Wednesday 30 March 2011

Disconnected.

Before we started moving house, I'd had lots and lots of partial dislocations (as is normal in people with my condition) but never a full dislocation.

In the last two weeks, I've had 6.

My mood is still up, my life is still good, but my body is struggling with the extra activity, and it's starting to weigh on my mind that my hypermobility may be even more severe than I'd previously thought. And I thought it was pretty damn bad before.

Dislocations *hurt*.

Anyway, laptop is now only opening in safe mode, and keyboard is ridiculously fucked up, so it needs to go to the laptop hospital. Poor laptop :(

Sunday 20 March 2011

Alive with the Glory

I originally wrote this as a comment over on Veronica's latest blog post, but then I changed my mind and decided that really, it needed a more general audience and it's something I've been trying to figure out how to say here anyway.

Last night I was hanging out of the window of my new place, smoking my 'congrats for making it through the day alive' cigarette, and I realised in that moment that I felt alive. Fucking.....ALIVE. Like I could breathe again, not just go through the mechanical, necessary motions of moving air in and out of my lungs and heaving my chest up and down, but properly and fully, I could breathe. I could feel my skin and I could feel the tears in my eyes and I could feel that feeling I hadn't felt since I was 17, that wanttosingwanttodancewanttoshout feeling that bubbles up inside and overflows.

It was beautiful. For the first time since I started smoking again I didn't feel bad about it, or mentally justify it to the baying mob of better-mothers in my head. It was ok, because it was making me feel. It was ok because I wanted to do it and I am allowed to do things I want, even if I'm a mother. I'm allowed to want. I'm allowed to need. I'm allowed to be a person, with flaws and bad habits and things that have nothing to do with my child. I'm allowed to do things I'm not 'supposed' to. I'm allowed to go away for a night and NOT miss my baby. I'm allowed to drink a little more than I should at a special night out with girlfriends. I'm allowed to drop my kid off at granny's house and go home and have loud sex with my husband even when we were supposed to be running errands.

I feel like I've taken off a heavy winter coat and boots and hat and scarf and gloves and I'm glorying in the nakedness of freedom from guilt. I'm a person. PART of that person is a mother, but I'm so very much more than that too.

Today for the first time in years I smiled for no reason. Just because the sunset was beautiful and the air was crisp and I was alive, and it was enough for me.

Friday 4 March 2011

Update very quickly.

My marriage is not over, but my keyboard is FUBAR so I can't write a big long update on what happened because right now I'm having to C&P in ALL my 'h's and that shit is looooong. What I might do is c&p in some posts I already wrote on a private group on Facebook where I've already filled in all the blanks, that way until I have a working h-key you're not all in the dark.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

It's dark in here.

I think my marriage is over. I had my first night away from A.B on Saturday and it was lovely, but I was chatting with my friends, we were complaining about our relationships -as you do- and the things I was saying seemed so small, so insignificant, so stupid. I realised slowly over the next couple of days that all our fighting, all my unhappiness with the relationship, it's not because he's actually a bad person or a bad husband. I'm unhappy with him because I'm unhappy with EVERYTHING. And the worst thing is, I'm taking it out on him, blaming him for my misery as if he's causing it, when really all I do is drag him down and hold him back because he spends all his time looking after me. I'm so sick all the time, he's either at work or he's taking care of A.B and taking care of me. We fight over stupid things because I'm unhappy and never satisfied with life.

The truth is, I didn't want this. I got married because I fell in love but at the time, I wasn't expecting to live very long. I was very sick, and I wanted a few years of stability while I slowly wound down my life. It's easy to be in love when you think you're about to clock out. I wasn't expecting to get pregnant after 6 months of marriage, and when I did, I didn't want a baby. I continued the pregnancy for two reasons. I didn't think it would last (everything every doctor was telling me pointed to a negative outcome) and and I didn't think our relationship could survive any alternatives. As stupid as it sounds, I wasn't expecting to have a baby. No one, at any stage, had really prepared me for the idea that we would end up with a child. From the moment she was born, I went into a waking coma. My life just stalled and nothing I did, nothing that happened could re-start it. I tried over and over to do things that might make me come back to life but nothing worked. Blogging was supposed to help but while it was a good distraction sometimes, it didn't produce any real revelation like I was expecting. In fact the more involved I got with the disabled blogging community, the more depressed I got.

If I leave, they'll both be better off. He's an amazing dad and he'd be a better dad if he wasn't having to care for me too. I know people won't understand... it's practically accepted that fathers sometimes leave their children, but mothers don't. Mothers are supposed to be there always. Mothers are supposed to stay forever. But that's not what's best for her. What's best for her is to be with the best parent, and her father is the best parent. I'll stay around as much as I can to help him and I won't disappear from her life, but I think the only way to give her a happy, healthy childhood is for her to grow up in a home where there isn't constant unhappiness and fighting. I love her too much to ruin her life by staying around to poison everything.

I don't know where I'm going to live or how I'm going to live. I suppose these things have a way of working out. I won't pretend I have any answers at this point, or that I'm not scared, but there's no doubt in my mind that this is the right thing to do. Both of them deserve better.