The Late Night Amazon Breakdown

The other night, I was feeling massively low, and I decided to try and improve my appearance.

The logic ran thusly- nobody loves me. I am fat and ugly. I am unhappy. If I had someone to love me, I would be less unhappy, but I am too fat and ugly to be loved.

Looking at the people in the internet, but realised that they have long luscious hair, perfect nails, flappy eyelashes, and bright white teeth with no gaps. They were also all thin.

I went to Amazon to see what I could do. Obviously I did so while eating biscuits.

Behold, this is what a tenner can buy you to fix your teeth.

Brace yourself.

depression doesn’t feel like you think it does

i’m writing this one handed, because the little man is on my lap whining and wriggling. he’s got tummy ache; he needs a poo. when he needs a poo he holds it in, and engages in increasingly frantic attempts to distract himself from the pain. he bounces on the sofa, leaping about as energetically as he can. he stands with his nose up against the television. he drinks juice or soya milk, he plays with food that he thinks he wants, but has no stomach for. he runs up and down the house wailing, desperately trying to escape the griping crampy pains of imminent poopage.

i’m sure you’ve guessed that while this is precisely what is happening in my house tonight, i’m also using it as a simile for my depression. because this is the closest approximation i can come up with for it.

people think depression is sadness, or numbness; sitting staring out of a rain spattered window into a byronic landscape. google image searches will have you looking at hundreds of pictures of men with their head in their hands, looking pained. apparently depressed people listen to sad music and mope about, like they’re curating their own soundtrack.

not for me. i literally cannot listen to music. i stopped jogging the day i realised there was not a single track on my spotify playlist that didn’t hurt. i used to love music, it was a fantastic escape, but now i can’t even handle desert island discs. it was gary barlow this week, on in the van on the way to preschool. unbearable.

because for me depression is like desperately needing a shit and not being able to actually go. just like my kid. it’s a desperate, sharp, spasm of pain that i have to breathe through, wait for it to end, keep telling myself it will go off. there’s a blinding, overwhelming desperation that SOMETHING will make it go away. like that feeling when you hurt yourself or you’re scared, and you want your mum, but you know it’s not your mum you need.

imagine having pins and needles in your brain. that “ARGH ARGH ARGH HELP HELP MAKE IT GO AWAY HELP HELP ARGH!” feeling, but inside you. what will make it go away? a drink? a fag? a joint? a fuck? shopping? pizza? self harm? anything! anything! everything! nothing.

i reckon this is why suicides happen. i don’t think anyone really wants to be dead, i think they’ve tried everything else and have decided that the way to make it go away is to be dead. they say often, people who have decided to kill themselves get really cheerful, their friends have no suspicion because they perk up after seeming really low for ages. why? because they think finally that horrible desperation is going to be over soon.

today has been a hideous day for that unbearable desperation. i’ve tried facebook (i can easily clock up eight hours in a day on facebook), i’ve watched videos on youtube, i’ve cooked, i’ve washed up, i’ve cleaned, i’ve played with eric, i’ve made party invitations, i’ve wrapped presents. i briefly had the anticipation of a Real Junk Food Project hamper delivery, but that came before lunchtime, so lovely as it was, it didn’t last. i considered a take-away. i played with eric, as much as i could. but i ended up laying on the floor of his playroom watching the back of his head, waiting out the pain, thinking there was simply no way i could survive it.

what do i actually mean by pain? it’s memories. memories of everything about me that is insufferable. i tried focusing on the things i’ve done recently that i should be proud of or grateful for, but it was like taking a paracetamol when you’ve got trapped wind. the agony (the first time i had trapped wind i thought i was having a heart attack) of everything that makes me fucking dreadful completely swamps anything healthy you try to do. being me is horrific because i am completely aware of how dreadful i am.

i don’t know why christmas makes it so much worse really. i mean it was about this time of year – a couple of weeks before christmas – that my dad decided to kill us all. my family on dad’s side made christmas pretty unpleasant, and i remember getting so upset i was sick during christmas dinner one year (i was an emotional puker). but i think ultimately christmas is just a reminder that everyone else is off being loved while i’m just on my own being unlovable. i do my absolute best to compensate and make eric happy, to earn his love, but there’s that terror that the presents won’t be good enough, that this will be the breaking point where everyone says to me “this present is shit, you’re shit, i can’t put up with you any more.”

apparently writing it down is supposed to help. meh.

 

 

Shitmas and surviving it

“aw did you have a lovely christmas?” “are you doing anything nice for christmas?” “looking forward to christmas?”

they’re not really questions though are they? they’re demands. subtle, insidious little demands. most people have a moderate to lovely christmas, i’m sure. most people get together with their extended families and get mildly annoyed about political differences or flatulence or whatever, watch telly, play board games, bicker, eat too much. they moan about it all but publicly announce they’re loving it.

but there are an awful lot of people who don’t have a lovely christmas. and we’re not allowed to bloody tell you that because it opens a can of worms you don’t want to know about. if you ask me what my plans are for christmas, i’ll say “oh, seeing family, you know” but that’s not an honest answer.

here’s what i’m planning this christmas.

on christmas eve the newly three-year old Eric and i will head over to Arundel Lido for a swim. it’s heated and you float about looking at a castle. i like to think we’ll always go on christmas eve, so that Eric has a nice middle class tradition that involves exercise and heritage. i find being in water outdoors healing, in an almost spiritual way. it makes me feel better. not just better in terms of mood, but better in terms of who i am as a human. i don’t know why, i have just always needed to be in water outdoors.

