I am, in a word, fucked. I am tired. I am drained. I am shattered. I am worn out. Are you getting the picture?
There is a line in a movie which neatly encapsulates the ups and downs of everyday life, when 'The Stranger' in cult 90's film "The Big Lebowski" says:
"Sometimes you eat the bear ... and sometimes the bear eats you"
That is to say some days you are up and everything is going your way. Some days you're down and you can't seem to catch a break. You win some, you lose some. Using this knowledge, I try not to get too wound up about things. After all, all things are impermanent, so if you bide your time, whatever is happening in your life that you don't like will right itself. No sweat, right? Life happens.
Right now, that is being tested. It begins about a month ago. Carra's nana suddenly fell ill. She's ok now, but the circumstances of her illness were such that she could not see Carra at all, and still can't for another few weeks, just in case Carra caught anything from her. Right there and then, Carra went from spending two full days and one half day a week in Nana's house with Nana, Grandad and Uncle Petey to spending no time with them. This meant we had to find a creche for Carra. We had been putting it off for a long time because it was quite a source of apprehension. But MT and I have to work and we had nowhere for Carra to go. So creche was on.
At the same time as Esther got ill, so did I. Now I am not seriously ill nor have I been but it's been none the less problematic. Firstly I woke up one Friday morning with the most excruciating stomach cramps. I spent, no joke, the vast majority of the next 14 hours on the toilet in absolute agony. It was bad enough to the point that I set up a little stool with a pillow on it just by the toilet so I could rest my head and pass out because I was so dehydrated but couldn't physically not be on the toilet. This was the first day of work I've missed sick in 2 years and I hate that. I work in a small office so I feel very self conscious about the impact it has on others when I miss a day.
The following week, Carra started creche and I went back to work. Initially, creche went ok. Carra would get distracted by the toys and I would bail. All was well. However, at the same time I got a really bad head cold. I was completely drained. And my stomach issues hadn't cleared up either. With the combination of the two, I wasn't sleeping well.
At the same time as all this was happening, Turkey was on the horizon. I have needed teeth replacing for a long time and had booked the trip a month or so back. A week before I was due to go, Carra picked up a bug. She was comfortably the sickest we had ever seen her. She had no energy at all, no spark. Just moped around, intermittently vomiting, weeing herself and snotting all over her poor little face. Eventually I brought both of us to the doctor. I was told I'd had a stomach bug and now had a bad cold and she probably had just picked up the cold. This wasn't of any great comfort to me as you can imagine.
Sunday two weeks ago I went to Turkey. I believed that if nothing else, this was a great chance to just get back to health. And it seemed to work. My stomach issues finally cleared up. My cold disappeared a couple days after I arrived. I felt close to 100%. Back at home, all was not so well. Carra was getting worse, not better. Her face was covered in red marks and she wasn't sleeping. Her breathing was off. She went back to the doctor and was diagnosed with a chest infection and impetigo. They gave her an antibiotic.
I got home from Turkey last weekend. I believed that at that point, our struggles were close to an end. I thought that by now Carra would be settled into creche, we would all be back to full health and life would go back to normal. But truthfully it's been one of the more draining weeks I can remember having. Firstly, on Monday I felt a sharp pain in my throat. By Tuesday it was full on agony. I had aches and pains all over, a sore throat, phlegm etc, etc. I was so frustrated I wanted to scream. I have just gotten over a cold. What is happening to me now!? That has only developed as the week has gone on, and as I type this I am incessantly short of breath because when I breathe in deeply, I cough. So I'm taking short, shallow breaths. The real issue though, is Carra.
"She's not herself" is a cliched and overused phrase but never has it rung more true. Since I came home, it's impossible to avoid the fact that Carra has been hugely impacted by all the recent changes in her life. Firstly Nana disappeared, and then Dada was gone for a week. Clingy is not the word. She demands my presence all the time. And when I say demands, I mean demands. In the mornings when we go to creche, she physically digs her hands into my shoulders and fights to not let me go. Then when I have handed her off, she starts screeching - not screaming, not shouting, screeching from the top of her little lungs "NOOO DADA DON'T GO! I NEED DADA! I NEED DADA!". My fellow parents will probably understand this, but there is little more traumatizing or harder to do than walk away from your screaming child when all they want is you. What makes it worse is the before and after. For half an hour before, she knows what is coming. She tell me. "I am not going to creche Dada". Then "You are not going to work Dada". Then when she knows this isn't working, it goes to "I am coming your office Dada". Eventually she understands she can't stop it happening. So she starts roaring. She fights her shoes. She fights her hat. She fights her coat. If you don't put them on her, you can't bring her to creche you see. On the drive down she whimpers and cries, slowly building to the giant wailing when you arrive. For a half an hour after I leave her, it's no exaggeration to say I just feel shock. It's so bloody distressing. To make matters worse, on Monday she spent a lot of the day looking for me. Eventually she got so distressed that I wasn't around that she threw a fit which resulted in vomiting all over herself. I had to leave work to come and get her.
