Welcome to Holland

Tags

Grief, Guilt, Parenting

So I had this thought. This great thing happened at work and I paused for a moment to really feel it and it made me think, the pain doesn’t go, the guilt doesn’t go.

I remember reading an article about grief, about how people say time heals as if you go back to normal but that never happens, it’s always there. You live with it, it is part of you but it gets maybe a little easier to manage. Like when you have a duvet and you’re trying to stuff it back into the cupboard and it doesn’t fit, that it maybe gets a bit easier to manage or a bit easier to put away.

So I live with the pain like V our friend the musician. Last time we saw her she looked radiant with a stunning new short haircut. She told me that all her life, drink or no drink, drugs or no drugs, she has episodes. The highest of the highs, making music, being on stage, connecting with the crowd, and the lowest of the lows, I’m gonna kill myself I’m gonna kill myself I’m gonna kill myself. She was trying to shave her head and her husband grabbed her and stopped her and that’s why she’s got this groovy new haircut. My mental health training kicked in, I might have said have you sought any help but I didn’t actually say what about antidepressants although I was thinking that. Even though I don’t take them. Despite one evening after my little yoga/dance session listening to Primal Scream I was blind but now I can see and thinking, that’s what I need to do I’ll go on antidepressants! I can be happy! A flash of insight but I still didn’t do it. John said about V well without that maybe she wouldn’t make the music and maybe she can learn to live with it… I thought maybe that’s where the music comes from even though I know that’s a cliche, the whole tortured artist thing.

Anyway this thing happened at work where in the multidisciplinary team meeting, the patients’ families were on zoom. These people, it’s as if you’re watching the news and there’s parents of children who have been abducted and they’re making an appeal. Those parents just look so broken and that’s what these parents look like. I was moved, I thought I’d like to do something for them, maybe some meditation or relaxation. I mentioned this to the new family therapist who is full of compassion, she said she wanted to start a family group and so we decided to do it together.

The first week I taught them counted out breaths* and we did the Metta Bhavana and then week two I did shoulder shrug** and then I did relaxation through the five senses… imagining yourself on a beach or in a wood or garden and all the things you can see, hear etc… one of the men nearly fell off his chair. I knew that one woman had a lot of trouble sleeping so I told them about Jody Whiteley on YouTube and mentioned The Joy of Painting (also on YouTube) put on to soothe by the BBC during lockdown, my mother in law and my sister in law had told me that it made them sleepy and was relaxing. I watched an episode, my eyes filled with tears, what a good man, ‘There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.’

*Firstly become aware that you have four parts to your breathing, the in breath, a little pause at the top of the in breath, the out breath, a little pause before the next in breath. Next, count your next ten out breaths. Count only your out breaths. Notice how your breathing magically slows… Great for the dentist etc.

**First breathe out, allowing you shoulders to relax. Then breathe in slowly and deeply, at the same time slowly drawing your shoulders up to your ears, so that the top of your in breath coincides with your shoulders being fully shrugged up. Hold that tension and your breath for a moment, before gently releasing your outbreath and lowering your shoulders in a controlled way, as if you were lowering a weight on a pulley. Safety- be kind and gentle to your body especially if you have shoulder problems. Don’t do loads in a row- the deep breaths may make you dizzy.

A few days later the family therapist said to me the woman who couldn’t sleep had been doing the shoulder shrug and had put on Jody Whitley and went to sleep straight away. A few days after that she said to me, ‘She wanted me to let you know she tried your technique of relaxing with the five senses and she was asleep before she’d even got past listen to the sounds outside the room,’ (which is the beginning bit where you’re drawing yourself inwards)

I felt very moved. I didn’t say anything at home but later when I was in bed a couple of little tears came out, just indulging in the feeling. I felt like it was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my career. When you work with people who are so complicated and there’s loads of other people working with them how do you know if what you do makes any difference… But here was somebody who was suffering who couldn’t sleep, I taught her something and then she slept. Even for me with all my negativity it was impossible to argue with that. I made a difference. That was worth doing. I did something good.

