I miss me

One thing that I have completely underestimated about this pregnancy is how much of my self esteem is dependent upon what I'm able to do, achieve, and produce. The vision of myself as someone who is more resilient and healthy than ever, who is more capable of carrying on doing the things I feel needs doing through another difficult period of illness, turned out to be a complete illusion. I was feeling so much better, emotionally speaking, because as my children got older I was simply able to see the results of the work I was doing. My life was more measurable, and hence I was more mentally well and strong and all of those things I thought were due to some inner work I had mastered, some level of peace I had won.

I have had a difficult reality check. Not only hyperemesis and its accompanying exhaustion and mental burden. But also much worse sickness, and longer lasting, than in my last two pregnancies (I had utterly convinced myself that each pregnancy was slightly better than the previous and therefore *surely* I would only be a vomity mess for about sixteen weeks this time - wrong)!

Even though medication has reduced the sickness to a level where I no longer feel like I'm dying (not an exaggeration) and am able to stay hydrated enough not to worry for the safety of my baby, I am still utterly wiped out and prone to needing a nap lest I start vomiting again later in the day in spite of the medicine. This week I have had bad days, where medication and indeed everything else I consumed didn't stay down. I have spent more time horizontal, and not gracefully. I have resented the heck out of it.

I am extremely unproductive. I'm behind with work. I'm trying not to look too closely at the piles of laundry and general crunchiness of the house. I dropped out of Index Card a Day after less than a week. I haven't journalled or even written a page in my bullet-journal-ish household notebook for weeks. I'm in bed by nine almost every night. Some days I can't point to a single thing I actually did.

Yes, I'm taking it quite hard.

Call this my training for being glued to a needy tiny human for a few months, if you like. Though I have to say that will feel significantly more voluntary than this does, albeit due to the same tiny human. I miss being able to predict what I will be able to get done. I miss feeling like a reasonably good parent.

I miss the sense of self I gained from doing.

Yarn Along: American Gods and some marl

So, I started reading about a week ago and finished a couple of days ago. Proper book hangover this week! I read the abridged release a long time ago and wasn't nearly as taken as I have been with this. What a bloody gorgeous book.

I've been playing with the marled blanket a few days longer than that. It's getting huge now. Still at the fun stage of wanting to see the next colour change.

Between projects and the children and the odd excursion on my own, I've had a busy-peaceful couple of weeks. And now Martin is off work for a couple of days helping to Spring clean the house a bit. :)

Art Every Day

During the Summer, I participated in Daisy Fellow's Index Card a Day. Every day, one piece of art on an index card. No holds barred, no worrying about perfection, cheap card, go for it. This year's felt amazing, I never got stuck in that feeling of duty and enjoyed every piece.

And yet since then I haven't continued to create every day.

I intended to. Kept my little art station set up by the kettle and all. Every morning I get up, take my supplements, drink a glass of water and wipe down the surface, put the kettle on for a cup of tea. In the Autumn that minute seemed to be for spacing out and staring at the willow tree. End of Summer weirdness.

Over the Winter I have painted again. Not every day, though that would be a good aim for me eventually I think.

Right now there is a lot of knitting to do. And a lot of facilitating for the children. So much to learn and do. Still, maybe today I'll pick up a brush again.

Ugly

I want to pour out words here about never feeling enough, about sabotaging good healthy friendships with this damn anxiety, about feeling like I'm always making excuses and ought to just "pull myself together"...

And every time I try to shape passages of real, raw, beautiful, healing, it comes out ugly and self pitying and dark.

Honestly things aren't actually all that dark. I'm as safe and supported as I've ever been, home and family are stable and healthy (bar Winter bugs). My mood has been better (I self-inventory, again, and worry that I'm thinking about it too much, again). 

Then, whahey, darkness from nowhere, petty triggers and insufficient sleep. And I lash out and hide, self protective and small, and what USE is it? I don't WANT small and safe. I want whole. I want to be kinder than I feel.

What does one do with this mess of darkness that clings and pushes and chokes?

I want it to be redemptive. I want to pour it into love and I fail at this over and over. I want it to mean something.

