Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • So far from okay

    My last few years have been … eventful. Starting with a pregnancy that didn’t look like it was going to end well, cancer, death, family fuckwits, autism x 2, early intervention, Ehlers Danlos, a falling down house, debt and depression. It hasn’t exactly been the time frame that I would hold up to the light and dissect, more the time frame that you force to the bottom of your closet, stomping on it as you go, so that you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

    I signed up to participate in RUOK Day and then promptly decided that I would be better off stabbing myself in the eyes.

    I am not okay. I am so far from okay, that okay is the distant shore that I left some years ago, before doctors told me that things were “all in my head” and tossed around words like anorexia and problems at home to explain why I was sick and exhausted, why I threw up every day and why my joints hurt so badly.

    You tell me, how are you meant to trust the medical professionals to help out with mental issues, when mental issues are what they thought your major, genetic, connective tissue disorder was? I don’t trust them to help anymore.

    I watched my grandmother die. I dealt with the fallout that rewriting a eulogy caused. I read long winded rants about myself on the Internet, written by a family member. I dealt with the trolls. I helped clean out her house, knowing that it was never going to be okay that she was dead and we were parcelling up her belongings.

    I went to a doctor to discuss anxiety medication, only to be told that it would be better to sort out WHY I was anxious, rather than just medicating. You can’t cure grief by wanting it to hurt less, any more than you can make a broken bone heal faster than it does. I left with medication, that didn’t work anyway.

    My son was diagnosed with autism and while it wasn’t the worst thing to happen, it was the straw that broke the camels back. Really universe? Autism and Aspergers ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE? REALLY?

    Fuck you.

    I would like to be okay, in the same way that I would like my joints to stop dislocating and to stop vomiting all of the time. To stop having to deal with meltdowns and the assumption that I am okay, because I tell everyone I am. I would like people to notice, without having to be told, just how far from okay this whole mess is and to stop assuming that they know how they would handle it.

    I would LIKE for the Pain Olympics on the Internet to stop and for people to stop negating what I am dealing with, because it could be so much worse. Sure it could be worse, but stop trying to fucking jinx me. Last time I thought that nothing else could go wrong, everything else went wrong.

    And you know what? I DON’T want to talk about this. I don’t want to cry anymore, or have to talk about this, or try to explain. Writing it is hard enough. The last psych I talked to about my anxiety and grief, seemed to think that it was nothing to worry about. Obviously I downplay things, really well.

    RUOK?

    No. No I am not.

    Now excuse me, while I get off the Internet, before I am tempted to swear anymore.

  • From this angle, the school holidays are feeling very long

    It’s no secret that I dislike early mornings with the kids and find school mornings inordinately stressful, even if I do have everything laid out and organised the night before. Let’s face it, I am just not a morning person and would much prefer to greet the day slowly, from the warmth and comfort of my bed.

    But, that’s not how it goes once your child is at school. Most mornings, I’m lucky if I even manage half a cup of tea, before we’re out the door, dropping Amy off at school.

    However, once the chaos of the actual drop-off is over and done with, we come home and Isaac and I have a leisurely breakfast, while he watches cartoons and I catch up on things I need to do.

    With school holidays happening at the moment, I may be getting a slower start of a morning, but that is counterbalanced by the amount of attention my children need. And frankly, at this point, I’ll forgo a lie in, in favour of no screaming/fighting/kicking/hitting/toy stealing/whining. Which is what it feels like my school holidays have been made up of, so far.

    I think half of the problem is that this is Tasmania and while the calendar says that it is Spring out there, my weather flat out refuses to play nicely and it’s been cold and windy. Cold and windy means that my children have been inside more than out and it’s starting to do our heads in, just a little.

    I took the kidlets to playgroup today and LO, it saved our sanity. Isaac only had two meltdowns, and Amy painted plaster figurines, leaving me mostly free to chat to other mothers and herd Isaac into the playdough table.

    After that, they weren’t even that terribly behaved in the supermarket! I am, exhausted, of course, but so are the children, so it’s not too bad.

    And all I can say is, how long until school goes back? (8 days)

  • Blaming everything

    I keep starting to write posts and them reminding myself that actually, no, I’m not meant to be writing about that on the Internet. You see, I’ve taken some pain killers and it’s been a while since I took them, so I wasn’t sure if I would end up passing out, or just getting really stoned. This time, it appears that instead of passing out, I am inflicting myself and my weird feeling ears on the Internet.

    You’re welcome.

    I haven’t slept properly in a week. I keep passing out and them waking up with half of my joints where they’re not meant to be, then putting everything back in place, before passing out again. If you do this every hour, by the time your children wake up in the morning, you are not only exhausted, but you feel like you’ve been beaten by a baseball bat all night. This is how I’ve spent the last week.

    Sure, I could blame the flu I have had (and I will) and I could blame the bed I have (and I will) and I could blame Nathan’s snoring (and I will), but really, it’s all the crappy joints, and the crappy problems that come with the crappy joints and I’m just a little bit over it.

    Okay, I’m a lot over it.

