Maybe I CAN do this…

Lauriel got a job and began working last week.  I was worried about how I would cope because since about April 2013 she has been doing a bulk of the responsible adulting and parenting, because of my less than stellar mental health.

Prior to last week, I can’t really remember the last time I took the kids to school by myself, or went and did the groceries by myself (actually, it was Christmas Eve 2014… what was I, fucking crazy???), or did the little errands that needed to be done.  Sometimes I would go to school with her.  Sometimes I would go to the supermarket with her.  Very rarely did I do anything alone that would put me in contact with those scary human things.

Depression and anxiety do fucked up things to your brain.  The simplest of adult tasks seemed impossible and I lacked motivation to do… well, anything really.  Even eating was hard and on a daily basis Lauriel would have to force me to eat breakfast, to eat lunch.

You can understand how shocked I am that 10 days into needing to be self sufficient, and being responsible for everything relating to the kids (until 5pm), I am thriving.

I wouldn’t say I LOVE my wife being at work all day, but finally, after years and years of feeling like I am inadequate as an adult, I feel like a real adult.  I feel like a real mum.  I feel like a real wife.

I really am shocked that I feel so mentally well, because I thought it’d be the opposite.  I had images of myself crying all day while Lauriel was at work.  I had images of needing to force myself to pick the kids up, and crying all the way there.  I had images of being pissy that I had to go to the supermarket, of getting out of that place and being ready to punch a brick wall.

But no.  Being in a routine has done wonders for me.  Doing what I want, when I want is no longer an option.

I know that I have to be awake at 7.30am. 
I know that I have to have the lunches done and kids out the door by 8.30am. 
I know that I need to do x, y & z on certain days. 
I know I need to leave home and be at school by 2.50pm. 
I know I need to bring the kids home and get afternoon tea and homework underway. 
I know that I need to have dinner planned and depending on what it is, underway by 5.30pm. 
I know that between 5.00pm and 5.30pm Lauriel gets home and we spend a few minutes cuddling and talking about the day. 
I know that around 6.30pm dinner is had. 
I know that between 7pm & 7.30pm the three younger kids go to bed. 
I know that 8pm means lights off. 
I know that around 9pm Eloise goes to bed. 
I know that around 10.30pm we go to bed.

The last time I felt ‘blah’ (aka: depressed) or anxious was at least 10 days ago, and that is a major accomplishment for me.

I do miss my wife like crazy when she’s at work, but I’m also busy enough that I don’t really have time to sit and mope, or to feel sorry for myself.  For the first time in a long time, my brain doesn’t feel quite so cluttered and the world doesn’t seem quite so scary.

Except on Sunday and Monday, when my wife has days off.  By then I’m over being a responsible adult and tend to become a bit of a recluse.

 

Roadtrip: success!

… admittedly one of the highlights of our weekend

Well, our roadtrip was pretty damn successful!  So successful in fact, that the kids all want to move to Napier.  So do we.  Dreams are free, huh.

Rather than giving a hugely detailed account of our trip I thought I’d just post some photos and a general overview… here goes!

Friday
We left about lunchtime, got to Napier at 3.30pm and stopped at the Silky Oak Chocolate Company for some afternoon tea (OMG, the 3 hour trip was worth it for the Marshmallow slice!).  We then went into the city and spent some time on Marine Parade before heading up to the Bluff Hill lookout for some… well, looking out!  Bluff Hill was followed by a trip to Mexi Mama for an authentic Mexican dinner.  Well worth the cost, the food was simply delicious!  After dinner we found our way out to my friend’s house and spent a couple of hours socialising before getting some much needed sleep.

Kiddos all ready to go!

Rainbow on the way to Napier

Marshmallow slice from Silky Oak Chocolate Company

Entering Napier… I love the Palm trees!

Marine Parade

Bluff Hill

Mexican for dinner… seemed only right to have a Corona!