The next day driving to work I thought that’s where the compassion and the healing that worked for the woman came from; it came from my own pain and guilt and suffering. That’s where the healing comes from or at least that’s where the motivation to help comes from. And I thought that’s kind of the real meaning of the word Alchemy.

This inspirational poem helped STEPS Autism Treehouse Coordinator Claire through the time of her son’s diagnosis.

Welcome to Holland – By Emily Perl Kingsley

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like you’re planning a vacation to Italy. You’re all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks, you learn a few phrases so you can get around, and then it comes time to pack your bags and head for the airport.

Only when you land, the stewardess says, “WELCOME TO HOLLAND.”

You look at one another in disbelief and shock, saying, “HOLLAND? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I SIGNED UP FOR ITALY.”

But they explain that there’s been a change of plan, that you’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

“BUT I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HOLLAND!” you say. ‘I DON’T WANT TO STAY!”

But stay, you do.

You go out and buy some new guidebooks, you learn some new phrases, and you meet people you never knew existed.

The important thing is that you are not in a bad place filled with despair. You’re simply in a different place than you had planned.

It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy, but after you’ve been there a little while and you have a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland has Rembrandts.

But everyone else you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They’re all bragging about what a great time they had there, and for the rest of your life, you’ll say, “YES, THAT’S WHAT I HAD PLANNED.”

The pain of that will never go away.

You have to accept that pain, because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan, is a very, very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to go to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland. 

‘It’s broken here:’* Nha Trang, Vietnam Part Two

Tags

Connection, depression, despair, Guilt, healing, Nha Trang, self awareness, spiritual memoir, suicidal thoughts, Travel fatigue, Travel memoir, Travel writing, waking up

WARNING This post discusses a period where I experienced suicidal urges, thoughts and feelings. It explores suicidal ‘logic’ and mentions thinking about methods.

I’m now okay now, these feelings come and go over the years, I keep myself safe and it passes.

If you are experiencing similar feelings PLEASE SEEK HELP. Here is a page I have found very useful in the past 

DRAFT extract from book chapter

The day of the beach walk, when we walked to the Incense Tower the wrong way… I wanted to stand and look. Anthony walked off, thinking I wanted to be alone. Being left behind is a trigger for me. A misunderstanding; over sensitivity, a bad atmosphere, the atmosphere between us deteriorated and my mood plummeted.

Thinking, ‘It would have been better if I hadn’t woken up.’ Thinking about the past, imagining going back and preventing things with my son turning out as they did. Thinking, ‘Better to be an asleep person, who could take pride in having had a successful family.’ Decisions, my responsibility. But what did I actually do that was so bad?

And on and on, thoughts spiralling down and down. ‘I left my children for you.’ Anthony said to me once. Oh God, and I’d painted myself as so good, getting their room ready, buying things, cooking. It wasn’t only my kid I messed up. Lots do it, women break up families, but they’d already been separated for years. But he did move to me not vice versa.

The ultimate destination of these thoughts for me is suicide. So many reasons to die: As a punishment. As a I don’t know how to live with myself. As a solution to every other worry or concern. To take responsibility. All I do is harm. I do no good. My son is doing well without me. Wow, the matrix/me really did a number on me. Such dangerous thoughts: If he’s done this well when I stepped back, and done even better when I went away for a year, then how much better would he do if I wasn’t here at all?

I remembered in Kerala, Sea Win, lying on the floor. Me: ‘Why do I feel so bad?’  The answer seemed to come from the light above me: ‘It’s your programming.’

It’s the mother of all battles undoing this. Do I want to? Or do I want to die? All this talk between us re The Future and getting older; who am I kidding? One day I’m going to kill myself and this is why. I’ve not yet got the method planned. Maybe I haven’t reached the end of my tether yet. Maybe I don’t want to enough. Maybe when I do, I will.

Walking along the beach, going into late afternoon, grey light, me thinking of methods of committing suicide, thinking about drowning myself, getting up early or coming back late.

