most part I am. I have my dream job, house, husband and 3 gorgeous children as well as friends and family who have rallied around me; holding me up. But then randomly, I’ll wake up with this pit of anxiety in the bottom of my chest. And the feeling will build and nothing that I do can calm it down. The pique of adrenaline that you get when someone startles you, only it just doesn’t go. 

And the thing is, it’s like it’s catching. The anxiety I’m feeling; I’m passing it on; to Chris who thinks I’m having a breakdown; to my children who can’t understand what is going on. 

And it’s so difficult to understand, how could they possibly do so; I don’t understand myself. On a cognitive level I’m fine. I’m happy with life, I have a job I love, family and friends who have surrounded me with love and support. A husband who loves me and is trying his best to show it from 1000 miles and a different time zone away and yet emotionally I feel different. My emotions don’t match my cognition. In a split second I go from absolutely fine to full blown out of control; for no particular reason. 

And so I’m scared.  And I don’t really know how to stop it. some days I don’t want to leave the house, or speak to anyone; but I do, because sometimes going through the motions is all I can do to remain sane. I’m looking for coping strategies, trying to work my way through it. 

So I’m sharing it, because I know others feel like this too and maybe they aren’t as lucky as me. Maybe they don’t have the support network and maybe they just need to know, like I do, that sometimes it’s ok to be a bit broken. So far I have a 100% record of getting through this, and I’ll get through it again. 

Categorically selfish. 

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

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Anyone who has been in my company for more than 5 minutes this past week (even more so the past 2 days) knows that I’ve been a complete mess. On the verge of tears constantly and bad tempered to boot! 

From nearly the first time that I met my husband I’ve known that he wanted to be a doctor. He is one of those people; it’s not about a career for him. He is driven by a sense of wanting to be able to do his best to help people and despite volunteering and then training as an ambulance technician, he has always wanted to do more. 

Anyway, when we got together and decided to move in together it was important to me that he didn’t lose sight of that dream. He took on me, and my boys, and my ex husband, and all my family and it couldn’t, I wouldn’t let it,  be at the expense of his dream. And so last year we agreed that he would work part time to study and apply to study medicine. 

He (along with approximately 64,000 of the 71,000 other applicants) didn’t get a place in a UK medical school when he applied last year and so it looked like he would apply again for next year. And then we saw an opportunity to study medicine abroad and three weeks ago he applied and was accepted. So on Sunday he flew to Bulgaria and yesterday he registered. He is a medical student!!! Yay! I was kind of on a high all day. Yes I miss him, but he was enrolled. He was doing it. He was beginning to live his dream; I was excited by it, enthused by it. Happy. 

Then he called me to tell me he had rented a flat and got a new phone number and was generally doing all the things that we’d discussed in the previous week that he would do, and all of a sudden I just wanted to cry. Not because he was doing these things, but that he was doing them without me. In a moment I felt every single mile between us; and they felt eternal. 

I got off the phone and I had a little cry and messaged a friend who immediately rang me and I talked it out and with my brother, and with my colleague, until I realised that I was ok again. 

And it’s only been a few days, and I’ve spent longer than this away from him loads of times, but because it’s not a short trip, or a holiday away, the void feels huge. 

However, I can’t agree with people who say I’m brave to do this, to commit to making this work. I adore my husband. He truly makes me happy in a way I didn’t feel possible. 

And so I am doing this for me. I am doing it because I want him to feel as happy and fulfilled with our relationship as I do; and I know that if I stopped him from fulfilling his dreams, he might  never feel that. He might always resent me a little that he gave up his own dreams for me. So I’m not brave or good for supporting him in doing this. I am categorically selfish. I can’t bear to give him up forever, so I will give him up temporarily. And I will do everything to make this work. 


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Sometimes accidents happen.

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

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I know from the arguments and reprimands that I’ve had on social media today that this isn’t going to be a popular view, but whoa, I’m an honest person and so I’m going to just say it anyway; that kid who fell into the gorilla pit? It could just as easily have been mine. 

So go on start throwing your insults, but first let me explain: 

I am human. I am a mum of 3 and I am human.  This means that I only have two eyes, and I only have two hands. I’m already handicapped when it comes to having 3 children; there’s just not enough of me to go around. I can only physically be holding 2 of them at the same time. I can only see them all if (and this never happens) they are standing nicely together. Normally, I’ve deliberately got the youngest two as far away from where they can annoy each other as possible. This means I get to see those two one at a time. i.e. I have to take my eyes off one to look at the other. And let’s face it, even if I didn’t, I’m a self confessed haphazard parent. I get through my parenting life by the skin of my teeth and occasionally by the seat of my pants; I actually once nearly ended up in my Nana’s grave on top of her coffin due to a particularly difficult moment when my 18 month old decided to do that throwing himself backwards with the force of a baby elephant  thing just as I threw in my handful of mud and rose as we were burying her. It was only the quick thinking of my ex that stopped us both falling 8 ft into the ground and giving my Nana one last shock. These things happen, right? Accidents I think we call them…

All day I have seen on Facebook and Twitter that the mother should have been looking after him properly. That it was her fault. Was it though? Really? 

