What's in a name?

I was always the weird kid.  I had have a slightly twisted sense of humour.  I will be the one telling the ever-so-slightly inappropriate joke or laughing at the "wrong" parts of the movie.  I remember when I was 16 I went to see Fifth Element with a group of friends.  Afterwards one of them scolded me with wide eyes "how could you LAUGH when they were SHOOTING PEOPLE?!".  Um, because it was a comedy?  I thought so anyway.

There's nothing WRONG with me - I don't think anyway.

Then I grew up.  I got married.  I had a baby and found I liked it so much I kept having them.

I had 6 of them.

In less than 8 years.

I don't do things by halves.

Our sixth baby changed our lives more dramatically than we could ever have imagined.  She was born with severe, life threatening, health issues and a rare syndrome called Cornelia de Lange Syndrome.

In her early days I spent 8 weeks sitting by her hospital bedside and I blogged my little heart out.  Writing was a way to make sense of the world, to communicate with my husband (who was interstate from me taking care of the other five kids for most of this time), to let the world know what we were going through.

But as any writer knows, writing honestly is hard.

At the start, when life was so folded in on itself the outside world seemed almost fictional, I didn't care what the world thought.  I didn't think about what the world thought.  My whole life was focused on keeping that little girl alive and trying to untangle the snarl of issues, worries, STUFF that had dropped into my lap.  Hemmingway once said

Well I was bleeding anyway - in the metaphorical sense (which I am assuming Ernest was referring to) - so it was just a case of putting the lap top in front of the flow.

Then as I started to find my feet again.  My toes started to catch on the rocks on the bottom of the river that had swept me off my feet and I started to raise my head above the water and look around once in a while.

I freaked out.

The handful of readers who were following my blog kept telling me over and over who I was.  "You're Amazing!" "You're a Super Mum!" "You're Fantastic!" "You're so Strong!"

The people in my life had opinions of how I should run my life.  "Accept this money from this charity - even if it makes you feel awkward and you don't know what to spend it on!", "Send your traumatised older children away and have the house re-roofed and rewired - because renovations are the priority right now!",  "Have this bag full of hand-me-down clothes even though you have nowhere to store it an no time to go through it and you don't need any more clothes!",  "Have this cake even though there are so many cakes on your kitchen bench you can't fix dinner and you don't even like cake!"

Readers and the people in my life had opinions on what and when I should write. "You have an OBLIGATION to your readers!", "We all want to know what's going on, you need to write more!", "How dare you write that watching people pin down your baby and hurt her makes you want to punch them, that is so inappropriate for a public forum!", "I can't talk to you anymore because you wrote that listening to other parents talk about normal frustrations upsets you on a bad day and I don't want to upset you."
 
And that's the day, ladies and gentlemen, the blog died.

It all just got too hard.

I wanted to write because that's what I do, not out of a sense of obligation.

I wanted to write honestly, but not hurt my relationships.

Between doctors, therapists and other para-professionals decisions as simple as what and how to feed my kid were now being made by committee.  The last thing I wanted was another opinion on how to run my life and putting myself out there onto the internet seemed to be taken by some as an invitation to comment.

And I didn't want to be a Super-Mum.

People don't really listen to Super-Mums.

If a Super-Mum tries to be honest about her pain or her failings, her "fans" just keep shouting at her how fantastic she is until she is quiet and goes back to living up to their expectations.

It's not me.

I am changed, but I am still me.

And I needed to take some time to figure out who that was now before having the world shout at me who they thought I should be.

I think I am starting to work out who that is again now.

And I am still twisted.

I still laugh at the wrong places in movies.

I still give a happy wriggle of joy when I hear the Dr Who theme.

I still consider Joss Wheedon to be the Shakespere of our time.

I still cling on to my Bible as a lifeline I can't do without.

I still make inappropriate jokes.

I still occasionally use words that I pray will never come out of my kid's mouths in front of their grandmother.

I still loose my mobile phone on a regular basis and can't abide touch screens.

I still consider eating cheese and/or chocolate and watching youtube videos on my own to be the penultimate way to spend an evening.

When I am angry, it is not because I am bitter, it is because I am angry.

When I am frustrated, it is not because I am not coping, it is because I am frustrated.

When I am sad, it is not because I am broken, it is because I am sad.

I am not an icon.

I am not a doe eyed Madonna with lilly white skin, a symbol of self sacrifice and maternal perfection.

I am not a Super-Mum.

I am me.

And I still write.


I am twisted - not broken.

This blog is my fresh start at writing for the public forum.  What do I want out of it?  I am still trying to work that out.  But I know that writing with no audience is like having half a conversation.  I want to throw some ideas and thoughts - practical, theoretical and esoteric - out there.  I want to polish up this compulsion I have to write and actually do something with it.  I want to play around with words.

So here we both are.  Let's see where it takes us.