On the sand there were big chunks of mosaic. I remembered there was mosaic on the stairs at the hotel too. (mosaic is kind of a thing for me). A grey bicycle was chained up on top of a ridge of sand so that its background was the cloudy sunset sky. Then, a shiny apple lying on the sand with only a few bites out. Then, some beautiful driftwood. Then a sparrow pecking at a discarded corn on the cob on the sand. Another sparrow, another corn on the cob. A light koru, the Maori symbol of new life. ‘It’s no good showing me all that,’ (good stuff I’d usually like, things of beauty I’d normally connect with) I said grimly, in my head. But then I realised, ‘All that stuff is always there.’

An old Vietnamese lady walked past selling buns, bags of tiny sponge cakes. She smiled and was friendly. I smiled at her, was friendly, and bought some. I felt bad about being so sad, as if she could catch it.

On the beach, mountains one side on a spit, partly concealed by high rise blocks of hotels ranged in front of the mountains, the juxtaposition was shocking.

In Kerala at the beach cafe, at the place where we’d been in a film, I’d read a tatty newspaper pull out/magazine. In it there’d been an article by a food/travel writer. In the wake of two recent celebrity suicides he’d written about how he’d travelled to all these amazing countries, stayed in great hotels and eaten all this wonderful food, that was his job, but at that the same time, ‘For two years I wanted to die,’ he said. I thought it would have been better if he’d written about that too. Like the social media thing of people tending to only put up the good stuff. ‘No one posts photos of themselves sobbing on Facebook.’ I often say. I know there are sites of self harm etc, but are they another extreme, all bad, would it be healthier if we all put everything, or at least a balance, out there?

The trigger to all this was another news interview raking over the past of twelve years ago when my son was a teenager and out of control, and a few cross words between me and Anthony.

Once awake, awake. ‘Enlightenment’ is accepting all of it, somehow, and somehow making peace with it.

As Anthony and I have discussed previously, being conscious doesn’t mean you’re nice. Some heads of big businesses that destroy the environment and people’s health for money to fuel their pleasure lifestyle may well be conscious. They may have decided it’s all an illusion so just do what you want it doesn’t matter. But like I’ve said before, even if it is only a game, I will still recycle, I still won’t hurt animals. And being conscious definitely doesn’t mean its fun. Sometimes you’ll wish you were still asleep.

But I made all the mistakes before. Before I woke up, whilst I was still asleep. So was that all my script? My back story like in Blade Runner to make me less likely to wake up? In Blade Runner they gave the robots memories, even a family, ‘To make them easier to control.’ Or if we don’t believe in some malignant power, that it just made it more of a challenge for me to wake up. Like George Harrison Isn’t it a pity. Or some people say the sadness triggers you waking up; the cracks let the light in, etc. And Now provides the chance to go off script and deprogramme myself, should I choose.

Back in the room, thinking about how just a short time of silence and awkward atmosphere will plummet my mood. One to two hours of it and I’m at suicide methods and my mind is dangerously out of control. ‘No,’ I said to myself, ‘I may not be in control of my thoughts but I can control my actions.’ I hugged myself and thought of the suicide prevention workbook (that I wrote!) ‘Curl up into a ball, you can’t hurt yourself then.’

In bed something in the room screamed method: the curtain pole. Compared to Dong Hoi, where I had admired the curtain pole’s glittery beauty, here, the pole was a suicide option. I was scared of it. Would I just do it, like I slapped myself the other day, involuntarily? That night, so depressed… ‘Just get through the night,’ I said to myself.

Later, talking myself out of it… You think committing suicide will wipe out (or atone for) all the bad you did; but of course it doesn’t, and actually makes it worse. It’s another bad thing. A really terrible thing. It ADDS to the sum of the harm you’ve done. If you were to ask them if that’s what they wanted, of course they wouldn’t say they wanted that. But of course even to ask would be an awful thing to do… The ‘logic’ of a suicidal mood state can be terrifyingly dangerous. In the past I’ve even thought people would WANT me to do it and agree with me that it made sense and that it was a good idea if I were to ask them. One particular time, after a particularly awful Mother’s Day, when my son had stolen something and run up a one hundred pound phone bill, I decided to go to bed, sleep on it, and if I still felt definitely that it was, I’d run it by my friend M, ask her if she thought it made sense, and if she did, I’d do it. Of course I woke up and thought there’s no way she would, and crisis averted.

