A fresh start?

I'm not sure what it is with me recently. I keep finding myself thinking about ifs and buts and things that I could do but that aren't really realistic practical at the moment. I'm talking about the possibility of a fresh start. A new job, a new house, a new life... somewhere away from here.

This in itself is weird for me. I spent my first 13 years of life being moved around from house to house, country to country, continent to continent, but my unsettled and debt ridden parents. They solved their problems by moving and running away from them. So I've very much become desperate for stability and security. I never had that when I was a child. So you would think that the last thing I'd want to do to myself and my kids would be to move. To some degree that's right. But me just writing the bit above about my parents has made me twig something...

"They solved their problems by moving and running away from them."

I think, in a nutshell this is what's going on in the back of my mind. I don't WANT to move. I don't WANT to unsettle us and have to start afresh. I'm looking for a new job anyway. And sure.. if the perfect job came up and it meant moving to be nearer then of course I'd realistically think about it. But that's last resort.

There's only really one reason I've been wanting to move away. My ex. The past year has seen him do a complete character reversal, and he's still be clinging on to ways to control me. Sadly, the only way he can do that now is through the girls. He's been messing us about, and more than anything, making repeated comments which insinuate that I'm basically a selfish bitch who neglects the girls and is essentially a bad mother. The trouble is he's completely obvious (at least I hope he's oblivious, has to be said nothing would surprise me anymore) to what he says. He is NEVER in the wrong. Ever. But that's the way he's always been. Part of the many layered and complex reasons I left him in the first place.

The long and short of it is, I'm fed up of being made to feel like a bad mother, and having the girls constantly messed about. We need stability, we need calm, and we need security to be able to be happy.

The sad fact is that other than this one part of my life, life is great. I'm the happiest I think I've ever been at the moment. I'm generally happy and content. The girls are great and growing up into great kids.. if stubborn! But I have to admit to being worried about how the very strained relationship with their father will effect them. Another reason for the wanting a fresh start.

If I can get away from the problem.. can I protect them from the hell I went through as a child?

I'm fully away that this could be read as though I want to run away and stop all contact with their father. I couldn't do that. It's not fair on the girls and they need a male role model in their life. Which to be fair is the only reason I put up with the constant crap I get. The sacrifice you make as a mother eh? I would never stop contact with him unless the girls themselves told me that they didn't want contact anymore. I would in no way manipulate or control them into a choice either. It's their choice and theirs alone.

But that's the sad part... they're becoming less and less bothered. I think they're so used to being let down by him now that they've stopped caring.

For example, when he first started messing us about the girls would be inconsolable. They'd want to see him all the time, they'd cry, they'd tantrum, they'd be distraught if they couldn't see him when they expected him. They got upset, I got upset because they were upset, it was a vicious circle.
So take today... their dad sent a typically shitty text about him being ill, which inevitably culminated with him not having the girls tonight. Ash is smart. And she knows the routine. After school on a friday they go to dads after dinner. So this is how it went today.
"Mummy, we going to daddy's later?"
"Not tonight darlin', he's poorly."
"When will we see him?"
"I don't know hun, I'm sorry."
"We going somewhere special tomorrow?"....

And that was it. No reaction. Not fussed. K didn't even ask and hasn't even noticed the change. Ash just doesn't care. They used to get really excited about going, but now...? They're 4 and as-good-as-3. It doesn't bode well for the future.

But as for the fresh start? What would it solve? It would be likely to cause more arguments than anything, even if potentially temporarily. I don't know. Part of me still gets tempted by the idea. But for all the shit I've been getting and want to get away from, I have so much going for me here. Ashli is going well at school, and both her and K have lots of friends at school and nursery. I'm on the path to a great well paid job, it's just a case of finding one that's permanent. I have my own place which is cheap, I have my dad local and a good relationship with him now. I've got my beautiful daughters, amazing friends and the closest bunch of girlie mates I have EVER had. Even at school. And of course I have Ian. And things are great with us, so what happens if in the future we decide to get a place together? You just don't know how things are going to pan out.

So I think at the moment I should focus my efforts on making my girls happy, ignoring the bullshit, sorting my job out and enjoying the amazing things I have right here. Instead of pining for something that wouldn't actually solve the problem anyway....

3 years on...

3 years ago today I was getting married. I was 21, and 16 weeks pregnant with my second baby, and about to marry the guy I’d been with since I was 16. 5 whole years.

Today, I’m 24, and a lone parent to 2 children, on benefits and with a divorce petition that’s just gone to court.

Didn’t see THAT one coming 3 years ago… I’ll be the first to admit I got married too young. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, or didn’t want to marry him… but the one small thing I wish I’d known in hindsight was that, for all me saying ‘’I’ve always been mature for my age, and I’ve ‘done’ my youth, I’ve got kids and responsibilities, this is it for me. Time to settle down. I’m not going to change. This is me.’’, quite simply I was wrong. I have changed more in the past 4 years or so than even I think I realise. I’ve grown up. A lot. I’ve become a different person who has gone through utter hell and had to reassess and correct the course of my life on numerous occasions. Here’s a brief timeline of the past 5 years or so..