 

Saturday
We left my friend’s at around 8.30am and headed into Hastings to get some new shoes for Emersyn.  Her boots broke.  Of course.  After our quick visit to KMart we went up to the top of Te Mata Peak and were lucky enough to have a breathtaking view of Hawke’s Bay.  Te Mata Peak was followed by a short visit to Arataki Honey to sample some honey and learn about bees… it was quite fascinating really!  From Arataki Honey we finally made it to Skeinz.  It was love at first sight, I tell ya!  All that wool, all that inspiration – it really would have been easy to spend hundreds of dollars in there!  By then time was getting on so we had a quick stop at McDonalds for lunch before going to McLean Park to watch Hawke’s Bay beat Taranaki in the final pre-season match.  We were lucky enough to get a photo with one of our favourite players who seemed amused when Eloise told him her dad used to be his teacher when he was in primary school!  After the game we stopped at the famous Marine Parade playground before heading to Feilding to stay with friends for the night.

Te Mata Peak

Skeinz, baby!

The kids with Tony Lamborn, a family favourite!

… and a rainbow on our way out of Napier

Sunday
Was mostly spent in our pyjamas, having baby cuddles. Eventually we left, getting home at around 3.30pm.

My wifey and Miss Lillian (3mo)

As nice as our weekend was, it was lovely to get home!

… and Mr Bo was happy to have us home

“Let’s go on a roadtrip” they said…

You know how sometimes you get an idea and you know it’s going to blow up in your face, but there is a small chance it might actually work out splendidly and that small chance is enough to make you go for it?  Also known as a ‘<enter activity here> they said, it’ll be fun they said’ moment.  Well, we had us one of those on Tuesday; it went a little something like this:

“So where is the Hawke’s Bay game on Saturday?”
“Napier”
“Hmm, we could go… take all the kids, make a day of it!”
“We could…”
“We should…”
“We really should!”
“Let’s do it!”
*excited giggling ensues*

Us in October 2012, our first trip to Napier

On Wednesday ‘make a day of it‘ turned into ‘we could always stay the night‘.
This morning after a friends invitation to stay, ‘could stay the night‘ turned into ‘we will stay the night‘.
… and there is the potential for it to turn into two nights.

Yeap.  We, of [supposedly] sound mind are taking our four lovely (read: crazy) children on a 3 hour roadtrip to watch some rugby and explore Napier.  For a whole weekend.  A whole week.end. Whooooooole weekend.

Napier is a very special place for Lauriel and I – it is the first place we went away to together on a roadtrip – and I love that we’re going to have a chance to share it with our children.

I remember as a kid it was always so exciting to know we were going away for a weekend, especially if it was somewhere we didn’t often go (for us that place was Christchurch, Dunedin or Queenstown)… and I want our kids to have that same excitement!  Eloise is already extremely excited about going – and if you have a tween or teen, you’ll know what a joy it is to see them excited about something; especially something related to spending time with you!  Gabrielle and Aidan are also excited… to the extent they have decided they’re going to get up at 5.30am so we can leave as soon as humanly possible.  Emersyn is Emersyn.  As long as we are there, as long as Eloise is there, she is happy.

At the game we went to on our Napier trip

The kids don’t know that we are now leaving tomorrow as our original plan was to leave on Saturday morning.  Okay, this is going to result in tears from Gabrielle (how dare we make her miss a day of school?!) but I’m sure she will get over it by the time we are at McDonalds having breakfast *rolls eyes* (yeah, I stupidly promised McD’s as a treat for breakfast).

I’m not too sure what we’re going to do in Napier, but one thing is for sure, we’ll be checking out the Skeinz shop!  I hear there is a magical bin there that I simply have to check out!  Speaking of knitting, because Lauriel is doing the driving I will be able to do lots of knitting on the trip there and back!  Might even be able to get my niece’s Unadorned knit over that time!

Okay.  I said the kids are excited, but really… I am bloody excited.  I cannot wait to get away with my beautiful family for a whole weekend… it’s been so long since Lauriel and I went away and even longer since we went away with the kiddos.

On a more serious note: this is going to be a big test for my anxiety.  As I’ve posted before, one of my major anxiety issues is with being a passenger in a car driving long distances.  I am feeling a lot more relaxed about it than I would have this time a year ago and am actually considering emailing my psychologist to let him know just how far out of my comfort zone I’m stepping.  Sure, it might be a different story tomorrow morning, but all I know is I can do this and I will do this.

