A letter to myself

Dear Me,

Here's the thing.  When a doctor or a nurse or a specialist or a therapist walks in the door, you treat them like a superstar.  You do this, not because you worship the "expert" or the "degree" but because you know that the absolute most you are likely to get from a person, is what they think you expect of them.  You reason that if you treat them like they are a superstar, you will get their best work.  If they feel admired and happy and fulfilled in their work, they will do their best work.  If they like you, they will do that little bit more for you and your kid.

And you're right, it works.

Not every time, but enough of the time.  You get results.  You get them at their best.  It's awesome.  You go girl, you work that system.  It's not manipulative, it is creating the most positive environment for the most positive outcome.  It is part of your job and you are good at your job.  You rock.  You, my dear, are a total superstar at what you do.

You know what you suck at?

Treating yourself well.

You completely and utterly suck at that.

You stay up too late, you drink too much coffee, you don't exercise, when time or money or energy gets tight the things that make you happy are the first things to go out the door every single time.  You eat crap.  Seriously, there are more than two food groups and none of them are called "coffee" and "Carbs".  It's like you're punishing your body with food, not feeding it.  And the only exercise you get these days is hauling the girls around.  You have stellar triceps and biceps but they are seriously the only part of your body with tone.  You don't drink enough water.  And you are mad at yourself most of the time.

You are mad that you haven't got half the things on your to-do list done.  You are mad that you are not kinder and nicer.  You are mad that you aren't a good enough mother, wife, friend - whatever.  You are mad that you fall so short of the expectations you have of yourself. You're mad that your armor had chinks. But armor without chinks can't move, you know that.  And you need to dance sometimes. You are angry that you trusted or hoped or believed in people who have hurt you lately - which really is not fair because, yes, those people have a history of letting you down, but honey if you never hope.....

And because you are mad you pile that on top so you can't see that you are sad.  You are sad that you can't stop the hurting.   Yours, Kaylee's, everyone's.  You are sad that so many of the people who are supposed to be in your corner are instead in the critics box.  You are sad that help and support seems to come with strings attached or judgement more often than not at  the moment  You are sad because you're realising that many of the dreams you had for yourself are impossible and the ones that aren't impossible are mostly really, really hard.

And you are tired.  You are tired of it being so hard, every day.

And because of all the sad and the tired, you get more mad.  Because you SHOULD.  You should be thankful for what you have, you should be more organised, you should take better care of yourself, you should work on your relationships more, you should be kinder and nicer and softer....you should...you should....you should.  Your shoulds could fill up a room and frequently, when you let your mind drift to the land of should, they do.  And it is easier to be mad than sad or tired.  It feels safer.  It feels stronger.  But it isn't.

So stop.

Tomorrow, when you get up in the morning, you are going to treat yourself like a superstar.

You are going to enjoy a cup of coffee, and make yourself some herbal tea and egg on toast for breakfast.  Yes, there's only one egg left  - everyone else will survive a few days until the grocery shopping is done, it won't kill them for you to eat it.

You are going to fill up a jug of water and take the time to drink it through the day

You are going to be at least a little bit realistic with your to-do list and cut yourself a break about the things you don't get done.

You are going to do something that makes you happy.  I don't know what right now because I'll be honest with you, I am so sad and tired I can't imagine being happy right now.  But you will find a way.  And if you can't be happy, at least be neutral.  Find things that don't make you sad or frustrated or angry and do them for a while.

You will think about what you want to do tomorrow evening and if it is just go to bed, you will excuse yourself without guilt (or at least while telling yourself not to feel guilty) and go to bed and read and journal for a while on your own.  And that will be OK.

And you will feel tired, and you will feel like you work damn hard - because you do and that's OK because that's what superstars do.  That's why they are superstars, because they work darn hard.  But you will also feel loved.  You will feel cared for and you will feel respected.  By you.  And that's important.

Because honey, you are teaching people how to treat you by the way you treat yourself.  You are teaching your daughters how to treat themselves.  You are the only one who will take care of you, get used to that.  So you need to do it.  And when you get up the next morning, you will be a superstar, a BIGGER superstar than the day before.  And you will treat yourself as such.

And perhaps one day, you will stop being angry that you are not perfect.

Perhaps one day being a superstar will be enough.

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.