That night in Nha Trang, I woke later, realised it was no threat- the method I’d been scared of, the curtain pole. And the next morning, I saw that the curtain pole had a screw loose, it wouldn’t have held, it was not dangerous, and me, feeling better, noticed glitter on my leg which reminded me to include the nice Dong Hoi curtain pole in the story.

Nha Trang abounded with patterns and metaphors, the trapped huge variety of beautiful/fascinating animals dead/alive; the non communication, we spoke to other people only twice. The longing to connect… I wished we could all speak the same language or that I knew another language but to really connect you’d need to be absolutely fluent and how long would that take and which language to choose… And how few people I can absolutely connect with even in our first language… Even Anthony and I lost each other for a while…

*One day halfway down our street, on the other side to our hotel, I passed a young Vietnamese woman wearing a red t shirt. Printed on the t shirt, over her heart area, were the words, ‘It’s broken here.’

Thank you very much for reading

I found that my mood dipped as I was writing this chapter. I found this song helped:

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts and feelings PLEASE SEEK HELP. Here is a page I have found very useful in the past 

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

I just got lost for a while: Koh Rong, Cambodia, Part Two

Tags

acceptance, family dynamics, Friendship, Grief, Guilt, mental health, parent adult child relationships, regret, self acceptance, Shame, Social media, Teenagers

‘Are you so strong or is all the weakness in me?’

I just got lost for a while:  Koh Rong, Cambodia, Draft chapter for book

Even in paradise you can still be sad…

I’m not friends with my son on social media, it is Anthony (my husband) who monitors things.  Sometimes things seem terrible on social media, but when we call things are fine.  Or they’ve been fine on the phone then a day or two later seem awful on social media.  Or on social media some kind of terrible disaster is reported and then when we call or even if we don’t, within a day or two it’s actually resolved.  A, a blogger and millennial, said millennials use a lot of hyperbole, maybe that’s a part of it?

So it was my husband who saw a news interview my son had done, and who gently, piece by piece, told me what it contained.  My son is an upcoming artist, being interviewed about his backstory, and one of the things he said, was that he was kicked out of home as a teenager.  It’s true, I kicked him out as a teenager.

When he was a child, I would never have thought that would have happened.  In a ‘secret’ drawer of my grandmother’s card table, was a leaflet I’d picked up and saved from when I was on a work placement at a child and family place, when my son was eleven.  Me still so smug, a confident and loving parent, providing a childhood with friends, fun, parties, dogs, pets.  My social work friend saying she’d driven past us on her way home from a horror filled day at work and seen us playing with the dog on the grassy walk, and said we’d made her feel that there was good in the world.

The leaflet said, ‘Parents of teenagers often feel that they have failed.’  Much later, when things had gone wrong, I over related to two mothers from an autism organisation who said, ‘As a mother you feel like you’ve got ‘Guilty’ stamped on one side of you and ‘Failure’ on the other.’  Oh yes, yes, yes.  I was on a training day at work, so I couldn’t say anything.  Those words weren’t meant for me, I just borrowed them.

Like I’d do a depression questionnaire on myself at work; I never hit the criteria, I ate, I got up for work, I liked to have sex, but did I feel like a failure, did I feel hopeless, did I feel like I wanted to die, yes yes and yes again.

When my son was sixteen I phoned up the housing department of the council.  A woman answered, ‘You would have to ask him to leave, he would come here with his bag and we go from there.’  ‘I can’t do that,’ I said.  ‘Well, then you haven’t reached the end of your tether yet.’  She added, ‘I did it to mine, and it was the best thing that ever happened to us.’

