Mother

The background music to my shower is that of a crying baby, and yet when I turn the faucet off, and stand dripping in the sudden ensuing silence, I hear no baby crying.

I tiptoe out and drip on the carpet, peering into the bedroom.. baby sound asleep on my bed, ne’er a stir.

Back to the shower it is. Rubbing shampoo through my sparse postpartum hair, trying my utmost to ignore the anguished imaginary cries of my baby.

I towel myself dry and watch that peaceful little face, large soft peachy cheeks, eyelashes gentle on the roundness below, small deep breaths under the covers, a contented little sigh.

My eyeballs are burning. I am beyond needing a nap. My body screams for a good weightlifting session at the gym. I flutter about the house on my toes, doing only chores that are silent. Brooming, mopping, dusting. No hoover. No dishes. Never boil a kettle. And set the washing machine to start when nap time is over.

If I am too tired to do that, I sit on the sofa and eat ice cream. Noodles. Doritos. And I watch reruns of Gilmore Girls. Not focusing on the story, really, just mindlessly staring into an abyss.

Daily things are done as and when I can manage them. I want to kiss my boy inside and out, but don’t know how to. I live for the little gurgling laughs and the huge shy smile and that soft little double chin. I knew I would love him but never realised how much it would hurt and what sort of worry it would cause.

I miss my mother. My mother in law doesn’t like it when I visit her. She gives me the silent treatment and yet acts normal when my husband is around. She complains to my husband that I am disrespectful and always act like I am itching to leave. She doesn’t let me leave. And when I try to she asks ‘why’. Even though I spent the entire weekend at her house, and only a few snatched hours with my mother. I am not allowed to stay the night with my mother else she gets very upset and her husband shouts at my husband and calls him names and stresses him out until he fights me to the death so I give in and stay in their horrid, horrid depressing house. My father in law wouldn’t have cared if his wife hadn’t pushed him to. He told my husband that she comes first before anything and he must never upset her.

I am shocked. I didn’t think she had it in her.

What about me and my sanity and my mental wellbeing?

I miss my mother so sorely and yet when I am with her I am stressed because I know I will be ‘in trouble’ when I go back to my husband.

This time is meant to be special, and I am making it so, I really am. I am treasuring my child so very much. I just wish family was easy also. I feel trapped, because I don’t actually have a choice. I feel anxious all the time and on the verge of tears.

My husband makes it very hard for me to see my family as he prioritises his mother, and causes trouble when she causes trouble. So I have to pick my battles, and that means much less time with my parents.

I miss them so much.

Having a baby makes you need and value your mother in a way you never did before.

When I am a mother in law, I honestly will ensure that I am not so selfish and insensitive to my daughter in law. People need their mothers, while they have them.

I NEED my mother.

Exit

I am extremely nervous. I start my first day at a new job tomorrow – as a supply teacher! I don’t know which school I will be teaching at, I don’t know where it is or how far it is. All I know is that I have to be ready by 7:30PM sharp, and will have to leave at the drop of a hat.

I don’t know what kind of kids I will be teaching, and that worries me the most. I am really good with the younger ones; its the older ones I am dubious about. You can get some right messes at school; and its dealing with them delicately whilst grasping at shreds of wisdom that is tricky.

I am afraid of KIDS. But I will not show them, of course. I will march in there like a Trunchbull and show them who’s boss. I can be quite mean when I want to be. But I have never been in that situation before, so I really don’t know what to expect. You never know with kids.

I am exiting my comfort zone, that’s what, and the thought of it churns in my stomach like acid and worms.

Rainless.

Once upon a time everything was fine.

People did what they had to do, wrote their assignments on time, and submitted excellent essays brimming with poignant points with legitimate quotations and impeccable referencing. They researched on time, and read all the books they needed to well in advance.

They did not stress eat chocolate until they were too sick to move, their sticky fingers flying over the keyboard at a thousand miles a second, and they certainly did not forget to brush their teeth two days in a row and wear a STAINED dress to work.

They also studied very hard for their exam not one week in advance, but five. They were nice to their husbands and made an effort to not look like a plastic bag with greasy hair, and they were not anxious and did not have separation anxiety when their husband told them he was staying in the next city for a month because this travel is getting too hard.

They did not silently cry in secret and fume over not going with said husband.

They did not miss the gym for three weeks despite paying £25, and they also understood everything perfectly and didn’t speak rubbish.

They were good and clean and tidy and healthy and mentally well equipped to handle life.

They were not named Lenora Sparrow, but some other name that was nice and sensible and did not reek of late submission and missed personal deadlines and/or goals.

That reminds me, I need to call my dad and discuss flights, write that amazon review I promised to write and read a tonne of things, also clean this place and myself up and lesson plan for this afternoon as well as finish 1200 words by tonight and make sure my car has petrol in it for tomorrow.

Etybyte

 

Shift

As the seasons change, my life grunts a little and turns over, her eyelids fluttering. She senses a force awakening, and it is stopping her from carrying on in the same old position. Soon she will have to shift to accommodate new matters.

Today I walked into the chemist and bought something that I have never bought before. I wasn’t anxious about buying said thing, but my heart was palpitating at the thought of the nuances behind such an object.

The lady wrapped it in a paper bag and then put the paper bag into a plastic one.

“Oh, there’s no need, really,” I began, reaching for the bag, but she patted my hand and smiled at me.

“It’s absolutely no problem, darlin’. Give you more privacy that way.”