2004 -
June – Find out I’m pregnant and due March 2005
August – Get engaged
October – My mum is diagnosed with lung cancer
November/December – My mum undergoes radiotherapy, all the while claiming she was getting better and the doctors were saying she’d recover, but I’ll leave that for another blog. It’s the anniversary of her death next month…

2005
17th March – Ashli, my eldest is born.
May – I start work at a Nursery as a trainee nursery nurse.
June – My mum is taken into a hospice.
August – My mum goes into ‘Palliative care’ at a local residential home.
14th September – My mum passes away.

2006
14th September – approx hmmm….April/May 2006?? – Can’t remember any of it. At all. I guess it was the grief. I went onto autopilot for most of it. I can barely remember any of the wedding prep.
April/Mayish – Find out I’m pregnant again, due Jan 2007.
5th August– Get married
November – Go on early maternity leave due to Symphysis Pubis Disorder, in so much pain I could hardly move and relying on a special belt to essentially hold my pelvis together.

2007
29th January – Kaitlyn is born…. screaming…. Should’ve known we were in for trouble then!
Feb/March approx – Sink into postnatal depression.
May – Due to return to work but end up having to leave due to the depression and extortionate childcare fees.
August – Decide to turn my life around and get myself out of the depression, as the antidepressants were simply keeping me reliant on them and nothing else. I start playing bass again, join a band, and get a Saturday job to get me out of the house. Start reinventing my image and trying to get out and make friends again. I literally gave up all social life when I left work and was depressed. I had NO friends. Except online. I was determined to do something about it, and get me out of the depression a the same time.
September - Took myself off Antidepressants

2008 -
Jan - Started going out to pubs with my then best friend. Started making friends within his group of friends and slowly creating my own circle.
Feb - Decided to volunteer for the CAB, with a view to eventually having a career as a debt advisor. Started my general advisor training doing 2 mornings a week and
Apr - Started work at the CAB, and also became self employed working for Ann Summers, working around childcare home life so I could work 16hrs plus and get tax credits to help with the childcare while I was at CAB, and also just to get out of the house.
May - signed up for an open university course 'you and your money' on personal finance to supplement my CAB work.
Sept - Separated from my husband, forcing me to leave my saturday job, as well as Ann summers. But I carried on with my CAB and OU work. Focusing on it to be able to get me through the stress. My husband moved out, and I became a single parent and on benefits for the first time in my life. My husband took the car, so I was pretty much housebound apart from the 2 mornings a week he let me use it to continue my CAB work, (He doesn't know it, but even through all the stress I am eternally grateful that he let me use it, as at that point the only thing keeping me going was the kids and my job).
November - March 2009- Become romantically involved with my best friend. Who inevitably broke my heart numerous times and destroyed my self esteem and confidence at a time I was most vulnerable. This may be the subject of a blog in the future. I've not decided yet. It's a time I don't really like to think about, but either way I'm not naming anyone as you never know who reads these things. Plus that's not really the point of this blog post. For the record though, I've forgiven and forgotten the whole thing, although it did, and probably still does affect me to some degree. But life's too short to hold grudges. Just hope that maybe one day we can be friends again.

2009 -
April - Became a qualified CAB advisor and around the same time found out I'd passed my OU course.
May - After pestering and request from my ex husband I started divorce proceedings. Also was offered position as a paid advisor at CAB, running a newly weekly outreach, and finally got my foot on the employment ladder.
End May - Started dating my current boyfriend, who, full aware of everything inc the best friend stuff, was totally patient with me and just gave me space to be able to work out the kinks to allow me to put my heart on the line again. I'm still scared of having my heart broken again, but on the whole I'm slowly coming around and much more relaxed now.

.. and that... in not so great detail.. is how I came to be where I am today. In just over a month Ashli starts school, and I'll be looking to go into more hours at work and come off benefits completely, and pay my own way again. The divorce has gone to court and just waiting to hear from that. Work is great, and bar usual up and downs which frequent my life (My life wouldn't be mine without drama..) life is good in general.

I don't really want to go into the reasoning behind my separation. In the end, his behaviour, and me heaving myself up out of depression and moving on my life inevitably left him behind, and we grew apart. There are other factors which I won't go into on here. But the choice to leave was mine and there are times I still feel guilty for hurting him, but it's a 2 way thing and end of the day, we've both moved on and now getting on with our respective lives.

Everything happens for a reason, and I truly feel that the reasoning behind everything that has happened is to create a stronger me. I'm the strongest I've ever been, even when dealing with continual crap. I have wonderful children, my own (admittedly rented) home, and a decent career on the way. Just sometimes you kind of sit back and wonder what the hell happened. My best friend (female) said to me not long ago..

'' What with everything that's happened to you, how are you still standing?''

In all honesty?