It took another two years until I reached the end of my tether, screaming on the stairs, wanting to hurt myself, my boyfriend at the time locking away paracetamol and knives in a suitcase.  My son was eighteen, spent all his time in his room, threatened to throw the tv out of the bedroom when I tried to make him do anything.  Mental health services advised to separate out what was ‘behavioural.’  ‘What would you do if someone else threw the tv out of the window?’  In the long years prior, trashing the house, getting in trouble with the police, truanting, refusing to go to school, social work threatening me with prosecution re the not going to school, school saying I needed to take more responsibility.  During my son’s teenage years my confidence as a parent evaporated.  Of course, when I look back maybe there were loads of other things I could have done, if I had been a different person.  I took his things to my mum’s, he stayed round a girlfriend’s, sofa surfed, and several years later we are all still alive, I am available to help and we get on fine…

…It’s not like I’ve ever forgotten any of that, but to be dragged back there so completely, publicly, more than a decade later, was almost more than I could bear.  It was a hilarious contrast that we were on a paradise beach in Cambodia at the time.  Oh, the shame, I could barely move, and yet of course I did.  In the water, in the heat, over dinner, terrible shame that I couldn’t get away from and the guilt, the guilt.  Imagine the worst thing you’ve ever done, something you did years ago when you couldn’t do any better, not only brought right back, but now it’s public.  I didn’t hear anything from anyone.  Anthony reminded me that those who knew me would know there was more to it than that.

Northamptonshire, April 2019

From Cambodia, Anthony messaged my son, ‘Maybe try not to be quite so hard on your mum,’ and he has toned it down since.  Back in the UK, my son invited us to an event where everyone would know about his the backstory- people are interested, his agent emphasises it.  It’s his story he’s entitled to it, he has every right to say whatever he wants, and I support his right to say it.  Anthony told my son this, from me.  Anthony also said, you have a right to say what you like, but it has an effect.  Anthony explained, it brings up a lot of emotion for your mum, and the emotion it brings up is shame.  My son was unaware that I might find it difficult to go to the event, and my husband explained why I couldn’t go.

Anyway, we went to see the work at his place first, newly produced and framed before being shipped to New York for an exhibition after the show.  His agent, his girlfriend, her mum and dad, all her family were going.  We left, aside from my young nephew, none of his family would be there, not us, no Dad, no Grandmother, she’s annoyed and upset about the airing-dirty-laundry backstory.

‘I feel bad about us not going.’  It took Anthony to say this.  As my friend later said, you’re so lucky you have Anthony.  Like the cliché, Do the next right thing.  You can’t do anything about the past.  All you can do is do the next right thing.  If your son has a show, you go.  So we went.  Yes her family said, ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’  Yes the councillor who had put the event on didn’t shake my hand.  In my mind I thought, she thinks I’m scum, some kind of horrible person.  But maybe she just doesn’t shake hands.  And it doesn’t matter anyway, I’m never going to see her again.  And what does it matter what a politician, of all people, thinks of me.  It’s more important to show support for your family than to worry about what other people think.  I don’t know why I’m still so upset about all this, but I am.

Northamptonshire, June 2019

I went to see a friend, we spoke about Cambodia.  In the past she had experienced similar events and feelings and fears, and understood completely.  The next day I saw another friend.  Her adult child is severely mentally ill and violent.  My friend has been pushed beyond the normal limits many times, and many people in her position might consider cutting all contact.  ‘She’s my only child,’ she said.  She spoke about her sadness over not experiencing the happy milestones that other parents experience.

But all we can do is feel and grieve and eventually, if we can, accept.  Stop pushing it away and just allow it.  Allow that it happened.  Allow that what is, is.  Allow that you are sad.  Allow that the past can never be altered or undone.  And allow that you’re going to go on and be here anyway.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

For photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

 

 

 

The Gift of Freedom

Tags

escape the matrix, family, Guilt, Mom guilt, The matrix

This Valentine’s my husband gave me something far more useful than flowers.

I could wallow forever in the dirty water where the fish won’t go.  I could never get up again.  I could say to myself, how can I live.  I could rake over and over the past, looking for a possible way things could have been made different.  I could cry forever and it wouldn’t change a thing.

