At five o'clock in the morning

She woke me at 4am by lying face down draped across me until I put my arms around her and she could relax and squirm into the bed, under the covers, between two parents. This has happened more than once lately, usually an hour or two after bedtime when she is woken by some sound in the house and comes to tell us about invisible people in her room, or that her knees hurt so much she can't sleep. Cuddles, return to bed, hold her hand until she sleeps, repeat the following night.

"The bed" last night was the inflatable kind, in the living room. Creak, creak, crunch as she crawls up the bed to me. Elbows. Those pointy four year old elbows as she grows into all limbs and angles and strength.

Guests are sleeping in our room, and I didn't wonder until now whether she tried to climb into bed with them first. I think she didn't, because last time she stumbled blearily onto my friend looking for me at night she reported to me confusedly when she came downstairs to me. "Mumma, Emerald in YOURS BED?!" Like I might not have realised and just be sleeping in the living room for fun, because it wouldn't be the weirdest thing in her life probably.

She still falls asleep so effortlessly. A busy hour of helping me to put the bed down, cuddling on the sofa, talking about cats and trees and asking me how moths fly, and she goes quiet and stares up at me from her end of the sofa. That minute of stillness is all it takes for her eyes to drift closed. But I'm awake now, not quite rested but mind too busy to nap with her.

I sneak out. Snap a sleeping-baby picture of her (how many more of these before she's grown?) and take myself into the kitchen to brew a cup of tea and paint something.

I'm not ever going to be the kind of person that leaps out of bed at five and Gets Things Done before the children wake. I've tried it a time or two, never for more than a week at a time, but I've come to accept that I'm a nicer person with an extra hour or two of sleep if I can possibly get it and I really can live without being so very organised about things. Today it's nice though. Warm, and sleepy, and my first cup of tea of the day is so very good.

All the Colour

1. Elvaston Castle play area
2. Small weirdos in town
3. Tired four year old (who hadn't been in a sling for almost a year before this I think?)
4. Mud pies
5. Star disk Jenna
6. Dancing in the rain
7. Pokémon go on a nice last a minute I unplanned walk where I got us a bit lost

Tangled Mind

When do I say I've been just feeling a little bit odd and down, and when do I call it Depression and say it's back? I don't think I can ever even be sure when there's no touch of this darkness, these days.

Last year I was feeling so utterly great and struggling the least I ever had in my entire adult life when, WHAM, out of nowhere I spent a month so completely out of it and crying constantly and it was awful and I couldn't imagine feeling okay again ever. Clawing back from there took months. As we turned towards late Autumn again and Winter festivals hove into view I started feeling creative and alive again, started making plans and looking forwards to things.

This year has been much less extreme, but still, Summer has been Hard. I have been crying for no reason, and apologising for crying, and feeling sort of disconnected.

I don't have a problem with using the proper names for things. It's not stigma or a fear of giving my mental health conditions more power by naming them. It's just that I'm confused. Sometimes I can't say until much later, "yes I was depressed then" or "I felt a bit down about something proportional but that I couldn't put a finger in at the time and it totally passed after a while".

When I'm not certain, though, when I can only tentatively say, "I feel a bit sad but it's nothing much really," I don't ask for support and I forget to do the most basic ordinary things that help. Maybe the fact that I clearly feel I only deserve care when I legitimately can't cope with life at all is a sign that the depression never goes away.

Writing this feels ridiculously self-indulgent and I don't think anyone will want to hear it. What IS that??

Shut up, brain, I'm writing it anyway.

I've taken to writing myself check lists for the morning; drink water, take vitamins, make tea, clear kitchen surface, write something, EAT, check calendar. One foot in front of the other. Sitting with the feelings waiting until I'm certain before I go back to the doctors.

(But, okay, please don't advise me about treating my mental health conditions unless I ask you directly; after fifteen years I'm totally over been told I could definitely cure myself if only I did exactly what you/your friend/someone you read about online did. If it's simple I've tried it. If it isn't I've either tried it or do not have energy to spare on it, especially if there is zero evidence for effectiveness. I'm not rambling to the internets hoping someone will fix me, just processing my own wonky mind in my own way and happy to be heard if there's anyone there to hear.)

