Tag Archives: hope

What does it matter.

01 Friday Jun 2018

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I’m on holiday in the South of France with the two youngest boys and my mum; the eldest ditched me to stay at home. Can’t say I blame him, I would’ve at his age!

We have had a lovely week. The sun is shining, we’ve swum, played games, sunbathed, read books. It has been awesome. I’ve read three books in 6 days and started a 4th. This never happens. I love spending time with my mum and kids. I don’t get enough of it.

Whilst I am officially on annual leave, I have spent a lot of time emailing and calling work over the past two days as I am changing jobs and had issues with my start date. I’ve done this laying by the pool in between diving in and out, or watching the kids attempts to learn to dive themselves.

Whilst I’ve been doing this the boys have been playing with their friends and my mum has been reading on her kindle, watching TV on her ipad or crocheting. She’s never without a crochet hook within easy reach. She is bloody amazing at crochet. She makes loads of fantastic stuff. She can’t help herself.

Anyway this evening on the last day of our holiday my Mum said to the boys in front of me “I have to say your Mum is always on her phone”.

For some reason this raised my hackles. I have fully participated in this holiday. It is my holiday too after all. Despite the fact that I drove for 14 hours to get us here, whilst they were all watching TV, or reading or crocheting in the car. I’ve swum, taken the kids go-karting, and climbing. I’ve read over three books. I’ve cooked every night (with help from my Mum, of course), but I was being judged because I was using my phone a lot.

Whilst it annoyed me immediately, it’s not worth stressing over and so I forgot about it until I was in the shower. Whilst I was washing, I started to think about how some things appear to be acceptable for others to comment on, but somethings not. For example, I never watch TV. Anyone who has been to my house knows that I actually don’t know how to work my TV. And I don’t have Sky or Virgin, just the standard TV channels. People always comment on this. “You don’t watch TV?” As if I have some affliction..nope I don’t watch TV, not on a regular basis. If I’m not working I read or I catch up with friends, that may be in person or on the phone or via text. I don’t sit and watch crap on TV.

But somehow it’s socially acceptable to sit all evening watching TV. Or all day, and to judge me for not doing the same.

Lots of people spend all their spare time knitting, or like my Mum, crocheting. No one would ever dream of saying to them in a slightly acusatory and judgemental way “Oi Doris, all you ever do is knit” or “Brenda, you are always doing those jigsaws, can’t you do something else”.

What does it matter to anyone else if I’m on my phone rather than doing something that they feel more suitable and appropriate? How is me being on my phone different to any other pursuit, such as reading or sewing?

I don’t get a lot of time that isn’t occupied by work or childcare or other life admin; I keep in touch with those I care about using my phone. Instead of buying newspapers I read the news on my phone. If I’m reading, I often do so on my phone. If I want to watch a documentary I’ll do it on my phone. If I’m working, I can often do it on my phone. I really don’t see a problem with that.

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Riding the waves.

01 Tuesday May 2018

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I live life to the full. I pack in more in some days than others do in a week. I socialise, I work, I organise and plan. I plan and re-plan and change plans. If I’m your friend I will be there for you if you need me. I throw myself into everything and people always tell me to slow down. To relax. To take some time to be myself. To look after myself. But I don’t. I can’t. I’m terrified of not having people around me. Of solitude. Of having to face up to the demons inside of my head. Of finding the time in my life to look at what I am doing and working out where I want to be. Because, in all honesty I have no bloody idea.

I seem to lurch from one thing to another. No concerted plan or design. Rolling with the onslaught of waves that never seem to stop coming. Just as I pick myself up from one thing another comes rushing up to take its place, pushing me back over, throwing me back. Like a wind whispering in my ear “know your place” forcing back. And I’m standing here drowning and everyone thinks I’m doing a great job at staying in the water. Well I’m not.

I don’t know how to get out. I don’t know if I want to. Because getting out will mean examining all of the things that took me to this point, and I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. I’m not sure I ever will be. And so I’ll keep riding the waves and battling with the tide in the hope that one day, soon, it will turn. That it will run in my favour. That I won’t have to work so God damned hard to just stay where I am; on an apparently even keel.