I did everything I was able to do at the time.  I remember us both going to the dentist in New Zealand and me buying us electric toothbrushes to use out there as we’d left ours in the UK.  He was fifteen.  Everything was okay then, teeth wise.  But not long after, I stopped being able to make him do anything he didn’t want to do.

Since he’s been an adult, I have watched his teeth deteriorate, and no amount of encouragement from anyone in the family was able to persuade him to go to the dentist.  Realising nothing I said made any difference, for the last few years I have stopped saying anything in case it actually makes him even less likely to go, and also because I don’t want to spoil the times we have together.  But every now and again I’d think, am I being remiss, am I copping out, am I wasting opportunities…  all the time they are getting worse and worse, and I am not saying anything.

But of course he has mirrors, and eyes.  And as I write this I’m thinking, Oh my God, did we do this?  Did we make him dig his heels in more by trying to encourage him to visit the dentist?  But would a person really do that to themselves, not brush their teeth, not go to the dentist, just to be oppositional to their family?

I don’t talk about any of this to anyone but the night before Valentine’s Day my son messaged my husband and said he was finally ready to go through with the required treatment.  This will involve sedation, anaesthetic, and because things are so very far gone, implants.  So I ended up talking (and crying) about it until way past my bedtime and the conclusion I arrived at was that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever I can do.  A person needs to psych themselves up to face dentistry, blood tests or open heart surgery themselves, no one else can do it for them.  They need to be brave and they need to be a grown up.  My son is 28 years old and anxiety or no anxiety, the only thing I can do is think of him as an adult who is capable of facing this.

It is time for it to cease being my problem.

The next morning I felt a little better, like the day after an argument has blown over, still a little fragile, but recovering.  I still have CDs to go through so I put on The Jesus and Mary Chain album Stoned and Dethroned.  Track one is above.  It felt like the first day of the rest of my life.

Today, in an ironic twist I went to the dentist, which meant I got to sleep in and go into work late.  I came out into the warm sunshine and felt… happy.  I bought a birthday card and a box of vegan chocolates for my step grandma, and new spare cat name tags as they keep losing theirs.  Getting these things off my list and not having them to do on Saturday when we are already busy gave me a sense of elation out of all proportion.

Walking back through the town, thinking, yes, the post office, the chocolate shop, the pet shop, the cute alleyway, yes, they are all nice, just as dressing nicely for work is nice, but, it isn’t everything.  It should have been easier to walk away from our last place which was not pretty and was boring, but it’s been being in this lovely place that has inspired and propelled us to give up everything.  Is it because we needed to be happy in order to be able to dream, whereas before we were just surviving?

We have both been unwell for what seems like ages, colds etc, plus last-minute wobbles re vaccinations/not, water purification options, malaria, plus a long to do list, a house to clear and work to finish.

But as I said to my husband, I’d feel really good right now if I wasn’t feeling ill.  I had my bloods done and my doctor put my thyroxine up, which feels like it did when I first went on it, like the clouds clearing after a storm, everything shiny, wide awake, excited.

I said re our to do list, it seems as though simplifying our life is actually really complicated.  That’s because the matrix doesn’t want you to do it, my husband said.  The matrix wants everyone hooked into the complexity of everything, that is why it makes unhooking yourself feel so difficult.

See you on the other side.

I have set up an instagram account for when we are travelling followingthebrownrabbit

 

Thank you for reading.

 

F is for Family*

Tags

Guilt, healing, Mom guilt, Parenting, Teenagers

Warning, contains depressing content

My son is 28.  Christmas 2016, I pretended to go away for Christmas because I couldn’t face us spending Christmas together.  He wouldn’t have wanted to come anyway; we’d only been speaking since the September and things were still slightly frosty.  Prior to that we hadn’t spoken since Christmas 2015:  I had picked him up to bring him to ours for Christmas and he started fidgeting and then shouting in the car on the dual carriageway.  I was frightened, exasperated and completely incapable of dealing with it.  You work in mental health, you’re supposed to help people, I remember him saying.  I stupidly tried to reason with him, to connect with a part of us that was above all this, to explain that I wasn’t the one to help him, because if I had, I would have been.  In the middle of a panic attack isn’t the time, and he was extremely angry and disappointed with my response and my inability to respond.