UPDATE: this is now a full weekend trip…. two nights away it is!

An unexpected trigger

I was in a really good mood last week… until I read a news article online and my whole mood plummeted.  I just mentally and emotionally flatlined.  It wasn’t until a day or two later that I realised exactly what had happened to me when reading that article; I had been triggered.

Triggers are something I’m no stranger to.  I have triggers related to my abortion, to the sexual abuse I suffered, to my nephew dying, to my ectopic pregnancy, to the earthquakes… but never before had I experienced a trigger related to depression.

The article I was reading was about the domestic violence allegations against Shaun Kenny-Dowall and was written after he’d been hospitalised due to concerns surrounding his mental health.  To begin with there is a bit of background about the  journalists previous experience interviewing SKD as well as his own opinions on the man.  Pretty standard for a feature article.  It then moves on to an interview with SKD’s dad…

And that’s where it got hard for me to read.

The more I read the sicker I felt and to be honest, I felt close to crying.  I wasn’t really sure why, I don’t know SKD personally, nor do I know that much about him… but there was something about his dad’s words that really affected me.

“After a very difficult night Shaun was staying at his dad’s place in Bondi. He was being watched but jumped a back fence. He took his father’s car. He could not be contacted and John called the police. John got in his wife’s car and headed straight to The Gap. The lonely drive to The Gap was the worst  minutes of John’s life.

He was looking for something he didn’t want to find.

“I had it all planned out,” he said. “If I saw his car I was going to get to the edge and get down to him as quick as I could. I wasn’t going to let him be alone down there.”

The police searched block by block through the Eastern Suburbs and found him in Bellevue Hill.

Three cop cars pulled up next to him. He was sitting in his car staring blankly into space with a newspaper beside him. He wasn’t responsive, was emotionless and was not making sense. He felt let down and alone.” (from ‘Families divided amid allegations’ – Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2015)

The words resonated on a very strange level.  For the first time since I really acknowledged my depression I began seeing myself from Lauriel’s point of view.  I realised how scary it must have been for her when I was at my worst, how helpless she must of felt… and not just her either, my kids also saw me at my worst.  I felt crushed when I thought about how it would have been for the to see me like that, a shell of the person I had been.  They must have been terrified and confused.  I will always hate that I put my kids through that; I am just glad my parents weren’t here to see me.  It is easy to pretend you are okay via text message!

What really got me though, like a suckerpunch to the gut, was reading about the state SKD was in when they found him in his car.  Not responsive.  Emotionless.  Not making sense.  That state is familiar to me.  That state was me in April 2014 when I finally lost it.

I remember sitting on the edge of the bed in a towel after my shower, my eyes fixated to an invisible spot on the floor, not feeling, not thinking, not really there.  My body was there but the rest of me was… elsewhere, or perhaps it had turned off.  My heart was beating, my lungs were were filling with air… but I just… wasn’t there.  Lauriel literally had to dress me and talk me through the seemingly simple task of walking out to the car so she could take me to the doctor and I could finally get the help I needed.

On the one hand, the flashbacks have acted as a reminder of how far I’ve come… but on the other hand I’ve been reminded that depression is never really ‘over’.  It’s not something that you deal with and leave it in the past.

It stays with you, all of it; the bad times as well as the good times.

We added to our family!

I’ve posted on this blog quite a lot about the conflicting emotions that come with knowing that Lauriel and I aren’t going to have a baby together.  It’s something I find I have made peace with about 90% of the time, but there is still that 10% of the time where I feel anything but peace-ish.

We recently celebrated Emersyn’s 5th birthday (note to self: do a general update post!) and amongst the partygoers was a teeny, tiny, utterly adorable, perfectly perfect 3 week old bubba girl, Lillian.  As you can probably guess, holding that teeny, tiny, utterly adorable, perfectly perfect baby in my arms triggered the not-so-at-peace emotions I feel with regard to Lauriel and I not having our own kiddo together.  Watching my wifey holding the baby my uterus literally ached, and then when I finally had a cuddle I went into that automatic gentle-swaying-side-to-side, whispering-soothing-words type of zone it’s impossible not to enter into after you’ve had a baby of your own.