Which leads me on to: Being extroverted and depressed is crap. No energy to get out and do Peopleing. The less human contact, the less energy I have to spare. It's the worst kind of vicious circle knowing exactly what I can do to help my mental state, knowing what I need to feed myself, and just being utterly unable. I want to diverge into an analogy about being an artist and needing to create and at the same time having very young children and the feedback cycle of putting off creating until the itch mainly goes away and how sad that is.

Oh, look, I worked it out. I'm pretty sure I AM depressed again.

But I'm also on it and starting to turn a corner, and super well supported by my family and dear ones, and actually at a point where I can figure out words. Yay. That's progress for a short piece of navel gazing wittering, typing on a tiny phone screen, letting words pour out of me and rearrange themselves in my mind.

This still already ended up considerably more words than I set out to write. And I still didn't photograph my ICAD Summer art. Or any of the other things I wanted to write about. Hey, talking to myself sort of works for me though, so...

Twelve

Twelve years ago a complicated and stressful two days in labour had retreated smoothly like an evening tide, depositing a tiny baby at the strandline and washing gently away leaving my life quietly divided into before and after.

When the last person finally left the room and turned off the lights, I cradled the future skin to skin and began to sing.

The night was deep blue, and perfectly still. The earlier storms that had flooded part of the hospital corridor vanished without a trace. My nineteen year old self, singing in the dark, had not the first idea what the next years of our lives together would be.

Today we celebrated twelve turns around the sun, madly whirling, frequently clueless and stumbling. She's becoming a woman before my eyes, that little strandline storm baby, that little china doll of a girl who is such a bold fearless creative wild climbing creature. She wasn't ever as breakable as I first feared, yet I still very much fear not being good enough, not giving her something she might later need. Do we ever know we didn't mess it all up? Do my parents know I'm broken and whole and happy and anxious and *right where I always wanted to be, even when I didn't know what I wanted at all*?

And today we laughed and cuddled and swam and made home made pizzas - and ate carrot cake just now, at 9pm, by the dim orange light from the kitchen. My heart is still singing, still a happysad song of true love and this is what it looks like, messy and raw and real and hopeful.

Weell that didn't really go to plan...

1: Tali's new haircut... self-inflicted.
2: Photographing the silks that turned out right, not the two that I ruined this week.
3: A day well spent, depending on your definition of well spent.
4: Watching the construction of our new gate (followed by me getting more and more anxious as the work stretches into three days and I feel increasingly under siege)...
5: Primary coping tactic for the above equals not being in the house. Which is how we end up at an arts festival with a marquee blowing down on my head. Awesome.
6: But, okay, the cold breeze is absolutely amazing.
7: Meal out with family, which somehow wasn't at all stressful.

When all else fails, kitchen cleaning and comic books...

This week started off really promisingly. A friend came over for the day and we basically spent the entire time laughing and behaving incredibly childishly. My soul needed her so badly after last week's pervading sense of hopelessness! I'm a huge extrovert but my anxiety is often triggered by strangers or crowds, and I badly needed the recharging powers of someone who I just didn't have to stand on ceremony with (or worry about what she thought about the state of my carpets).

Then Tuesday, unexpected repair people struck. Now, landlord's agents getting access to our home and causing endless difficulties in the past are one of the deep painful root triggers for my history of panic attacks. I never had a full panic attack until that whole episode, and for almost two years after we finally got them to leave us alone I couldn't even answer the door unless I was expecting someone. So the landlord sending people to put us a new gate in without advance warning could easily have sent me into a spin.

I hadn't had chance to rely on any of my usual options for avoidance or minimising impact (advance tidying frenzy and usually someone else with me when workers turn up) so I settled for my tried and true last-ditch coping tactic of offering coffee or tea and trying to appear unflustered. Go, me!

I probably failed as far as not appearing too weird is concerned, but I did manage friendly - and not crying. Yay.

Yesterday they worked at the front gate, which required no access at all and barely freaked me out in the scale of freaked-out-anxious-person. Today was the turn of the back gate. We have no curtains at the back of the house. I felt like I spent my day in a fishbowl.