It's still Autumn until my birthday

The cold weather has floored me, a little. Our boiler has stopped working twice now for no real reason and I'm at the wearing-mittens-indoors stage of the year already. My mental health is like a pendulum. I'm sort of trying to ignore it, actually, the general anxiety increase from examining these fluctuations is worse than the unpredictability.

Still, it's Autumn until the end of November, the trees are still colourful, I'm not yet feeling dragged down by the greyness. It's not all that long until my birthday and the start of Advent. I have a good stack of books to read and cinnamon candles and so many more plans before the Christmas season.

I haven't been making very much. My knitting mojo has vanished and I'm just plodding on methodically with orders and not feeling enthused about any of the potential next cast-ons. I did tie some shiny bark leaves to some yarn for the window. This totally counts as crafting, and is sufficient adulting to negate the need to clean the windows. Right?

Nottingham Contemporary, rambling, art day, shattered

We took the train to Nottingham today. Connor wanted to show his dad the exhibits here and I'd promised the children we'd see these ones again before they finished if we could. Five kids, and two mutually supportive adults with anxiety disorders, what could possibly go wrong?

Even an anxious extra adult is a huge help and motivation for me to get up and out and refuse to let the anxiety beat me. Plus a whole day of art? I was enthusiastically on board, even if now at the end of a long busy day I can poke wry fun at myself for thinking it would all totally go to plan.

Pump House, by Michael Beutler, is an interactive series of rooms made from basically junk. It's beautiful, and chaotic, and the children are absolutely in love with the giant weaving they are allowed to walk and play on barefoot. I knew Connor's dad would love this exhibit too, because some of his own artwork is based around similar themes and using the same techniques. It was fun to watch the children in such a huge strange colourful labyrinthine environment again.

The other exhibition showing at the Contemporary right now is Yelena Popova's After Image. Huge abstract canvases with barely discernable shapes in subdued colours. Rowan loved getting close, stepping back, getting close again. Seeing faint shadows make an image and disappear again as perspective changed the contrast. I love the wooden pieces in this gallery. Strange bone-like shapes leaning against the scattered pictures.

There's a room of sound, too. Walking between four speakers to enjoy the shifting tones and voices.

I still had castle tickets from the last Nottingham trip so we thought we'd chance the tired kids on a visit there too. As soon as we got into the building I remembered the Da Vinci exhibition I hadn't been able to see due to melty tired kids! Excitement! First, extended role play in the Robin Hood gallery and some drawing in the big hall.

Rowan and Talia were no longer exactly at their most helpful/happy, and I was starting to think perhaps I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I half-whispered a lecture to one of them about being respectful of other people's work and the folks we were sharing the space with. Sat for a while and gazed up at a beautiful seascape and tried to remember how to breathe deeply and steadily. That's when the children all suddebly went absolutely quiet and focussed, and I exhaled stress and worry and saw the miracle of all five children engaged and peaceably *discussing art with each other*. I almost did a happy dance on my bench, honestly, after an hour of gradually rising blood pressure!

And in the end I did manage another fifteen minutes of peace and cooperation, on top of that magical gallery interlude, to indulge my fangirl fascination. Whining caused an early retreat, and a short but exhausting walk straight back to the train homewards, but oh it was totally worth it.

Totally, totally worth it.

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.

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...

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.

Weekending: Everyone Exhibition opening and other things

This weekend's shenanigans were mainly museum-based. Derby Everyone opened at Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Rowan and Morgan, Jenna, and I all have pieces in the gallery. Several of our extended family and friends also have art on display. So of course we had to be there as soon as possible once the museum opened for the day.

You might get a picture of my piece another day, because *whispers* it was accidentally hung upside down, which the museum staff were so mortified about I felt guilty for telling them (so English, in fact so English I only let them know because my children couldn't stop laughing and teasing me about it). To be fair, it's abstract, and the staff had hundreds of submissions to contend with over a two day period!