I think what he doesn’t understand is how upsetting it is for me, but then he probably also doesn’t understand why I can’t just be all mumsy and cuddly, and I don’t either, but I can’t.  I don’t believe that would make any difference, but I understand why he’d be dismayed and upset that I couldn’t.

I remember one time dropping him off at the walk in centre with a girlfriend and just leaving him there, another time him at the doctor’s clinging onto me and me just being unable to touch him.  (This was when he was sixteen or older, in the middle of our relationship being very poor, him having a panic attack).

I used to think there was something deeply wrong with me, that I didn’t love him, or wasn’t able to love him, but then one night in meditation a year or so ago this came into my head:  you love him, that’s why it hurts so much.

Before I got pregnant, I wanted a baby very much.  When he was born his father and I were super attentive and loving.  When he was a young child we had lots of fun times, baking, playing with the dog, painting- there was always an easel and a washing line to hang up the paintings in the kitchen; riding trikes and bikes indoors, having big unruly birthday parties.  It’s nice to remember the good stuff.  Because there was bad stuff: it was quite hard for me, I was very young, a single mum from when he was one, and he was sometimes very ill with a serious medical condition, so there’s a lot of bad memories around that, hospitals, blood tests, unpleasant tests and medicines.  But even so, overall, it was a pretty happy, child centred life with supportive and loving friends and family.

Then he hit 12, 13, went to middle school, and having been very happy at first school, began school refusing, truanting, later at 15, petty criminal stuff and got arrested.  He and his friend would just mess up the house and break everything, so the sitting room ended up empty, it didn’t feel like a home…

Refusing all medical treatment, refusing to have baths or change his clothes… at 16, 17, 18, refusing to go to college or get a job or come out of his room.  I knew something was wrong but was powerless to fix it.  I sought mental health services advice, they said it was behavioural and he wouldn’t engage in any case.  I had no idea what to do.  The relationship had completely broken down.  Everyone gave different advice, I felt like a complete failure as a mother.

I became seriously suicidal.  When he was 16 I called the council about housing options for him.  The woman who answered the phone said you have to chuck him out and he has to turn up here with his bag and nowhere to go.  I can’t do that, I said.  She said, well you haven’t reached the end of your tether yet then, when you have, that’s what you’ll have to do.  Two years later, sitting at the top of the stairs, my boyfriend holding me, me screaming about suicide and paracetamol and knives, I reached it.  I packed up his stuff and called my mum and asked her to have him.  He was 18.  He actually went to stay with his girlfriend, got a place in a hostel, got given a council flat, couldn’t manage it, and now rents a room in a shared house where he’s been for several years.

I am sure there were a million other ways to handle those years but whether or not the person I was then would have been able to implement them even if she had known.  Like a series of random dropped stitches that ultimately cause everything to unravel.  Was there something, were there things I could have done differently?  Was there another way it could have turned out?  I’ll never know, because I can’t go back in time, and there’s no control group for a life.

Relatively speaking, the years up to twelve had been easy.  I suppose I’d always thought love would be enough.  So when this child who you’ve given so much love to, who had previously seemed so happy in your company, becomes someone who no longer responds to you, it is very difficult.  It is hurtful, confusing, and all confidence in parenting abilities goes out of the window.  I just didn’t have the skills to deal with this new person.

After he moved out, I used to see him and drop off bits of money, always feeling bad for not giving enough whilst at the same time thinking I shouldn’t give much so that he’d be motivated to sign on or get a job…  He usually wanted a lift, and it was often difficult, him criticising my driving and us arguing.  His council flat was given to him bare and empty, the same as when I’d been given one at 22 when he was 3 years old.  But whereas I had bought and laid the cheapest office cord and painted it myself, he did not do anything.  His washing up and rubbish piled up everywhere.  My mum paid for flooring, my (now) husband spent a day mucking out the flat.  I went round one day after work when I had a cold and painted the kitchen but he didn’t help and we argued.  He got diagnosed with anxiety.  I paid for endless CBT.  My husband and I spent hours on the phone giving advice about panic attacks when he called us up.  Nothing made any difference.  Until I just kind of stopped trying to help as much.  He got himself a nice room in a shared house, where he still is.  He got himself into college and then university, where he is today.