For a while there my brain toyed with the idea of suggesting perhaps we should have a baby.  The sight of Lauriel snuggling with a baby was one I could have gotten very used to, very quickly… the sight of the kids holding the baby and looking at her with awe was also one I could’ve gotten used to quickly.  Lillian, her mummy, daddy, brother and sister all left and so did the idea of suggesting we talk seriously about whether or not we should take the baby plunge ourselves.

But the sadness didn’t leave.  That feeling of…  not being empty (I am anything but!) but being… well, um… just knowing, I guess, that in an ideal world we could have all of that ourselves, but that realistically that ship has sailed.  It’s that stupid head over heart thing.

Now I’m off on a philosophical tangent.  Ever so sorry!

Anyway!  Fast forward to about three days later…

We went to the SPCA and adopted a kitty cat!

Introducing: Mr Bo

Yeap, we have ourselves a furbaby!  His name is Mr Bo (Mr Bojangles if you are addressing him formally) an he is the cutest, funniest, cuddliest, friendliest, most patient cat I have ever met!  He’s wonderful with the kids and from the very start has enjoyed playing with them during the day and cuddling up with one of them for the night.  Mr Bo settled in very quickly and I think he’s just as happy to be here as we are to have him here.

We may not have a baby together, but we now have a kitty cat together and in honesty, I think it’s just what I needed to fill that void-that-wasn’t-a-void-but-I-can’t-think-of-a-suitable-word-for-it.  It’s kind of like having a human baby together; we snuggle with him, we bond while smooching with him in bed… then there is the occasional poo to clean up, he demands food and gets under our feet.  But we wouldn’t be without him!

Is it odd of me to say that with the addition of Mr Bo, I feel as if our little family is complete?

Pretty kitty loves his Aunty Ali

Another completed project!

When one is given a whole lotta wool for her birthday, it is only right to make use of said wool!  I found a shawl on the bobwilson123 youtube channel  and decided to give it a go.

Like I have said before, we are huge fans of Outlander and I have a [not so] miniature obsession with Outlander-esque  items and decided I should probably make a shawl for Lauriel.  The shawl I made isn’t in Outlander-ish colours, but it is Outlander inspired.  Even though she doesn’t wear a lot of purple, I think she suits the colour, so a purple shawl it was!  I like the way the grey breaks it up a little bit!

 

 

If you want to check out the tutorial or the pattern, you can find them bobwilson123 ‘Crochet Rainbow Shawl’

Thanks for saving me from myself! Here, have a shawl.

Dear Wife…

 

How the hell do you thank the person who saved you from yourself?

I feel as though I wasn’t Lauriel’s wife for the first part of this year, rather I was the fifth child in the household.  I will probably always feel guilty for the way she had to prop me up over the first part of this year, mentally, emotionally, even sometimes physically while I cried.

How do you thank the person who lay in bed with you for hours while you cried?  How do you thank the person who told you repeatedly you weren’t stupid, an idiot, a moron, a waste of space.  How do you thank the person who put up with your mood swings?  How do you thank the person who didn’t yell back when you yelled at her?  How do you thank the person who essentially provided all the care for your children for a period of months?  How do you thank the person who always put you first and her kids last?

If you are me you shower that person with gifts of crochet.

Yeah, not exactly a fair trade is it?  You stopped me having a mental breakdown, here, have a capelet! And a shawl!

I feel as if I have nothing I can give, nothing that really explains or demonstrates just how grateful I am to have such an amazing woman in my life.  But I can crochet.  I can make her things.  I know a shawl or a capelet or… well, anything crocheted doesn’t seem like a big deal, but there is so much time and effort that goes in to each item.  More than that there is love.

While I am making something for her I find it impossible to not think about how lucky I am to have her, how lucky my kids are to have her, how lucky the world is to have her.  It takes a very special person to put themselves last and to spend so much time trying to reassure someone that they do matter, that their feelings are important… when most of the time it probably feels like talking to a brick wall.

One day I will find a way to truly thank her… but until then she will have to make do with a LOT of crocheted items…

A LOT.