I wasn’t there, but I find it difficult to believe that this woman stood by and idly watched her 4 year old son climb a small fence with a 15 ft drop the other side. Surely it is more likely that one of her other children demanded her attention in some way, perhaps she was trying to stop that child from climbing the fence, or running away? Perhaps another one of her children needed a drink, or a tissue, or lifting so they could see the animals, and in those moments, when her back was turned, the 4 year old got away from her? 

And by the time she turned back it was too late; he was gone, or maybe he was about to go, and she couldn’t quite get her fingers to him in time to stop him. After all, I’m led to believe there were plenty of other zoo visitors also in the area at the time. Now call me nosey, but if I’d been at the zoo and seen a child, any child mine or a strangers, about to climb into a gorilla pit, I’d like to think I’d stop them. The fact that no one seemed to notice kind of makes me think that perhaps this was something that only took a split second. That, like my son nearly flipping us both into my Nana’s grave, wasn’t really foreseeable and unluckily for her, she had no quick thinking sidekick to stop the nightmare. 

Which leads me neatly on to an imbecilic statement that I saw posted to Facebook earlier; she should have taken additional help with her to supervise all 4 children all the time! Oh yeah, because all those of us who have more than one child shouldn’t go anywhere unless the child to adult ratio is 1:1. Hands up who else would never be able to leave the house?

There’s something fundamentally wrong with that, because even if the ratio is 1:1, guess what, at some point that adult will need to look away from the child!! It’s impossible (not to mention probably mentally unhealthy) to watch a child every second of every minute of the day. I mean what if you need to look at your watch, or scope out where the next animal enclosure is? Have you never needed to sneeze? There’s forced eyes off time right there! And do you know how long it takes a child to slip out of your grasp? Out of your sight? I’ll tell you: 0.00004 of a second, well that’s how it feels anyway!! I don’t know how they do it but mine can literally vanish near enough in front of my eyes!! 

Find me any parent who hasn’t had that moment of absolute panic, when they’ve glanced at their watch, or spoken to another child and turned back to find that the errant child is not where they had last seen them and reasonably expected them to be. I know I’ve done it a few times, per child!! It is terrifying and it is horrible, but I have been lucky enough that the said child was just hidden under a clothes rail (or decided to ditch me and walk back to the car (aged 3 and in a shopping centre!!)). 

What are we going to do? Chain our children to us? Take out two adults for every child so they never have a moment without adult supervision (Bill, I need to scratch my nose, eyes on Charlie for me) , or do we put in adequate safeguards and precautions and allow our kids to be kids? 

I would not expect that a 4 year old could easily climb into a gorilla enclosure, if I had been that parent I would likely have taken my eyes off the 4 year old for a moment. That seems a reasonable thing to do; perhaps the younger one cried, perhaps mum needed a tissue out of her bag, whatever, I’m pretty sure it never occurred to her or the other visitors that day that it would/could happen.

 Parents should look after their children, but there is only so much supervision it is reasonable to give. As sad as it is Harambe was killed it doesn’t make it anyone’s fault. Sometimes accidents just happen.


Follow me on Twitter @101madness or Facebook.com/themadnessthatismylife

The right pair of shoes. 

16 Monday May 2016

Posted by in kids, Motherhood, Uncategorized

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The papers have been full of it lately; headlines screaming out in favour or against taking children out of school for holidays or funerals. The rhetoric (as well as the hefty fines) are intentionally designed to scare parents into compliance; just one week off school can apparently mean that the child can drop a whole exam grade. 

In a recent article I read,  a minister stated that grieving children should only be allowed one day off school; to attend the funeral of the loved one. Never mind that they may be paralysed with grief. Never mind that they may need to process the loss, no it’s back to school they are to go, to study for some useless test, that in 10 years time, in the world of work, will mean nothing; hell, I have a degree but no potential employer has ever asked me what classification, let alone cared that I failed my A levels miserably!  

Holidays, it is professed, when taken during school time, severely interrupt a child’s education. It seems odd then that my eldest, about to embark in his final year of GCSE’s, came home a few weeks ago with a letter for a school trip which will be two days off school. Yes, he will be learning Geography during this time, but he will also be missing 2 days of his other classes as well. He is also going on a 3 day History trip to Germany in September (at the extortionate price of £450, to stay in a youth hostel for 2 nights, but that’s another story). That is a total of 5 days (or a week) out of school. In this time he will have missed lessons in all the other subjects that he is undertaking GCSEs in, however, apparently, this is acceptable? So by their own reckoning he will be dropping a grade in all those other subjects? 

And don’t get me started on all those cases where children as young as 5 are sent home from or excluded from school due to some trivial reason such as having the wrong shoes, or hair cut, or some other minor uniform discrepancy. School attendance is so important that you can be fined for taking your child on holiday for a week where they might actually experience some form of culture, however they can refuse to let them attend for a week whilst their hair grows to a length deemed by some headteacher as being appropriate? Or until a parent can afford to buy appropriate shoes? Because obviously having the right hair style/colour/length really helps to improve their education doesn’t it?!? 

Surely if a child turns up willing and ready to learn it is our duty to teach? To provide them with an education, not deem them inappropriately dressed to learn. 

I’m not implying it’s right to take a child out of school for a holiday, but if it’s not ok for me to do something, surely that has to also apply to the school? Forgive me for appearing confrontational, but it really does seem to be one rule for us, and one rule for them?