after our swim, we will go to the little co-op opposite the lido. they will hopefully have loads of reduce-to-clear christmas food again. cheap fancy food makes me feel better too. it feels like a present somehow. i don’t question it, i just know that i feel grateful for it, and that gratitude is really important for me at christmas.

after that, we head over to gosport (yeah i know, lots of driving, but eric will be ready for a nap), where we collect two hampers from the junk food project. they intercept food waste from supermarkets, and on christmas eve, you don’t know whether you’re going to get a turkey, a whole salmon, a catering pack of mince pies, or a lump of coal. but again, it’s important i feel grateful, because that way i feel something a bit like love coming my way.

drop off the second hamper to its recipient, and then home for some telly and toys with my boy. i don’t honestly know how good or bad my mood will be, but i’ll either be excited about the morning, or telling myself it’s nearly over. you can’t predict really.

christmas morning, eric will have a stocking to wake up to and a massive pile of presents. we’ll have a play, eat something involving cheese, and then head over to the community christmas dinner we’re booked on. i’m nervous as all hell about that, because the last time i booked us in to one, come the day i was too depressed to go. eric was only a baby then, so he didn’t know any better, but this year i have to go, come what may, and i’m dreading the possibility that i cry for four solid hours and ruin everybody’s christmas. we’re going so that eric has someone happy around, just in case i’m not. it will hopefully be a real mix of ages and types of people, so that eric gets to charm old ladies and such, because he loves a bit of that.

home for tea, hopefully exhausted and feeling peaceful and lovely. but whatever i feel, eric should be happy. early night, i really really hope, and then boxing day my mum is coming to visit, so eric will have more presents to open, because i’m going to save the presents from mum till she gets here. i think we’re going to have lunch together. not sure.

so yeah, christmas. i’m scared of it because as often as not i get really, REALLY depressed at christmas. i’ve put as much in place as possible to make sure it goes smoothly whether i’m depressed or not, but it still worries me. eric has a tree, decorations, christmas food, more presents than you can possibly comprehend, and a mother who loves him, hopefully that’s enough. we’ll have done the birthday treat (monkey world) and the christmas treat (meeting father christmas at hayling funland), he’ll have been to two christmas parties and a birthday party, and he’ll have been for a proper christmas walk. but where my head will be is anyone’s guess.

it’s not that i hate christmas, that i wish it didn’t happen. i love christmas, but it has hurt me so many times. i don’t mean i wanted a pony when i was seven and only got a donkey. i mean deaths and cruelty and heartbreak. the christmas songs that have a pavlovian effect on my central nervous system. the loneliness and the waiting for life to go back to normal so i could see people again. craving tescos for human contact.

but you can’t tell people that when they ask what you did for christmas. they want to hear it was lovely even if it wasnt.

 

Cough

So yesterday morning, in the early hours, i woke up and noticed Eric’s breathing was wrong. He’s had a cough for a few days, the kind that sounds gooey and unpleasant, but this was more than that – he was breathing shallow and fast, and his stomach was moving up and down like his whole body was trying to breathe. When he got up, he was holding his breath and making pained noises – I was 90% sure that was down to needing a poo, but I was still worried.

He was also a grumpy git.

Naturally it was a Saturday, so if he was going to see a doctor, it would be at a walk-in centre. Bugger. So I waited. I hoped that if he had a poo, he’d be less of a misery-guts and start breathing properly, and I’d stop worrying. He didn’t poo and he carried on breathing funny.

At half two I googled “toddler cough” and spent a while reading up on what to treat at home and what to worry about. It’s never a great idea, is it? Anyway, I did, and it suggested I should get him seen. A productive cough with shortness of breath and tummy breathing, loss of appetite, reduced urination, blah blah blah. Pneumonia and worry.

So I got us both dressed (it had been a lazy rainy stay-at-home day) and headed over to St Mary’s walk in centre. After a little wait, we were assessed, which Eric hated, with the pokey-in-the-ear and the pinchy thing on his finger. He didn’t have a temperature and his oxygen levels were fine, but due to the world-class melt-down he was having, his pulse was a bit high, so they circled “urgent” on the triage form.

We were seen quickly, and the screaming kicked off again, so we got the bum’s-rush very rapidly. He’s absolutely fine.

It’s tough sometimes being a single parent. I don’t know if i’d have over-reacted to this extent if I’d had someone to talk to about it all, not just google. But ultimately, if it HAD been a chest infection it could have got bad quickly. Pfffft. I dunno.

 

 

Poo Day

Eric withholds. This was not a term I was aware of when I fell pregnant. It’s not a concept you tend to hear about until it’s happening to you as a parent. It’s a pain in the arse.

When Eric needs a poo, he holds it in. For days. It drives me bonkers because he is obviously in pain, and gets really clingy and demanding, because he’s in pain. It’s incredibly difficult to be sympathetic and patient when he’s inflicting it on himself. For a few weeks he’ll poo perfectly happily – pop to the toilet and bish bash bosh, we get on with our lives. Then without warning he starts acting like a little dick, and I have to remind myself over and over again that he’s only little and he can’t help it.

So here we are on Poo Day, gearing up for yet more nonsense and 42 thousand trips to the bloody bathroom. If i’m really lucky he’ll poo in the toilet. If I’m fairly lucky, he’ll slope off and hide in a cupboard, and then come and tell me he’s done a poo. If luck is not on my side, we’ll have another day of him fighting mother nature, and he’ll finally go kablooey in my lap.

I hate Poo Day.