Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • I get tired sometimes.

    Have you ever reached the point where you actually have no money in your savings accounts? Nada, zip, zilch.  I’d forgotten how awful it feels to be this broke.

    A series of small misfortunes occurred this fortnight. Sick children required new prescriptions, bills needed paying, food was more expensive than normal and school went back, doubling our petrol bill.

    My bank accounts are stripped bare.

    On top of all this, my credit card was cancelled after a company I bought from recently had their database hacked.

    With $3 left in my bank to last us 6 days, it was a low key weekend. Things we might have done – a local festival, a trip to the shop for ice-creams, a picnic – all disappeared. Instead, we stayed home and I baked while the children watched DVDs.

    Read the rest at Money Circle.

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  • In the middle of a small town, stories die

    Last week Nathan and I were talking after school.

    “I feel like they’re judging me, judging us, because of your blog.” Nathan said, out of nowhere.

    I was stunned. Three years after I got any real publicity here, surely they’ve all forgotten I write on the Internet?

    We talked about it and I’ll admit, I was defensive. I’ve been defending this blog as long as I’ve had it – not from Nathan, who understands my perpetual need to tell stories, but from everyone else.

    But why would you put your children on the Internet?

    How can you tell strangers that?

    Isn’t it weird?

    You’re weird.

    Weird,

    weird

    weird.

    The side-eye and the shifty glances, the subtle judgements.

    I was feeling defensive. Yes, there are women who haven’t spoken to me since they discovered I had a blog, but honestly, did they expect me to stop writing because of their judgements?

    Maybe they did.

    Maybe I did.

    I stopped writing as much, exposed and naked as I was here, the all seeing eye of the Parents and Friends association falling on me. My trust issues, anxiety issues making it into a bigger deal than it might have been.

    I stopped telling my stories.

    —

    Amy grew up. She started school, grew wings, made friends. I stopped writing about her, and maybe that was my mistake. By refusing to share stories of her, I’ve stopped talking about her all together. My amazing, spirited, independent daughter.

    I emailed the school yesterday to see if the referral I signed for Amy to see the school psychologist is still current. She needs assessing, with more help than I can give. We suspect dyslexia, but who knows what is going on inside her mind? She’s stopped eating enough at school, the food shaming body police getting inside her head.

    “I just don’t want to eat too much Mum.”

    “But why? What is too much?”

    She shrugs, unsure of how to tell me what she means. Maybe unsure of what she means. She’s internalised the God of Skinny and I worry about her as she picks her way through dinner two hours after we’ve finished eating.

    I shouldn’t talk about her – I should leave it to others to make up their own mind about my brilliant daughter, without the taint of my opinion clouding their judgement. Without labels hanging over her head like rain-clouds, floating soft and silver and ever present.

    But there’s dyslexia and my ever growing disillusionment about the messages they’re sending in school about health and healthy.

    Children cannot live on carrot sticks alone, but oh how they can try.

    —

    I grew up in this community, and the slurs I internalised still whisper in my ears. A gloating child insisting my father wasn’t my real father because my parents hadn’t been married when I was born. I was an illegitimate bastard, she took pains to point out.

    Eight year olds don’t know what illegitimate means in relation to their school friends. Someone was talking outside of school, whispered conversations in kitchens, overheard and repeated back to me. Arrows to my heart.

    They’re the ferals up the hill.

    Never have any money.

    Have you seen the way they dress?

    I heard they eat roadkill.

    Hey feral, do your parents feed you roadkill? What’s in your lunchbox feral? Why don’t you have new shoes?

    Now my children go to school here and I wonder if the stain is fixed, under their skin somehow.

    —

    When you stop telling stories, even though your soul is filled to the brim with swirling words, something starts to die inside you. Round and round inside the goldfish bowl I go, more worried about what other people will think, rather than sticking to my own guns.

    Slowly I slide off the radar and it’s safer this way, easier, warmer. Huddled in the bottom of the pool, not speaking out.

    I can’t sustain it though. Not writing is harder than writing. Swallowing my stories down is harder than regurgitating them for you.

    And let’s be clear, they are my stories. I have every right to tell my truth, as uncomfortable as you may find it.