I was retching when I was in the bathroom. Not because it smelled bad or anything, but because I was frightened. I was terrified. I was completely out of my wits.

I was too scared to look.

That’s it.

My life, as I know it, is over. No more travelling, no more being chill, no more going wherever the whim takes us.

I’m scared because I think I am not ready yet. I think that there is loads more that I need to do. But sometimes in life, no matter how pre-cautious you are, the thing that you planned becomes unplanned.

I picked up the cheap plastic stick.

Two pale pink lines.

A positive.

*deep, shaky, teary breath*

Crests and Troughs

 

I don’t feel too good.

I spend too much time in the shower. I enjoy the torrid water beating against my body, I think it is hot but if it were to be cranked up a degree  I am afraid I would burn. I hold my finger poised over the power button on the electric shower and contemplate it for a good five minute before i press on it with a sluggish finger. Everything feels weakened. Even after I have slept.

I lay in bed yesterday for hours, and when I got up it was 4pm. I got in at 9:45am. I didn’t want to get dressed but I did because Damian did and I wanted to make an effort for him. He told me I seem like I am carrying a heavy burden and I smiled at him and whacked him lightly with a towel and told him not to be so silly.

I wish I could tell him. I wish I could tell somebody. That somedays all I think about in bed on my own with a growing feeling of fear and disgust is everything that happened for two years and ended a year ago. I am constantly reminded of it. Sometimes smells waft my way and I am jerked back into a time and a place and my throat constricts and the world shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and I want to escape but I can’t because the world is too small. There’s nowhere to go.

I was standing outside the flat yesterday, and it opens right out to the high street of the little town I now live in. I was leaning against the wall because Damian went in to get the car keys and while I was waiting the faint music from the pub down the road wafted my way. Rihanna. Singing something. I’d know that cow’s voice anywhere. He always had her blasting. He always spoke about how he would fuck her senseless if he got the chance. While I was sitting right next to him. When I complained he slapped my thigh. My thigh. My thigh. I don’t know how I could have let such a disgusting thing touch me. Why did I let him touch me. Why. Why. Why.

Or Rihanna blasting out in a rickety old car as it sped down a quiet, pitch black A road. Rihanna wailing about how she would drink to the frickin’ weekend. Him singing along. Me giving a fake, forced smile. Him telling me not to be such a moody cow. It was such an ugly song. Her moaning voice drags me back to bleak places.

I did not want to be there.

You know those times when your soul isn’t happy? When you have every reason to feel joy but you just don’t? When everything you thought would make you happy, help you escape, is in your grasp but you just want to go back? When you keep being told that you are free, you are better off, this is you being an adult, living your life… but your mind finds it increasingly difficult to relate those facts to the agony you are feeling. But I’m not really living it, am I? I am a frightened little rabbit doing your bidding because I am scared to death of you. That’s what the voices in my head were telling me.

I looked out into the darkness and blocked everything else out from my mind. I focused only on getting it over and done with and going back to the safe haven of my home again. Where nobody knew anything. Where I spent hours late at night glued a phone call I really didn’t want to partake in, tiredness cloaking me like a heavy, hot blanket. I glanced listlessly at all the work I didn’t do because I had to spend hours talking to a madman.

A madman. A mad man who rambled and shouted and raved and told me despicable things about my mother. I sat there in the dead of the night listening to somebody insult my mother and call her a fat cow and a selfish bitch. MY MOTHER who sacrificed everything for me, who still does, who spends all her time and energy thinking of me, doing things for me, planning for me, researching for me, and never spares not a second on herself. My mother. And I sat there listening to it. I took it in and I nodded and sighed and yawned and tried to make excuses but to no avail. Egotistical manipulators  don’t understand excuses. They think of nobody but themselves.

I thought that period of time would be erased from memory once I escaped it. I thought my dabblings with such a force would have no effect on me later because.. why would they? I am alright, aren’t I? I am fairly normal. Average. Happy-go-lucky. I have never suffered with any mental illness. I am fine.

A whole year ago yesterday and why is it still bothering me. Why am I still terrified? Why  does my heart beat with frantic panic every time an unknown number calls me? Why do I feel like I will never ever shake the disgusting, terrifying, menacing, monstrous feel of him off?

I want to step out of this heavy burdensome skin.

Sometimes I laugh so loudly at the things Damian says and after a while I am still laughing, but I am no longer in the moment. I have stepped away from it, and now my laughter is a deafening echo and my face is doing all the motions but I am really crying so heavily I have melted right into the ground.

So, I don’t feel too great. I have stomach aches in the evenings. My limbs fall heavy and I don’t seem to be able to breathe so well anymore. My chest feels too tight. I take off my bras and still, my deep breaths aren’t so satisfying.

It’s crests and troughs, though. I am so happy one moment in the park swinging on swings, sailing down slides, letting the wind whirl through my hair, opening my arms wide to embrace the forces of this beautiful nature. But the next moment I can hardly move for the pain inside. It just hurts. I cry for no reason. I cry when I tell Damian I love him. I cry when I hear my mother’s voice on the phone. I cry when I look at my hair in the mirror. How can somebody feel so happy, and yet so sad?

I just don’t understand it. Why do I feel so poorly, and yet so alive? How could I feel so nauseous and yet dig into meals like a ravenous pig? I want to look forward to things, get excited about things, sing and dance and laugh honestly again.

So I am just waiting for this trough to turn into a crest. Today was better than yesterday. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.