And the pretence will remain, as will the illusion of peace. Because all the while no one knows you are drowning, they don’t have to reach out a hand to help you.

Why I left.

06 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Emotions, Life, Relationships, Uncategorized

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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/

Bone tired.

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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It’s an expression that you hear and it doesn’t mean much, and you will think that the person saying it is being melodramatic, attention seeking even. And then one day, all of a sudden, you just get it. You know what those words, that phrase means.

You struggle on day after day, same old, same old; work, food shopping, kids clubs, cooking, cleaning, washing, money management, budgeting. Life admin that just keeps building up, letters to write, letters to post, emails to send, car insurance to get quotes for. Household items to replace. Lawns to mow. People to see. Sheets to change. Things to fix. Things to remember. Appointments to go to. Trains to catch, children to drop off, pick up, take to parties and you do it. You do it all, sometimes you even have time to remember to brush your hair.

And you forget. You forgot just how precariously balanced it all is. How the slightest most insignificant thing can just throw you over the edge. A thoughtless remark, an unexpected bill, a difficult phone call, then boom, just like that, the smallest thing exposes you for what you knew you were. Incompetent. Over committed and under resourced. And you know this to be the case because the thing that tips the balance from excelling at life to fucking it all up badly, is so bloody insignificant that you can’t understand how it’s brought you to your knees; from having your shit together to hiding in the bathroom silently sobbing so that the kids can’t hear you. So that no one knows how goddamned tired you are.

No one knows how difficult it is to pull your shit back together. When you haven’t slept properly in what feels like months because your brain can’t shut the hell up from thinking about how rubbish you are; scared that at any point it’s all going to go tumbling. Worried that you are doing life wrong. Tired. Right through to the bones; to the point that you can feel it in every fibre of your being.

It is at that point that you are feeling your worst that you need to reach out to people. You need someone else to hold the weight of your soul for you, even momentarily. For a minute, an hour. Long enough for you to pick yourself back up, shake yourself down and put back on your smile. Everyone needs that at some point.

So next time you get a message from someone, maybe out of the blue, or an email or a call, asking to talk, to meet up, or even just saying hello, take the time to respond. If you see someone upset or distressed, even a total stranger, take the time to stop. Maybe a simple “are you ok?” is enough to break the cycle. To let them vent. To make things OK for them once again. Take the weight. Give them a chance to pull themselves back up. To connect; adjust and move on.

We all need help at some point.

Lingering around.

17 Sunday Sep 2017

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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.
   

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. 

Sick and tired. 

21 Saturday Mar 2015

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I got onto heroin around my mid teens, my first ever serious boyfriend introduced me to it and within weeks I was hooked. The circumstances leading up to the decision to try it are long and complicated. I distinctly remember when I first tried it thinking that I didn’t have the time or desire to get addicted. I was stronger than that, I could try it and leave it alone. That was day one. 14 days later I had used everyday and the gear finally ran out. I couldn’t sleep, L decided that if we got some more it would help us sleep. We bought some more. My next proper recollection is sitting in my kitchen 6 months later. I was withdrawing, I recall sinking down the cupboards to the floor and saying out loud “I’m a heroin addict. I’m a fucking heroin addict” I nervously laughed at this realisation. I don’t quite understand why.