    I can see the judgey eyes swinging my way. How dare I poke things, how dare I lift the rug, talk about my childhood, talk about my children.

    My mother warns me. “Nothing is private in a small town school. Remember that when you speak to the psychologist.”

    I know this.

    How I know this.

    Carved into my skin, a thousand million insults remind me of how this works, when privacy is not a thing. My scars make me tougher, my convictions make me stronger.

    I tell stories, because that’s what I am. A storyteller.

    And if that makes us pariahs in our community – well.

    It’s not like I’m not used to it.

  • Exhausted, mentally, physically

    I had to walk up the road (200m) this morning to discuss an incident in which a neighbour’s dog killed a bunch of my baby chickens. By the time I got back, I was exhausted. It’s not a strenuous walk – the road is flat and easy. But my foot fell apart as I limped home, unable to quite work out which bone was out of place.

    Yesterday I had one ulcer hiding in the bottom of my cheek. This morning, both sides of my mouth are ulcerated. My skin is breaking out, my brain is foggy and I am Tired and Run Down.

    The school holidays were wonderful, but I’m wrung out. I need a week of laying on the couch reading books, drinking chicken soup and doing nothing.

    My joints are flared, my shoulders keep falling out of place and I am feeling like my blood pressure can’t work out how low it wants to fall.

    Look, this happens every few months. It’s actually been a while since I felt this terrible, and it’s nice to have had a break in the middle from the see saw that is my health.

    But today I feel crappy, and exhausted. I have things I need to do, I have things I want to do. I have children to feed and watch and play with, but uuuuugh.

    Sleep.

    School is back, which is a bonus. Isaac began Kindergarten last week, and his first day went amazingly well.

    Isaac first day of school 075

    Isaac first day of school 098

    I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to this week, with 2/3 of my children at school, and Evelyn still napping regularly.

    Hopefully, I can rest, recharge, and stop feeling like I’m being pressed into the ground by the sheer weight of the exhaustion I have.

  • Your twenties are not a practise decade.

    When I first started working, I spent money indiscriminately. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I were living in a tiny shoebox unit in the middle of the city, and spending money made us happy.

    Useless objects, littered around our house. No thought for the future.

    We were young, and growing up seems oh so far away when you’re 17 and 23. Who needs to save money? One day in the future, we’d be grown ups and things would magically work themselves out.

    Isn’t this the fairytale we’re all taught? That our twenties are only practise for our “real lives” which will start at some undetermined point down the track.

    Read The Rest at Money Circle.

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  • Counting down the minutes.

    I’m counting down the days, hours, minutes.

    Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

    Wednesday, Amy starts grade 2. Thursday, Isaac begins Kindergarten.

    Then, dear Internet, I will have somewhere in the realm of fifteen hours a week with only one child at home. I am pumped. I am stoked. I am carefully working out a regime of eating alone, drinking cups of tea and reading books.

    It is going to be GLORIOUS.

    I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this school holidays, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little mentally exhausted. Everyone keeps asking me questions and expecting intelligent answers from me, when all I want to do is sleep for a month.

    It hasn’t helped that Evelyn was sleeping terribly. Waking five-six times a night, wanting boobs, screaming, fussing, tossing and turning. She was getting molars, but come on, enough is enough.

    But, just quietly, she’s stayed in her own bed nearly all night for two nights running. Only needed one breastfeed at 4am.

    And I am feeling much less exhausted. Waking three times a night is easy, blissful in fact, when compared to double that amount.

    (I am writing this and Isaac is playing Minecraft: “Mummy! Come here! YOU NEED TO SEE! Another skeleton dropped a bow! COME AND SEE.” You can see why I’m exhausted. I am also not walking the length of the house again, to see a minecraft bow, again. Again again again.)

    So! School. Going back. Beginning. A new chapter. One toddler at home. One toddler who NAPS. Naps, people.

    It’s going to be great. Fantastic, in fact. And after Easter, there will be even MORE alone time, because Isaac will learn to catch the school bus with Amy and angels will sing, choirs rejoicing at the extra hour I have to Get Things Done.

    Of course, Evelyn will probably end up terribly bored and sit on me for the entire time her siblings are gone, but I’m remaining optimistically dreamy.

    SCHOOL!