Veronica Foale

Author: Veronica Foale

  • I’m trying hard to not be bitter

    Writing is cathartic for me and sometimes, I need to write things out before my head explodes from the words and the hurt going around and around and around.

    Sometimes though, once I’ve written them and gotten some feedback, it’s better. The words stop and the insanity stops and I can shake off the hurt and move forward again.

    This time, I don’t need to leave the post up. I’ve got no real need to sit and wait for the vitriolic emails to appear in my inbox. And don’t doubt me here, I know they’d appear. This is the Internet and I’ve always known my writing could be found by everybody.

    My family is difficult and nuanced and complicated. They are annoying and forgetful and biased. Even when I don’t like them very much, I still love them. I suspect they’re very much like every other family out there.

    The people who need to know how I feel already do and the people who made me feel that way in the first place, well, I’m doubting that a shitfest will make me feel better.

    I suspect my twitter stream has more spies than Russia and I am fine with that. My twitter stream is not private, in any way shape or form. If my highschool principal was so inclined, he could read what I was up to. In real life, I am intensely introverted. My blog and writing help to combat that and keep me balanced.

    So really, this is just me saying that while I don’t feel better as such, I’m not letting it hurt anymore and I’m walking away.

  • Hard is relative

    ‘That must be so hard’ they say, when I talk about daily life for us. The meltdowns, the screaming, the sensory overloads.

    It must be hard.

    And I think about it and well, maybe it is a little. But hard is relative and what’s hard for you, isn’t hard for me. This is daily life and I’m drawing on a wealth of experience and it’s not so bad.

    Hard for me, is death and grief.

    Not life.

    My body falls apart and we add yet another diagnosis to my long string of them. A diagnosis that is ‘broken’ when all is said and done.

    Maybe this is a little bit hard.

    Maybe not. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed right now.

    I created life. I gestated it and felt my body swell under my hands. When the time came, I panted and strained and gave birth to life, to a small human being who may just grow up to rule the world. We don’t know yet, life is full of infinite possibility.

    I am God for these lives I created and expelled out into the world, the lives that makes mine so infinitely complicated. If I gave birth to them, I know that I am strong enough to mother them and bring them to adulthood.

    This is not hard. This is a privilege.

  • Disjointed, just a little.

    Blink. Blink. Blink.

    I’ve been watching this cursor for two days now and wondering, have I lost my ability to string pretty sentences together?

    I hope not.

    —

    Words scream around inside my head and the longer I leave them in there, the bigger they grow and the harder they are to get out.

    So let’s see how we go.

    —

    My son has preliminary assessments to decide whether he is possibly autistic. The gatekeepers – perfectly lovely women in their own right – appear to be there solely to decide whether I am being a hypochondriac on behalf of my son. They seem a little shocked when I am able to use their jargon and we discuss his inability to transition and his burgeoning echolalia.

    His red flags are raised and waved high and we walk out knowing that he will be assessed for autism, that he is (very definitely, likely, probably) possibly on the spectrum.

    After we leave, I wonder at their reaction to the language I used.

    Doesn’t every parent learn how to speak medicalese when advocating for their children?

    Apparently not.

    —

    I have immaculate conceptions, two of them and now they walk around, demanding things and shrieking at me. A doctor tells me I am very lucky to have conceived on my own without help, that my uterus is very likely broken, a desolate wasteland of stuff that isn’t babymaking friendly.

    We organise to run tests and I leave, feeling like maybe I wasn’t insane after all.

    At the same time, my body contracts and I realise just how badly I want a third baby and just how unlikely that is going to be without assistance.

    But we’ll tread that path when it slams us in the face.

    —

    My plants grow and thrive and I spend a lot of time hiding in my garden – yes, the children may be outside with me, but fences separate us and my son does his whining and clinging somewhere that isn’t my leg. This leaves me space to breath as I coax a bean plant straight here and twine a pea shoot around a string. Tomatoes in seedling boxes need poking every few hours, how on earth can they be expected to grow without me checking on them?

    I breath in the smells of warm dirt inside temporary hot houses and wish that summer were here. I am so sick of being cold.

    I suspect my plants feel the same way.

    —

    My writing feels disjointed, which seems to suit my life right now. A mess of everything, being clashed together into a jumble and I’m left trying to make sense of some of it. Grief runs underneath everything, a dark tow threatening to pull me down into the dark.

    Instead I make beds and wish for warmth and long hot days outside getting my hands dirty.

  • The weight of expectation.

    When I wake up and step outside, the air is warm and heavy.

    Close, pressing on me as I wander outside and check the poultry and eggs due to hatch.

    It feels like the week before a baby is born, or the breath between birth and the angry screams of a newborn. The space between your heatbeat when you’re frozen with indecision.

    Everything stretches out in front of us.

    Waiting. Just waiting.

    The animals can feel it as they press against my legs. The dog whines and the cats are hasty to come inside, falling down asleep in the warmth of beds abandoned.

    I watch the sky and I’m waiting too, waiting to see what the day brings, what the warm air and pressure will disgorge on us. I can feel it, something is coming. The electricity in the air is almost palpable.

    The weight of expectation.

    It feels like a storm is coming.

  • Discontentment

    It feels like I’m banging my head against a wall, or swimming against the tide. Trying to get noticed in the swell of mummybloggers and professionals, the Internet is a shark tank and I’m not kitted up for the biting that inevitably follows.

    I want more, I want to be noticed and universally adored – despite knowing that it’s insanity to want universal adoration, something that only exists inside the minds of slightly insane movie starlets.

    Nevertheless, I click through and look at my stats and content myself with writing consistently well and still it feels like it’s not enough. I want ….. something. Something more.

    I think I’ve flown, THWAP, up against the glass walls in here.

    What the fuck hit me?

    Discontentment.

    Huh.

    I read amazing words and yet those women, they don’t write often enough. I respond on twitter to someone who appears to be no more popular than anyone else and never get a response. What sets him aside from us, that he can afford to ignore the plebs, those of us he deems below himself.

    Being noticed for writing on the Internet feels like being noticed for wearing designer shoes in a strip club. It’s a world of instant gratification and the time it takes to read words and let them sit inside you isn’t taken, not when you’ve got BOOBS and AWESOME and HAHAHAHA hiding over there.

    So they click away and it feels like I’m doing the same thing, over and over and not getting anywhere.

    And it goes around and around and around.

    Welcome to my merry-go-round. Want to come and sit up here and throw peanuts at the people who don’t want to notice us? You’re more than welcome to sit here by me.