A Round-Heeled Woman, predominantly about sex but includes a devastating passage about her son, who seemingly ‘punishes’ her failings as a mother by running away, not calling, and living on the streets, in freezing conditions, eventually calling her up on Christmas Day, destitute and freezing cold but refusing to come home.

The only other time I have come across people like me (mothers almost destroyed by guilt) is on an ASD training day where parents of kids with Autism spoke to us.  These mothers had kids who didn’t sleep, who flew into rages and smashed up the house.  They looked like battle worn survivors.  I was in awe of them.  But what I remember most is what they said about how they felt as mothers:  as a mother, you feel like you’ve got ‘guilty’ stamped on one side of you, and ‘failure’ on the other. 

What is the name of the emotion I feel when I see or think about his teeth, which are in a terrible state- I took him to the dentist and made sure he brushed his teeth as a child, but his illness, and poor care as a teenager and adult have taken a severe toll (recently he has said he is going to the dentist and going to go through with what is now major work, and I have given him the money to do this)…

Or when he recently asked for ‘anything from my childhood to remind me it wasn’t all bad because all I can remember is hospitals’…  To quote Alice Sebold, well that last comment just ripped me a new arsehole:  I spent my whole adult life from 18 to now, 47, loving, caring, worrying, and it was all for nothing, because all there was was bad and nothing I did mattered and nothing I do now makes any difference?

What is the name of the emotion again?  Suicidal, if that’s an emotion… despair… anger… panic… paralysis… horror… fear… tension.  Mostly there’s a bit of tension.

I used to work in an anorexia hospital and I am ashamed to say we used to judge the parents sometimes, we used to think they were cold.  Now I realise they were just wretched, forced to look at something no parent would ever want to see, their child yellow, furry and emaciated.  I was afraid of what I saw on my first day; they have to face both the horror and the fact that they haven’t been able to stop it or help with it.

Okay, I’ve felt it.  I’ve taken it all out and looked at it.  Instead of pushing those feelings away, tightening up and thinking that I can’t bear to look and won’t be able to cope, instead of that I’ve let my chest relax and my arms fall open and I’ve sat here with those feelings.  There’s a peace in accepting ‘guilt’, in letting it wash over me, just letting it be, sitting with it without fighting it.  Ready to start over…  To make mistakes every day.  We all do.  Start again every day.  What else can we do?

Is there anything I can do?  No.

There’s a comfort in this calm acceptance, in the moments where I can find it, that feels better than the pushing away or the anxious worrying or the futile attempts at problem solving.  It definitely feels better than endlessly going over past mistakes and missed opportunities.

Like a jumper that has unravelled beyond repair, the only way is to remake it from scratch.

And like my mother says re coping with the ageing process, well you don’t have any choice but to cope with it, because the only alternative is not to be here.

Right now, drag my mind into the present.  Right now, drag my thoughts and my gaze towards the positive.

So this Christmas, when my son said he’d come over Christmas Eve and stay until Boxing Day, especially as my husband was working and I would need to pick him up and drive him an hour to ours, I was a little nervous.  Whatever you do, don’t get angry, or don’t sound angry, my husband said.

The car journey was okay, and once home I made dinner, we swapped YouTube and Netflix recommendations, and the evening passed without incident.  Christmas Day we saw my mum, my husband came home, and my son’s girlfriend arrived in the evening and we all played Cluedo.  So yeah, I guess my Christmas was okay.

 

With metta

 

*F is for Family is my third favourite of the adult cartoons on Netflix, along with my second favourite Big Mouth which is a very warm portrayal of going through puberty, a largely neglected topic that has certainly never been covered like this before, and my favourite, so much loved that I wrote a post about it here, BoJack Horseman