Returning to myself

1: Post-sunny day evening treat, wildlings laughing and jostling, feeling very lucky.
2: Leicester visiting, my dad is recovering from surgery for cancer, we stopped by the pump house museum on our way over.
3: Tiny weavings, I'm building up to doing regular activity with the children who have been hanging around bored and worried a lot of the time I was really seriously ill. I have a lot of guilt about not being more present through this, but I'm trying to practice kindness to myself. Being so ill is hard and I'm lucky it's fairly temporary.
4: A long walk in heavy rain to the library.
5: Book festival wildlings.
6: And we met Mog, too. Rowan was terrified and squeezed my hand tight.
7: Flower bashing (hapa zome craft in the community gardens). I can't even express how lucky I feel to be vaguely back to doing things again.

In related news I'm now 17 weeks pregnant and starting to feel little goldfish wigglings. The middle kiddos came to my midwife appointment and heard the heartbeat last week, and now they are all competing over who can talk to (and kiss) the bump the most so it will be well socialised to being pounced on by siblings by the time it arrives!

May catch-up: the worst of it

I spent May throwing up, crying, falling asleep on the sofa, doing really simple crafts to occupy the children, and getting to grips with taking meds during pregnancy. The medication that worked well only continued to work well if I took it on time, getting my prescription re-filled wasn't as simple as I thought it would be, and just not throwing up every meal and every glass of water felt pretty damn wonderful actually. I'm getting there, honestly. But May was mostly hard work interspersed with sunshine.

Yarn Along: finishing the blanket, and starting new books

I cast off, today. If I gave it a twenty stitch border I think it would be roughly single bed size, but I'm still thinking ten stitch will be fine. I just have to decide what colour. I'm deciding between a greeny-turquoise, or a grass green, I think. I want to bring those colours a bit more into balance against the slightly dominant oranges.

This blanket has been my colour play and my meditation for two weeks now, so I'm at a bit of a loss! I plan to get at least one smaller project cast on by the end of today though and I'm pretty sure I've picked which ones.

I've not been reading much. I'm a third of the way in to The Mime Order now but I think it was a mistake not to reread the first book before attempting it, because I have struggled so much to make sense of such a busy landscape of characters and setting.

I started two other books last week and quickly put them both down again, so I don't know. Maybe it's just the same busyness sapping my attention. I might go back to comic books again for 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.

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?

Pumpkin everything and juggling anxieties

Sometimes it's a great week and a dreadful one rolled up together. I'm whiny when I have a cold, and always spend the first two days of my period thinking I'm useless and awful at everything. Add to that a broken boiler and the necessity of repair people in the house? I was a mess. I am still, really.

Anxiety is getting through an appointment and bursting into tears the moment the door closes.

All week the children have wanted to carve their pumpkins and all week the thought of the effort and mess has made me quake. Eventually the thought of the waste got the better of me and I realised the anxiety of NOT having done them would be longer-lived than the anxiety of dealing with it then and there.

Four pumpkins. Toasted seeds. Seed brittle. Pumpkin smoothie, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin curry.

I'd like to say I feel much better now and the anxiety has been kicked back into submission... but no. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week.

At least I feel like a productive emotional mess?

Adulting

Self care right now looks like remembering to take my vitamins and writing lots and lots of rainbow coloured lists in the hopes of not forgetting a bill or an order or a household task. My phone pings to remind me to carve out time with each child. There isn't a lot more I can let go of, so these are my priority spinning plates right now. So far, apart from the council tax bouncing and subsequent week of being extra careful and working out how to make meals from the cupboards for seven days, I'm doing okay and my general anxiety is back under control.

That makes it sound like a wayward pet.

I'm not sure I'm with the depersonalisation trend in mental health. This is my mind. It frames everything that happens to me, consolidates it, sorts and categorises it. I don't like being depressed and anxious, I'm not clinging to this identity, I would rather be well. But it is an identity in a sense. It's me; I'm working with (and sometimes against) myself.

It's not a very popular view, that one. I've been told that I'm not depressed and just need to pull myself together, or that I should talk about my conditions in a certain way if I'm serious about getting well. Fuck that noise.

I want to be well. More than that, I am planning to be well. I know how to get myself there. I don't know how to keep it gone for good, but let's get back there first. Safe, stable. I'm not stupid, I know I need to be healthy again and my family need me. (End or mental health rant/Public Service Announcement, I really did intend not to do that again but oh well!)

I have jumped on the Habitica bandwagon, which has miraculously kept me actually remembering to eat and drink water regularly. I really love a good checklist!

That's where my head is at right now. Not the most coherent words ever, but authentic and written on a day where I feel both full of cold and yet oddly peaceful with the ups and downs. I hope it reassures those of you who've asked what my plan is and whether I'm coping with the random upsurge in down days.

I'm still here, still doing, still being.

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...

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.

We can pretend June didn't happen, right?

Today has been the first day in a couple of weeks that I haven't feel generally overwhelmed. In fact, it has been one of those golden home educating days when everyone is happily engaged in doing interesting and impressive looking stuff all day, the siblings are all eager to help each other out, I get the satisfaction of hearing them chatter interestingly and knowledgeably, and generally feel like Not a Shit Parent.

In fact, they even made tea with minimal supervision; beetroot and mushroom pizza, broadbean risotto, and steamed artichokes with butter and balsamic vinegar. For saying there were actual tears about me having served the wrong kind of sausages a couple of days ago (they were in a parcel of food my brother kindly gave us), I was tempted to wonder aloud if these were really my children. Alas, the audience for my sarcasm is usually unimpressed at best.

I've spent years trying to compel wonderful days to keep happening, at first by working out ways to control their behaviour, and later by working on controlling mine, and now I've reached a place of relative peace (or perhaps capitulation). All of my best choices, and all of my best moments right now, are the ones in which I go with the flow and welcome the moment I'm in.

I'm not sure I'm a natural at this. Any of it. Ending days feeling bruised by life and not sure any more whether I'm a good parent if I'm feeling particularly honest. Yeah, it's been a tough couple of weeks.

Today I saw a glimpse of balance and joyful ordinary and it was good. I also barely remembered to take any pictures, but the evidence is largely in my newfound sense of peace anyway.

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.)

Yarn Along - miles of stocking stitch and some childishness

For some reason I am totally wiped out and exhausted today, so it is definitely a knitting and reading day. All of the children seem to be doing similarly too. Jenna has Neverwhere. Morgan has Matilda. Rowan has Minecraft on the laptop. Talia os snuggled up next to me with a huge book of Star Wars technical drawings. And I'm sitting here alternating chapters of Earth X with a couple of rows of the Sockhead hat.

My autocorrect doesn't like me typing "Sockhead" and I have to keep correcting its correction, which is causing childish sniggering here. I'm easily amused when tired.

After knitting 2:2 ribbing until I was sick of it, I am now going to knit the slightly more soothing stocking stitch until I start to hate this hat. I mean, the goal is "love in every stitch" but sometimes vague loathing of the project is just as helpful, an easy target for mild frustration that I can whine about and notice my own ridiculousness. Doing the small things with love. Patience. Impatient muttering. Persistence. One of those.

I'm pretty sure when I finish this I will choose something with the same sort of mind-numbing characteristics, because I need all the car knitting and projects that otherwise don't require my full attention.

There's similar logic in the graphic novels too. That and poetry and fanfiction are where I'm at for interruptibility and emotional energy. I'm taking my self care in snippets. :)