Anyhow, if you're in Derby and want to find mine it's in the hallway now correctly oriented. *subsides into another fit of giggles about it*

After museum number one, we had lunch and watched a series of excellent street performances before heading to museum number two for the all-day board games at the Silk Mill. Rowan and Connor helped operate the giant laser. The Ratman failed to eat us all in a round of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I made sleeve progress on Talia's circle coat.

Sunday was mainly about finding the missing bedroom floors to regain the children's play spaces, and baking bread again. Guests arrived to camp in our living room on their way to HECY, and their smallest one did a little happy dance when she was reminded that they are taking Jenna with them. It's going to be an odd week!

Seven-ish Days of Excellent Things (that happened in between sibling squabbles and disasters)

1. Floor picnic
2. Simon Starling's work at Nottingham Contemporary with friends
3. Hello, Torin <3
4. Board games with friends (again)
5. In the brook
6. Tiny toys
7. Rabbits on the verge

In which I set new standards for behaving like a dork in public...

Last night I had the most incredible inspiring experiences. I met one of my all time literary idols and got to shake her by the hand and tell her how much her poetry has meant to me over the years.

Carol Ann Duffy was at Derby Cathedral , opening the book festival with her wonderful poetry reading (and musical performances by Jon Sampson who was also spellbinding). I went alone; I booked myself a ticket in January, part of my newfound confidence in doing things solely for myself.

Afterwards I queued up in the line for book signings, and explained earnestly to the person asking what dedications we wanted I didn't have anything for her to sign, I just wanted to thank her for a poem.

"Prayer" has been stuck firmly in my head for more than half of my life. It has carried me through some desperately wordless times. Her words have profoundly touched me and helped me come to terms with a sort of reverent faithlessness and faith-filled prayerlessness.

She grasped my hand, and I welled up with tears. Aaand then tripped over her table.

Fangirling level: incoherent babbling. It was certainly a memorable end to the night... When I recounted the tale to Jenna she put her head in her hands and then gave me a sarcastic round of applause.

Warrior face

I want to whine: about being tired and juggling Martin's early shifts with evening plans for theatre trips, about being broody and yet not wanting another baby at the same time, about trying to juggle all the business administration, about being so very needed.

But I'm so very needed. And today is so very precious, and feels far too heavy to waste on complaining about having to be an adult. (Maybe I'll whine later, when I've kicked today's behind.)

I need to warrior up, first.

(Art and work progress shots just because everything is better with rainbows. Even tired-mumma-big-girl-pants rallying cries.)

Sometimes, I just want to create art

I want to do all the things, no matter how tired I am, no matter what work I have on or how the kids are or what size of laundry mountain is piled up waiting for my attention. During last week I woke up with a jolt at five in the morning with an entire artwork planned out in my head. I could picture it so vividly I ended up getting up to sketch ideas quickly before I lost the sense of urgency.

I can still see it in my mind's eye, so clear and simple.

A week later I've started, every couple of days adding a layer, and am at the stage of hating it and questioning why I think I'm an artist anyway (and considering throwing it away and starting over). Only the knowledge of having been through this process before is keeping me from taking a tub of gesso to the canvas and using it for something else.

I'm in the tired, introverted days of my monthly cycle. I found myself wishing, a couple of days ago, that I could send the children off somewhere for a couple of days so that I could just make something. Instead, I took them on the train to Nottingham to tour the art galleries, and then spent an entire day building train tracks and winding the crank handle on the giant tape measure for a small child to pull it out again. And giving myself over to being overwhelmed and present and not flinching from it was enough. It was enough.

Both the laundry and the art will wait. They will. Some days they have to.

Today I'm taking my brush to the canvas again. It's okay if it sucks. Tomorrow it might be just what I thought it would be. This is where I am, today. Beautiful mess. Vibrant chaos. Colourful disarray. Mothering as art. Art as mothering. Documenting the whirl of it, the essential hurry-up-and-wait of it, the beauty and the soul of being here now.

**Exhibits pictured: La Source (demi-teinte) by Simon Starling (part of his exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary); Mother and son by Sam Rose, and below that, Nesting by Jessica Paige Greig (both part of Artist as Mother as Artist at the ncn Lace Market Gallery).**