Crisis or calling?

August 31st, 2010

At a time when I am learning who my friends are … or rather who my friends aren’t … I am learning other lessons that I would rather not and more and more I am becoming disillusioned with life’s textbook. In the process of discovering the extent that social norms dictate the opinions of others towards what we choose to do, I can’t help but notice how much it scares people when you do something out of the ordinary … it shakes up their ideals and makes them wonder how fallible their own nucleus is.

When we are children we are told over and over how to behave, what not to do, that we are being naughty when we are just being children, what constitutes the overly-important word: polite … and we are smacked or punished when we don’t conform. We are, in a nutshell, controlled until our natural instinct for life is sapped and we become clones of this Borg-like social colony that obsesses over the size of their TV, their bank balance and the latest SUV.

Not surprising then how if you sit still for long enough and listen to your heart’s strongest desires – when you choose to follow a path that doesn’t fit the norm – you are not honoured or revered. It’s just not part of what we have been taught as children. People think you’re a problem; they accuse you of having a midlife crisis if you are remotely close to ‘that age’ … and sometimes your therapist even asks you to check your hormones. You become the person people tut about while they wonder if you’ll ever get a reality check.

But whose reality exactly?

I think about how my child, since he could string a coherent sentence together, spoke maturely about his ‘other family’; the one with the brother called SiscoFranco and the father from Spain and the mother from Paraguay … or was that the grandparents? He will be able to remind me because the story has always been the same, which makes me believe that, at his age when he can’t even remember what he had for breakfast immediately after taking his plate to the kitchen, there has been no embellishing. Children are so close to the spirit world that they need encouragement to find who they are now, while they still know why they came and why they chose you … although my child has always stuck to his story that he chose me because no one else was available!

It is a cruel society that shapes our children to fit a mould rather than encourage them to find their own unique fit.

Sure, I’ve been on the other side, blaming people for either taking too many drugs, being in lala-land or possibly just not getting enough sleep. But now I am here, I realise how profound it is to give up the norm and be quiet enough with myself to access what exactly it was all those years ago that brought me into this world in the first place.

Whether out of compassion or ignorance, people tell me they hope I find out who I am. But I have always known … of course I have. We all have an inner knowledge of who we are; it just isn’t necessarily the person people feel comfortable knowing.

It is not so much about change. It is about finding your way back. It is about ‘un’change.

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Fight? What fight?

August 31st, 2010

When you ask someone to please do a cartwheel for you and they say they can’t and you say try and they still won’t and then you beg them to just try the damn somersault and they dig their heels in and you say you are going inside if they don’t at least try … and they turn their back on you and refuse and you reiterate that you are going to walk inside if they don’t just do the somersault to see if they can or can at least do it to please you … Well, when you walk inside, is that a mutual decision or yours alone? Even a child’s logic can figure that one out. I know mine makes it very clear to me when he is doing something based on my not doing anything and he states with no ambiguity that his actions are really my decision.

I have not only been doing cartwheels for years but I have been shadow boxing too … against an opponent who has never bothered to show up but who has always taken credit for being in the fight. There doesn’t seem much point hanging around when the opponent is always a no-show. He will turn up one day and see … everyone has left and he is alone.

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Full disclosure

August 17th, 2010

One of the reasons I started this blog when I had a baby was because I was amazed at how mothers gossip about each other. Everyone has an opinion on how other mothers are coping, whether they have PND, what they feed their babies, when they wean them, how their mothering effects their child’s behaviour, whether they follow a routine, if smacking is condoned and a range of other general issues including reasons for bedwetting and tantrums. Mothers, in their search to find balance and normality in a mind-blowing situation can become … well, they can become a bunch of bitches.

I was, however, determined to let people know how I was doing and what I was failing at and I wanted to make it public so that people could either empathise or just feel like they weren’t alone. I know most of this generation was brought up with a side of shame and guilt at every family meal and I wanted these to be the only things I was willing to conceal under the gem squash skin.

