Me

Where did my year go?

by Veronica Foale on September 10, 2011

in Me

The time slipped away from me and when I stopped to take stock, I realised that it was September already and months had passed. My daughter turned five (FIVE – where do the years go?) and grew an attitude and my son spends his days clinging to my ankles.

This is life, the time passes and the world turns, until it feels like everything has changed (but nothing has changed) and you’ve been stuck spinning in circles like a spinning top.

How did I get to this point?

I sat down to write, a few days ago and got stuck on all of the things that had happened. A sum total of All Of The Things That Have Gone Wrong and I stopped, stepped away from the computer, and had a panic attack. Surely that wasn’t me? (It was you.)

I didn’t want to think about all of the reasons that I am Not Coping right now, until they slammed me in the face with the Not Copingness of themselves and I had to stop thinking.

Everything will be okay, if I can just stop thinking about all of the reasons why things will never be okay.

Then, everything will be okay.

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When it gets dark

by Veronica Foale on July 8, 2011

in Children, Life, Me

It’s a slow slide down into the dark places in my mind. Moments stretch into infinity as I imagine the worst case scenarios and how I would deal with them. I’m not sure how I got here, all I know is that I’m sitting at the bottom, looking at the light a very long way up.

It’s always unpleasant down here and the road back up is long and cold, usually.

The screaming outside of my head is never as bad as the screaming inside of it. The way the sound reverberates around, shaking all coherant thought with it, until I just want to curl up in the corner and drown it out with someone elses words.

It will be okay. It will be fine, I will be FINE, this is all fine. One foot and then another. It will be okay.

I’m regretful and despite regret being useless here, it insists on hanging around and I’m raw enough without adding regret to the mix.

Some nights, I dream ghosts and then I have days like today. Dreaming the past, I’d like to stay there. Nothing was broken there (only… everything was. We just didn’t know it yet.)

That’s the problem with dreaming the past, rather than the future. You can’t get there anyway, so there is no use trying.

Better to dream the future.

At least then you’re left with possibility.

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I’m trying hard to not be bitter

by Veronica Foale on December 17, 2010

in Family, Me, Navelgazing

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.

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Hard is relative

by Veronica Foale on November 23, 2010

in Children, Family, Me

‘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.

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The too muchness of it all

by Veronica Foale on September 7, 2010

in Children, Life, Me

My daughter has Aspergers. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a slip of paper with the words on it yet, I know.

An official recommendation is made for assessment by an autism team and while I’m coping, it’s all a bit much.

She bounces off the walls, sensory seeking, frantically jumping and leaping and running and falling and laughing too loud and too hard for too long. She avoids my eyes and runs away and hugs me like the world is ending, clinging to my shoulders, trying to scale me like a jungle gym.

I drag her outside to jump on the trampoline and run and swing.

It helps.

For a while.

The sun shines brightly, but the wind is cutting and while she doesn’t feel it, I do and I shiver as I push the swing.

We check for eggs, she races around, she falls over and laughs.

I read about autism and aspergers and remember Amy’s first year, a first year I’ve blocked out for my own sanity. A year of screaming, of arched backs, of refusing to be consoled, to breastfeed, to play.

***

My son screams the scream of a frustrated toddler. He has wants and needs and I’m not meeting them fast enough.

8 hours of tantrums later, a small giggle escapes him as I take time to tickle him.

Two white points pushing through his top gum, two angry swellings on the bottom. Teeth. More of them.

His tantrums continue, interspersed with happy chats on my lap.

My head aches.

***

My partner hurts his back and tries to drive me to an appointment the day afterwards.

Half way to the city, his back seizes and he pulls over, stuck, screaming, in pain.

20 minutes later an ambulance takes him to hospital, leaving me and the children behind, on the side of the road. Stranded; I don’t drive.

My father-in-law and brother-in-law rescue us. I’ve never been so relieved to get home.

My partner makes it home later that night, a prescription of painkillers in his hand.

A week later he still can’t walk much, or move, or help around the house.

***

It’s too much when my daughter bounces and screeches and my son screams and my partner winces and it feels like all the balls are up in the air, waiting to fall in a heap.

It’s too much.

And while I know it will be okay and our families are helping lots, it doesn’t help when I’m on my tenth tantrum and my eighth meltdown and no one can help.

I’m overwhelmed and planning on spending a week in bed when this particular hell ends.

With chocolate.

A lot of chocolate.

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