It would be one thing if this was just on the two days a week she has to go to creche, but she's doing it at home. When MT tries to bring her up to do her bedtime routine, she goes absolutely spare. The exact same screaming and fighting. Usually we give in and I go up and put her to bed. But she is terrified I'll leave. She sleeps on her side but she has taken to sleeping on one shoulder while stretching her other arm backwards in an unnatural angle away from her body, so she can put her hand on me. That way if I try and leave, even if she's asleep she will feel it. And then she wakes. And then she screams. This has meant this weekend I've had very little sleep and spent many many hours lying in her bed hoping she'll fall asleep. To add to all that, she has gotten sniffly again and she is constantly having pee pee accidents - something that never happened 4 or 5 weeks back.
So where does that leave me? In the next ten days, I have to go to Manchester for work, and then MT and I are going to London overnight. I can't not go, but considering how much anxiety and fear Carra is clearly carrying about my absence how can I not stay with her? It's such a unique sense of discomfort, something I have never experienced until now. I am an adult. I have responsibilities, I have plans, I have a life. This can't all be put on hold. I know that Carra will be fine in the medium to long term. But the idea that I could make Carra's fear and pain even worse is so distressing to me. Then there's the small matter of my health. Each time I think I'm well, it turns out I am not. Granted I have been through this before in much worse circumstances, and I have no doubt I will be fine in the next few weeks or month. But for this moment, it is just doing my fucking nut in.
So there you have it, really. In addition to all this, MT and I are in the process of applying for a top up mortgage which keeps being delayed and the banks keep asking for more info. And close people all around me are going through some serious health issues. Combined, it is just weight on me. I feel like when I wake up each morning I am already swimming against the tide. And it's exhausting. I just want a break. I just want a day where Carra is my healthy, happy, bouncy girl. A day where I feel like a normal human being. A day where I hear good news about the people I love. A day where my poxy mortgage is approved! And so on and so forth.
There is a line in a movie which neatly encapsulates the ups and downs of everyday life, when 'The Stranger' in cult 90's film "The Big Lebowski" says:
"Sometimes you eat the bear ... and sometimes the bear eats you"
That is to say some days you are up and everything is going your way. Some days you're down and you can't seem to catch a break. You win some, you lose some. Using this knowledge, I try not to get too wound up about things. After all, all things are impermanent, so if you bide your time, whatever is happening in your life that you don't like will right itself. No sweat, right? Life happens.
Right now, that is being tested. It begins about a month ago. Carra's nana suddenly fell ill. She's ok now, but the circumstances of her illness were such that she could not see Carra at all, and still can't for another few weeks, just in case Carra caught anything from her. Right there and then, Carra went from spending two full days and one half day a week in Nana's house with Nana, Grandad and Uncle Petey to spending no time with them. This meant we had to find a creche for Carra. We had been putting it off for a long time because it was quite a source of apprehension. But MT and I have to work and we had nowhere for Carra to go. So creche was on.
At the same time as Esther got ill, so did I. Now I am not seriously ill nor have I been but it's been none the less problematic. Firstly I woke up one Friday morning with the most excruciating stomach cramps. I spent, no joke, the vast majority of the next 14 hours on the toilet in absolute agony. It was bad enough to the point that I set up a little stool with a pillow on it just by the toilet so I could rest my head and pass out because I was so dehydrated but couldn't physically not be on the toilet. This was the first day of work I've missed sick in 2 years and I hate that. I work in a small office so I feel very self conscious about the impact it has on others when I miss a day.
The following week, Carra started creche and I went back to work. Initially, creche went ok. Carra would get distracted by the toys and I would bail. All was well. However, at the same time I got a really bad head cold. I was completely drained. And my stomach issues hadn't cleared up either. With the combination of the two, I wasn't sleeping well.
At the same time as all this was happening, Turkey was on the horizon. I have needed teeth replacing for a long time and had booked the trip a month or so back. A week before I was due to go, Carra picked up a bug. She was comfortably the sickest we had ever seen her. She had no energy at all, no spark. Just moped around, intermittently vomiting, weeing herself and snotting all over her poor little face. Eventually I brought both of us to the doctor. I was told I'd had a stomach bug and now had a bad cold and she probably had just picked up the cold. This wasn't of any great comfort to me as you can imagine.
