Catching up: Picture Dump

There's a London road trip in there, and a week of guests. Christmas, and New Years. I've been in quite a good place. Too busy to wallow in the difficult moments. Making, doing, seeing people. Not fitting in everything I want to, ever.

Sometimes it's really great to stop and think that these adventures are getting easier, that at some point I've stopped forcing myself to say yes and started leaping at opportunities. (Sometimes, sometimes the leaping is harder and more coaxing and handholding is required.)

I've felt some resistance to writing, and have been painting instead. I'll probably try to drag myself back here a bit to document more of these days before they're gone.

This morning I was woken early, to the sound of my button box being dropped in the kitchen (the shelf collapsed "for no reason" apparently "we weren't touching it!")! I'd stayed up until midnight to pay our internet bill and get services turned back on, and then had weird dreams I can't quite remember clearly.

It's still dark outside, mist softening the houses opposite. The cat is sitting in the middle of our season table, clouded in blue silk and purring smugly.

I feel like I'm running behind with everything, not keeping up with myself, playing catch up with my life.

Wordless, again

It's done. I can't pretty it up yet or wrap the right words around the raw spiky places. As emergency surgery goes it was easy and she's fine now the half-teeth are gone. As fine as a stubborn and extremely miffed five year old can be when she lacks the vocabulary to express discomfort and just howls and howls for hours at a time.

I've been so anxious about this I haven't even written about her birthday, or Christmas knitting, or crafts, or the learning they are all engaged in. I feel really stuck. At least now it's more literally physically stuck what with trying to make her immediate world feel a little less horrible - rather than the emotional stuck of not-really-coping-with-anything and awaiting boiler repairs and surgery and landlord's inspection and more appointments at the same time as getting last orders out and saying goodbye to my mum as she flies out to Estonia to meet my new nephew...

Oh look, a few dozen words. Quick, shut them down before they overflow everywhere.

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.

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...

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!

At one o'clock in the morning

It's the middle of the night , right now, and I'm sitting in the dark bedroom of my two youngest children, feeling like I'm floating in a little bubble of nocturnal aloneness and knowing that many many other parents are also awake at precisely this moment. Rocking, singing, shushing.

It has been a while since I saw 1am for reasons not related to staying up late giggling over board games and shenanigans with close friends. Last night I got caught up in an excellent book and looked at the time at midnight when Talia inexplicably knocked on the bedroom door. She usually climbs into bed with us when she wakes in the morning, quiet as a mouse and not caring in the least whether she was invited. Midnight waking is so unusual now. Talia knocking on a door almost unheard of.

I didn't answer, hoping she'd just decide to go back to bed. Fifteen minutes later I heard feet on the stairs and decided I'd better go and see what was going on. Rowan and Talia were both sitting down there wrapped in blankets and looking grumpy.

So here I am. I've sung about fifteen rounds of Ong Tal Sam (Rowan's favourite) and then about half of the folk songs I know (leaving out the particularly death-y or overly lively ones), and now I'm sitting here silently willing two small figures to be still enough to risk trying to take myself back to bed.

I'm not sure why I'm documenting it except to say that I can't remember the last time I did this. I can't remember the last time I nursed a baby to sleep or coslept all night (it must be over a year ago as Talia has been weaned for a year). Many sleepless nights, many repetitions of soothing and shushing, quelling my own impatience (or sometimes, futilely, not).

I spent some time with some mums of very little ones earlier, and remembered the baby days and especially participating in numerous semi-exhausted conversations about sleep. Numerous blog posts. How obsessed with sleep I was, documenting it or speculating about it or complaining about it or just dreaming of it; even when cosleeping was going smoothly and easily and I was getting more rest than those frustrating and impossible other Times (which I often didn't dare to talk about in many places lest someone tell me to "just" solve it by immediately sleep training or weaning) - I think I recall a lot of self-whining-censorship. And even so, the "sleep" tag on my old blog was of epic proportions.

Several things are incredibly, suddenly, easier since Talia weaned. I feel like my identity and purpose shifted without my permission, without being prepared or considering the cost. I am glad for a different set of freedoms and responsibilities and potential. At the same time, I don't feel I have adjusted completely yet.

Not that change usually has the courtesy to await my preferences.

(I think I lost the thread of my own thoughts, here. I blame the time, and leave it unedited in solidarity with fellow sleep deprived parents. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

The path we took to get here matters too, maybe

There's a little park near us that we really like. One route to this park is all main roads and busy crossings. The other is behind the post office and along a shady green walk by the railway bridge. Guess which we prefer?

Yesterday was one of those days when getting the necessary adulting done felt all uphill. The children took two hours of assistance, cajoling, and then tearful pleading on the verge of hysteria, to get their shoes on.

It didn't have to go that way. It didn't even start that way. One choice leads to another leads to another. Another occasion where I only realised I was heading for overwhelm when I was almost tipped over the edge.

The day got so much better from there, from that moment of, "I can't, but I have to," and taking time to calm myself.

I would like to tell myself, it would be easier to think, that the overall niceness of the day is the only thing that matters. I think it's probably all that the kids remember of today after all. I think it's more complex than that, though, and less convenient. The path matters. The moments matter. The habits of choosing matter.