People have commented over the years about things I have written, they have empathised and they have disagreed but they have always taken this blog at face value. Now that I am being public about other areas of my life, however, people have been coming out of the woodwork like bora that you don’t know is there until it’s done a whole lot of damage … people are now judging me about having been so public about baby.

The purpose of my blog is to create a bit of unease; some tension to provoke debate … it is not about causing damage but alleviating pain, both for myself and for others who may be going through the same thing. Like I said in an earlier post, we are all part of the same humanity and what is happening to each of us is also happening to millions of others … so where is the shame in sharing?

People I have known for years, and some I have never met, have used my frank discussions to finally open up about going through the same thing and close friends have only gone public once they have already been through it. I can’t express the pain involved so I know that those people have been to hell and back before they have even told anyone what they were going through.

Despite judgement and criticism, I will always stand on my soapbox. Other people’s secrets are sacred to me but my own life belongs to the collective. I may be scrappy and I may offend people with my lack of regard for issues that some consider too private to divulge so publicly … but I believe my life should come out of my own mouth, not the mouths of others. And when people try and silence me, I only shout louder … only this time I can shout to a lawyer.

However my soap opera plays out in the end, I think I owe it to myself to explore the world out there for an opportunity to grow and connect to those millions of people with whom I share a part in this tragedy. If nothing else, I owe it to myself to rip the words right out of the mouths of people who would rather discuss my life with others.

Gossip is always easier than confronting any issue. It’s not surprising then that it is the people who devour magazines such at Heat and Hello! who are the ones that choose to base their opinions on the gossip that they hear rather than my truth that I publish.

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Monsters

August 9th, 2010

I shouted at my child one evening because he was too afraid of the dark to go to the toilet about ten meters away from where I was making dinner. It’s one of my major faults: intolerance under stress. He threw a tantrum, I threw a wobbly … and I ended up leaving the food to burn while I went to turn the light on, still wondering what the performance was about when he doesn’t usually have a problem with the darkness. I start blaming myself and I get wrapped up in a kind of helpless feeling because I can’t make things right for him. Anyway, I recognised it as a problem and the next night I took him upstairs to the little area outside the two bedrooms. I made sure it was well lit where we were standing but dark in the bedrooms and I explained to him why I think he is scared of the dark – it’s not about monsters but about a time when he was much younger when he came downstairs in the dark while I was watching TV and I walked out of the TV room, got a fright myself, which terrified him so much I think his feet lifted off the ground.

I took him into the dark room and showed him how things looked lighter once he was inside and I showed him everything in the room. I then took him out again and explained to him how the pupil works and showed him the difference between how the dark room looks from an area flooded in light when the pupils constrict and how it looks when the pupils dilate on stepping into the darkness.

That’s all he needed – that’s all he ever needs – a few facts. I forget sometimes that he is only four and I also forget sometimes that he can process information so well. A simple explanation can make a huge difference. He went in by himself after that. He didn’t stay in there for long but I think we are on the right track now to overcoming a fear before it becomes so sunk in his psyche that there is no hope of ever extracting it.

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Fears about peers

August 5th, 2010

People say I’m boring because I don’t drink. And I say I’m comfortable enough with myself to not have to alter my mindset when I go out to have a good time. It works for me. I have a great time out regardless, meet people, make friends, dance my fanny off and wake up with a clear head for my child, ready for a run first thing in the morning.

Besides the fact that I have had my quota in my lifetime already to not need another alcoholic beverage before I die, I honestly believe that if a child never sees his parents drink that he will somehow grow up into a teenager less inclined to succumb to peer pressure. I vomited from alcohol for the first time when I was nine years old. I had seen my parents and their friends drinking all day at the Christmas dinner table and I thought the little tap on the box of wine quite nifty … so I used it until it was dry. And that was me set up for a very early bout of alcohol poisoning and many years of over the recommended daily allowance of flavoured wine and cocktails.

Children who are exposed to parents who smoke or take drugs are more inclined to do so too so why should that not be true of more socially acceptable forms of substance abuse? I don’t know if it will work but surely it’s worth a try. It’s an easy enough experiment but it takes a fair amount of commitment to the cause.

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