Sunday two weeks ago I went to Turkey. I believed that if nothing else, this was a great chance to just get back to health. And it seemed to work. My stomach issues finally cleared up. My cold disappeared a couple days after I arrived. I felt close to 100%. Back at home, all was not so well. Carra was getting worse, not better. Her face was covered in red marks and she wasn't sleeping. Her breathing was off. She went back to the doctor and was diagnosed with a chest infection and impetigo. They gave her an antibiotic.
I got home from Turkey last weekend. I believed that at that point, our struggles were close to an end. I thought that by now Carra would be settled into creche, we would all be back to full health and life would go back to normal. But truthfully it's been one of the more draining weeks I can remember having. Firstly, on Monday I felt a sharp pain in my throat. By Tuesday it was full on agony. I had aches and pains all over, a sore throat, phlegm etc, etc. I was so frustrated I wanted to scream. I have just gotten over a cold. What is happening to me now!? That has only developed as the week has gone on, and as I type this I am incessantly short of breath because when I breathe in deeply, I cough. So I'm taking short, shallow breaths. The real issue though, is Carra.
"She's not herself" is a cliched and overused phrase but never has it rung more true. Since I came home, it's impossible to avoid the fact that Carra has been hugely impacted by all the recent changes in her life. Firstly Nana disappeared, and then Dada was gone for a week. Clingy is not the word. She demands my presence all the time. And when I say demands, I mean demands. In the mornings when we go to creche, she physically digs her hands into my shoulders and fights to not let me go. Then when I have handed her off, she starts screeching - not screaming, not shouting, screeching from the top of her little lungs "NOOO DADA DON'T GO! I NEED DADA! I NEED DADA!". My fellow parents will probably understand this, but there is little more traumatizing or harder to do than walk away from your screaming child when all they want is you. What makes it worse is the before and after. For half an hour before, she knows what is coming. She tell me. "I am not going to creche Dada". Then "You are not going to work Dada". Then when she knows this isn't working, it goes to "I am coming your office Dada". Eventually she understands she can't stop it happening. So she starts roaring. She fights her shoes. She fights her hat. She fights her coat. If you don't put them on her, you can't bring her to creche you see. On the drive down she whimpers and cries, slowly building to the giant wailing when you arrive. For a half an hour after I leave her, it's no exaggeration to say I just feel shock. It's so bloody distressing. To make matters worse, on Monday she spent a lot of the day looking for me. Eventually she got so distressed that I wasn't around that she threw a fit which resulted in vomiting all over herself. I had to leave work to come and get her.
It would be one thing if this was just on the two days a week she has to go to creche, but she's doing it at home. When MT tries to bring her up to do her bedtime routine, she goes absolutely spare. The exact same screaming and fighting. Usually we give in and I go up and put her to bed. But she is terrified I'll leave. She sleeps on her side but she has taken to sleeping on one shoulder while stretching her other arm backwards in an unnatural angle away from her body, so she can put her hand on me. That way if I try and leave, even if she's asleep she will feel it. And then she wakes. And then she screams. This has meant this weekend I've had very little sleep and spent many many hours lying in her bed hoping she'll fall asleep. To add to all that, she has gotten sniffly again and she is constantly having pee pee accidents - something that never happened 4 or 5 weeks back.
So where does that leave me? In the next ten days, I have to go to Manchester for work, and then MT and I are going to London overnight. I can't not go, but considering how much anxiety and fear Carra is clearly carrying about my absence how can I not stay with her? It's such a unique sense of discomfort, something I have never experienced until now. I am an adult. I have responsibilities, I have plans, I have a life. This can't all be put on hold. I know that Carra will be fine in the medium to long term. But the idea that I could make Carra's fear and pain even worse is so distressing to me. Then there's the small matter of my health. Each time I think I'm well, it turns out I am not. Granted I have been through this before in much worse circumstances, and I have no doubt I will be fine in the next few weeks or month. But for this moment, it is just doing my fucking nut in.
So there you have it, really. In addition to all this, MT and I are in the process of applying for a top up mortgage which keeps being delayed and the banks keep asking for more info. And close people all around me are going through some serious health issues. Combined, it is just weight on me. I feel like when I wake up each morning I am already swimming against the tide. And it's exhausting. I just want a break. I just want a day where Carra is my healthy, happy, bouncy girl. A day where I feel like a normal human being. A day where I hear good news about the people I love. A day where my poxy mortgage is approved! And so on and so forth.