From that point on my life changed. My childhood was gone. I was thrown into an existence of survival. Something which I learnt I was pretty good at. I could start the morning without a penny to my name and within hours be sitting there with £1000 of drugs. I couldn’t see the point of doing things in a small way, so I threw myself into my life of crime. I sold drugs, a lot of drugs. I was unrelenting in my quest to obtain more drugs. Enough was never enough for me.
Gradually, over the years things in my life changed. My partners changed. L turned into S and then my eldest sons dad P, then J. They all had one thing in common; they were addicts, fully ensconced into their addiction. They were broken people and the one thing I have learnt about broken people, is that sometimes you end up being cut on the shards of their lives. Each one of them brought something to me at the time that I couldn’t find in myself.
L brought me into the peer group that had previously shunned me. He gave me an, albeit fragile, position in the society of my youth. S gave me a more grown up and sophisticated facade, he worked up town. He held down a good job, he helped me to make believe that my life was moving on, as I had always anticipated that it would. While with S, I worked in London at a solicitors office, I presented a view to the world that I wanted them to believe.
P came into my life and gave me control. By gave me, I mean he arrived at a point when my life had spiralled into chaos, and he took control of me. Totally and absolutely. It took me years to escape his clutches. The control I craved turned out to be stifling and unhealthy, instead of taking control of my own life I had no control at all.
J came after this, and he was kind and he helped me to like myself again. To see that perhaps, with a little work, I could be worthy of love.
Throughout this my drug taking continued. At some point I added crack cocaine into my daily medication list. I don’t quite know when or how. It just seemed to have slipped in. An essential ingredient in the recipe of my life.
My weight dropped drastically as my health deteriorated. I was 5.5 stone and I felt like the living dead. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Battling daily to survive, literally, took its toll on me. My veins were collapsed, and my arms, hands, feet and legs were bruised and bloodied from the numerous attempts to inject into them. I nearly wanted to give up. Only I couldn’t, you can’t give up on life. What are your options. Live or die? Well much as it looked to the contrary I didn’t want to die. I’d been inadvertently committing suicide for many years with my addiction but dying was never in my plan. I just didn’t know how to live.

Going to prison probably saved me. It was god awful and painful and scary but it came at the right time. I will never forget the day, a few weeks after I arrived when I walked into my cell and realised that I was able to just lie there in peace. No worrying about being ill. No pain. I needed a safe haven and I needed respite. I needed time to recoup my strength and determine a new path. I needed to clear the space to grow new seeds of life. Prison gave all that to me. That is one of the reasons that I work hard for my clients. Everyone deserves an idiom of peace.

Significant insignificance.

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

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I’m feeling fairly reflective this evening. I’ve been studying Trauma on my course and it makes you realise how fragile life is. Life as you currently know it anyhow. One minute you could be driving along worrying that you are late for work, the next you could be dead, be it from an accident or a brain haemorrhage or a heart attack. It really can be that quick. Alive. Dead.

In the case of a road accident, you could argue that being late was the cause. Because if you were on time something different would have happened maybe, maybe not, but one thing I do know is that life is full of moments which at the time you may not even pay attention to, and yet, with the power of hindsight or to someone else it is huge.

You may not even realise that it happened, there may be someone who is walking around right now, whose life you have massively impacted upon and yet you don’t even know it. The moment was so insignificant to you that you don’t even realise that it happened and yet to the other person it had huge significance, good or bad. Insignificant significances.

There are certainly people in my life who have done this for me, who have shown me an unwarranted, but absolutely needed bit of kindness that has been a turning point in my life. In the very least they have made me think differently about my life.

An example of this was when I was about 22. I was a single parent, who had just got out of a really abusive relationship and was attempting, for the first time, to cope on my own. Oh, and did I mention that I also had a huge heroin addiction? I weighed 6 stone (I’m 170cm tall) and I felt like I was going to die. Not just from the addiction, but just because life was supremely tough. I was living in a bedsit in a women’s refuge, I had no friends and I was also withdrawing.

I’d gone into town to see if I could see anyone to get some gear from or to shoplift to earn some money, but I was having no luck and I wanted to die. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was cold, I hadn’t eaten for 2 days, mostly because I’d forgotten to, but also because I was skint and feeding the baby came first.

And then I saw him approach me. I was standing in the local shopping centre, feeling desperate and instead of avoiding me, he came up to me. He asked if I was ok, and I nodded yes. He asked me if I wanted to sit down on the bench with him for a bit as I looked ill. So I sat down and we chatted for a bit. He asked me when I last ate and I told him I couldn’t remember. He told me to wait there, and he disappeared, only to reappear 3 minutes later with a can of coke and some chocolate for me to eat. Then said he had to go and left.

This good Samaritan significantly changed my life that day. I will never forget him. He showed me a bit of kindness when I desperately needed it. He may have even saved my life. His actions have become something that I have tried to live by; if I can help someone else then I should. It doesn’t take a lot, words of encouragement, a smile, a car of chocolate and a can of coke. All can be insignificant things which change the course of someones
world. Insignificant significances.