    I’ve been trying to work out why my shoulder was hurting and then I had a poke around in there to discover a dislocated collar bone. On top of dislocated ribs. And a hip that goes click-THUNK when I walk. Along with multiple other joints that have decided to rebel. I think my body wants a divorce from me, but I’m not quite sure where I would find the legal team to take on that nightmare.

    Also, I’m pretty sure that none of this is making sense, but that is okay. You can blame the pills.

    I was thinking about my pain management appointments and the fact that I’ve been handballed off to a psych, to get my anxiety issues sorted, before my physio will start to work with me again. I would have liked to handball my physio off to school, to learn more about EDS, before he could work with ME again, but it seems that you can’t demand that they do that.

    Pity.

    Of course, getting told I need to see a psych is the easy bit, the hard bit is actually getting my shit together to make the damn appointment (where did I write those numbers down?), making an appointment for some time that isn’t 2013 and then keeping my head together until I get there. Easier said than done, it feels.

    And now that I’ve put this out onto the Internet, probably regretting it tomorrow when I wake up aching and ill, I’m going to disappear to try and read a book.

    That is, if I can make my hands work properly.

  • Walking into walls

    It wasn’t that I didn’t want to become intimately aquainted with the doorframe; it was that I was on my way to the toilet and walking into the door slowed things down immeasurably. In fact, I am certain that it is a perfectly nice door frame, even if it is painted a godawful purple colour that makes me want to puke.

    Walking into doorframes at 3am has become something of a specialty of mine, along with learning where every single exit is in a room, in case I need to run outside to throw up, and working out, if I fall over, what is the least embarrassing way to manage it? (Tripping in the airport: Manageable. Tripping as you exit the aircraft down the stairs: Highly hazardous to your health. Avoid the latter at all costs.)

    Upon examination this morning, aside from the headache I have, I don’t appear to have any lasting side effects, unlike the time I walked into a doorframe so hard in year 7 that I concussed myself.

    Sure, I told everyone that I tripped and hit my head on the book cart, but I lied. I really just misjudged where my feet were and walked, hard, into the doorframe. It wasn’t pretty, as the purple bruise on my forehead the next day showed everyone. I spent a few days on the couch feeling nauseous and forgetful after that one. It was also the start of learning that I have to be lying down to have blood taken, otherwise I will throw up and pass out at the same time – a slightly dangerous combination.

    Another time, I misjudged where my hand was while I was talking and took all the skin off my knuckles on the jagged brick wall. Walking into class with your hand dripping blood might be dramatic, but I would have preferred to float a little further under the radar than that.

    Good times, good times.

    I am bendy today. So bendy that I’m seriously considering putting on my supportive undergarments, 3 of my ribs are currently dislocated, breathing feels too much like hard work and I think my hands have forgotten that they’re meant to be attached to my wrists still. Isaac dislocated my finger this morning. Thanks kid.

    But really, I’m not complaining.

    Except about the awful purple colour my house is painted. I am complaining about that.

  • I am so not fashionable

    I am so bendy, we don’t go out often. I prefer to conserve my energy doing things like reading novels, occasional baking, child snuggling and writing. This is much easier to do when I haven’t used all of my energy traipsing around a supermarket, or glaring at old ladies who don’t understand why Isaac is speaking at volume 11 and spinning in circles.

    Because I don’t often go out, it wasn’t until recently that I bought any nice clothes. The AusBlogCon cemented my need for something that wasn’t jeans and a t-shirt and so I bought some bits and pieces.

    So now I’ve got skirts and heels and shirts and scarves, but who can pull off that kind of attire, when the most exciting thing planned for the day is walking through a paddock looking for eggs?

    Even worse, when the paddock is muddy, I usually have “outside pants” and “inside pants” and my outside pants get worn, muddied up, taken off, hung in front of the fire and ignored. Do I actually need to be wearing pants if all I’m doing is blogging?

    My paddock bashing gear is all stuff I’ve had for years. I’m loathe to wear good clothes if they’re going to get dragged through the mud, snotted on, flown into, or muddied up by dogs. Although, I am getting much quicker at dodging the incoming flying ducks and they’re getting better at not landing on me, or in the feed bucket I’m carrying. For the record, ducks are heavy and flappy.

    So really, I spend a lot of time in jeans that are a size too big, daggy t-shirts and windcheaters. All of this, I am certain, make me look uber sexy.

    Fashion blogging seems to be the “in” thing at the moment, but I’m not sure I want to inflict myself on the Internet, wearing my everyday clothes. It’s bad enough that I wear a lot of it to school drop offs.

    I can say this though – I have not ever gone to the supermarket, or school, in my pajamas. Ever.

    Is it terrible of me to admit that the most fashionable thing I own and wear on a regular basis, are my new red gumboots? They’re only mine because they wouldn’t fit Mum, and they’re two sizes too big, but they’re shiny (still) and waterproof.

    For someone who used to overly concerned with how everyone else was dressing and keeping up with the latest looks (even if those looks were, in hindsight, crap), I have certainly fallen a very long way. Heh.