Writing it out like this is odd. It helps me to process. It also often means the overall tone is distorted by my need to work through the small frustrations and mistakes. Maybe I don't dwell enough on the overall lovely and interesting and good facets of mothering?

We spotted five different species of butterfly. We talked about train tracks and railways. We had a picnic under a tree. We talked about nature, and fairness, and books that we're reading, and how to tell what kind of metal something is made from, and what defines classification of materials.

Maybe that's the part that really matters most after all?

Seven Days of busy, lovely, and at the end of my tether

The past few days have been a lesson in patience to say the least (interspersed with fun and celebration, because the sublime to the ridiculous is sort of a speciality around here). In particular, we've had a birthday, seen a lot of friends, and supported Jenna to make a police report about some children who attacked her on the park. Maybe next week will be calmer. Or perhaps not.

I would like to think of myself as the kind of person who can put up a weekly post about normal daily life at maybe even the same time each week or even using the same format, but the evidence is somewhat against me here.

It has maybe been less dramatic than my words imply, and less pretty than my pictures suggest. Imagine, then, something a little less than frantic and a little more than serene with a lot more ups and downs than I can list.

1. Torin has the yawns, I have broodiness, Emma makes lovely babies
2. Moveable alphabet
3. Babysitting A, and Escher lizard puzzle love
4. Bubble tea
5. Bluebells
6. Talia taking pictures of the sunset with my mum
7. A again, plus trains
8. Walking to the polling station
9. Sharing chips with friends at the Arboretum
10. When did her feet start to reach the floor?
11. When Jeremy visits, everybody has to see what he's doing at all times

On starting over

I have form in the whole backtracking, mind-changing game. I mean, if you followed the old blog you've also followed bad decisions, flaky flip-flopping, philosophical about-turns, public apologies for being an arse and especially for being an Overly Certain or otherwise preachy arse. That blog was the story of a LOT of years, and all of those years contained small children and flurries of perfectionism, research, and then realising the actual children I had didn't fit my expectations At All.

So, why start over? Why a brand new fresh blog?

Um, I like lists. If you've never met me before, you'll soon catch on. I LOVE a list. I have to-do lists freaking everywhere (and most often they are abandoned after two or three items get ticked off - you were warned about the disorganised bit). Yeah, let's start as we mean to go on, eh?

- The LONG hiatus. Going back to writing on Carried Family would encourage me to put pressure on myself to catch everything up, and likely cause anyone still following that feed to get sick of hearing me whine about it and/or post massive picture-heavy epistles.

- I have no idea if anyone not immediately connected via Facebook remembers who I am any more anyhow. (NOT fishing for sympathy, it's totally okay not to care!)

- The Carried Family name feels like an odd fit now that my youngest child is not breastfeeding any more, no longer likes to ride in slings, and rarely even asks for a hip carry. These guys grew a lot. I'm still attachment parent-ish, but my children are past the cosy carrying-close co-sleeping days.

- When I started writing there was nothing out there on the internet about attachment parenting with more than one child. I had been told by a number of people that I wouldn't be able to do all that "hippy stuff" with a secondborn or I'd have to neglect my first. I wanted to put out there what it was like day to day actually living out my principles. Now not only is there absolutely vast amounts out there about attachment parenting and attachment parenting a handful of children, but I'm likely to be talking about totally different things to the life I was journalling about back then. My audience may well be different. Who knows?

- Although I'm not ashamed of having changed my mind (over and over, on many subjects) and absolutely will have times when I want to do a complete about turn on something I believe strongly right now, I feel like I've changed a lot in the last couple of years especially. Maybe it's my recently *vastly* improved mental health, but I'm emotionally ready for a new space. (Do feel that you have my permission to go and find embarassing posts I wrote way back when to ridicule me with if and when I'm being particularly strident about something, though. I won't be removing or revising anything. I didn't then and I won't now, I'd rather leave it all as a reminder to myself to be a little more humble.)

- If people don't actively want to read I'd rather drop off their feeds quietly. My voice is here because blogging made me so many wonerful connections, helped me learn about myself and my values, and allowed me to reassure parents with younger children than mine that the chaos *absolutely* continues but it does get less intensively consuming.

I am planning to stop philosophising about writing, now, truly. Here, have a picture of the children instead.

It's been a while, folks

Sometimes there isn't a right time. Sometimes there's no right place to start. I've thought about starting to write again so so many times, in the midst of the chaos (or the beauty) or in a quiet moment of peace (or exhaustion). There's nothing extraordinary about today. Here I am, surrounded by journals and projects and children, the vivid colours and astonishing disorder that is my home, and I'm sitting down to say something.

Not a big, articulate, important something. Just a hello. Perhaps only to myself.

Maybe I'm honestly evading starting to pick up toys and clutter and papers to make space for hosting Doctor Who Club tomorrow. Maybe I'm connecting this ordinary moment to so many other ordinary moments occuring right now, and that common familiar sensation of the present and its very mundane precious existence.

Here I am.