Talia watched them from the doorway, accompanied by her "friends" almost the whole day. I flitted between aggressively cleaning the kitchen cupboards, reading Hellblazer, and supervising mud pie making just to make sure the littles weren't tempted to touch the interesting cement buckets.

Nobody fell in a cement bucket, and my cupboards are sparkly. And no tears, unless you count Rowan loudly declaring herself not sleepy just now whilst yawning her little head off. I'm calling today a success.

Week (ish) in pictures, dirty feet and wild places

1: Roo, living room chaos, dirty feet
2: Silk den
3: Dragon Tree
4: Socks!
5: Torin and Jenna
6: Littles at the nature pond again
7: Attenborough walking with Ash (and babysitting the borrowed toddler)

I can almost predict which week each month I won't manage to write anything. The anxiety is so up and down the past few months, I think the return of broodiness has sent my hormones haywire. Or maybe the other way around. Too much information, always, eh? Weeks with a lot of time spent with other people are much easier, but actually reaching out for that connection when I'm so darn tired is hard.

Words come in fragments.

Talia cut her hair this week. She walked in saying, in the tiniest voice, "I didn't cut my hair..." I laughed. So so much. It had been a hard work sort of a day and I realised how unimportant the things I was stressing over were. Hair grows back. Time solves a lot of the little things.

This wasn't meant to be a long post but my intentions got away from me and here I am wondering whether to write about the stress of running out of money and washing detergent at the same time when Jenna seems to be getting hives from cheap soap. Or whether to witter about having got my hands on a copy of Fool's Quest and how satisfyingly perfect it is (usually I don't enjoy the middle book of a trilogy so much).

I have a horsefly bite on my shoulder from our walk yesterday. The cat is currently asleep on top of the Bueno bar Martin bought for me and I don't want to disturb her or allow the bar to melt. And so many other ordinary trivial tiny things that feel like they deserve cataloguing.

What even is this post becoming? I'd better go before it gets more bizarre!

Yarn Along during troubling feelings about how fast time is passing

I'm still setting aside projects and picking up something else, over and over again. Jenna's shawl is waiting for cables. Talia's coat is waiting for its button. I'm knitting back and forth on an experimental ribbon toy thingy that I planned to be finished with weeks ago. But at least I have lots to read. Okay that's an exaggeration, because these all arrived two days ago and I read them all within twelve hours. I have new fanfiction to read. That's good enough for me. :)

     *     *     *

You guys, this was ten years ago.Ten.Years. I was horrendously sick (again), pregnant with Morgan, and I felt like my life was simultaneously coming together and falling apart. I still feel like my life is simultaneously coming together and falling apart, and I look about that much pregnant even though I'm not, and I honestly feel like nothing has changed in any essential way and I sort of thought I would have my life a bit more together by 31.

I mean, the sort of together where you don't phone HMRC the day after the tax credit deadline to sort out the renewal. The sort of together that does laundry before we run out of pants. That sort of together.

Alas...

In ten years I have learned to knit, and stopped wishing I was an artist and started claiming the fact that I already am because I can't not create and it doesn't even matter if almost all of it sucks and I have no idea what I'm doing.

In another ten years maybe I won't feel so much like an overgrown kid trying to fake being competent at things. Or maybe I will. Hopefully I'll still be able to take it all on one moment at a time, one stitch at a time.

Belated Week in Pictures: some rainbow-ness

1. Weather yarn product photography session
2. A friendly picnic at Nottingham castle
3. Talia thought this hydrangea needed a crown
4. Giggly small squish
5. Playing with silks
6. Finding Dory trip with these munchkins
7. Another nature walk and a lovely long afternoon on the park with friends

This is only being written a couple of days in to the new week. Anxiety struck, the kind that feels like an elastic band around the chest and doesn't seem connected to any particular thought or event? My unreliable brain, again. We're okay. These three Wildlings are well. I'm well-supported. That's it, really. Oh, and I flaked off the last two days of Index Card a Day so I want to catch those up before I show off my Summer art project this year.