Not...a....clue.




Note: This is too long for me to be bothered reading through for grammatical errors. There's bound to be some, but please ignore them.

Encyclopedia Childhoodica Part 1

''Independence ''
Definition: Fending for yourself, while in effect eating/drinking yourself and your family out of house and home.

''Siblings''
Definition: Your lifelong foe and loathed enemy, who must be destroyed at any available opportunity and by any means neccesary.

''Sharing''
See alternative definition: ''Mine''

''Art''
Definition: A vast array of miscellaneous colours, shapes, textures and materials, forcibly and irretrievably applied to every available surface, regardless of value, sentimentality, rules, or artistic impression.

''Weapon''
Definition: Any item available and within reason to cause ''Demolition''.
Referenced examples: Crayons, ''Sustinence'', Body parts (Flesh and Calcified), Chairs, Tables, Gaming Paraphenalia, books, utensils, any object solid or liquified.
See related article: ''Demolition'', ''Sustinence''

''Entertainment''
See: ''Cbeebies'' (BBC, 2002 to present) Related link www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies
See also: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005)
Related link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367594/

''Demolition:
See alternative articles: ''Playing'', ''Sharing''.

''Sustinence''
Definition: Any material, animal or mineral, which may be ejected through the air at great speed and trajectory, usually towards valuable objects, and away from the place of origin. Such items are rarely ingested into the user's body for nutritional value, unless the item has a high cocoa or sugar content, or is of primary colour or not intended for human consumption.

''No''
Definition: Express permission to carry out any act or activity regardless of consequence.

''Playing''
Definition: Beating the living daylights out of the ''Sibling''.
Alternative definition: Demolition of any person, object or surface in sight, with any nearby '''weapon''.
See related articles ''Sibling'', ''Weapon''.
See outside source example: www.UFC.com

''Mothers''
Definition: Evil dictators of who's mission is to prevent ''playing'', ''demolition'', ''art'', ''independence'', and ''entertainment''.
Commonly used 'Mother' phrases: ''NO!'', ''Stop that!'', ''You plank!'', ''Can't you just place nice??'' and ''gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!''

To the rescue..

God what a day.

Today is day 1 of the summer holidays. Ash starts school in exactly 7 weeks. And for the coming weeks Ash isn't doing her government funded nursery sessions, just the sessions when I'm at work.

God.. please please please don't let every day of the holidays be like today. It's been utter hell. I've been trying to get my house tidy. This.. I've discovered is impossible. I managed to tidy my bedroom and put my clothes away.

After a good hour of hard graft and trying to keep the girls happy at the same time..

''Success!!'' I thought!! I have a clean room!!! And clean clothes!!

Oh... wait.... world war III has ensued in the rest of the house, so now instead of having a moderately cluttered and dirty house.. I have a clean bedroom and an absolute bombsite for the rest of the house. FFS... because.. of course.. silly me. I took my attention off the girls for a bit to try and get something done.. and what happened? They merrily set about creating 10x more work for me in other places.

God. Kill me. Kill me now. Maybe I should just lock myself in the bedroom and pretend I live in a spotless, but illequipped bedsit? Hmm maybe not then.

But today has been one of those days where you just want to resign from parenthood.
''I hereby give my 1 weeks notice to the termination of my mummy contract, I have regrettfully decided that I can no longer work with the customers and hereby resign from any parental duties.''
If only it were that simple!

I love them to death but JESUS WEPT they've been playing up recently. Hissy fits, fighting, biting, scratching, hiting, kicking, shouting, screaming, snatching, stabbing.... and I'm not even exaggerating. I'm worn out. Not only from that, they're absolute horrors in the evenings going to bed now and will easily go to bed and still be awake and playing up 2-3 hours later. That and they're waking up around 630am and playing up. I'm exhausted, I'm falling behind with housework and I want a holiday! Argh!

I could've eaaaasily just sat in the corner and cried from the stress today. I tried to make dinner, but because of being so busy I'd not be able to do a food shop, so I couldn't even make the spag bol I'd planned! The kids had devoured all the bread, milk and fruit after the early rising, seeing as I struggle to haul myself out of bed. I come down to a graveyard of bread crusts and spilt milk from where the girls have happily helped themselves and LITERALLY eaten us out of house and home. Thankfully they left me enough milk to have a much needed coffee... thanks kids..

Thankfully today I had a saviour. My wonderful, wonderful boyfriend. Who upon hearing my tales of woe and self pity, came round (without me asking) and watched the girls for a bit so I could have a break and go do a food shop so we actually had some food to eat. He would've put them to bed too had their room not have been so trashed he couldn't find their bedsheets and pyjamas. D'oh! I really am incredibly lucky to have someone like him. He'll probably say I'm talking crap but I can honestly say I've not known anyone as sweet or caring as him. He'll do anything to help me, and will go out of his way to see me smile. He treats me like a princess and even though he's never had to deal with children in this capacity before he'll happily look after them and they love him too. The really dote on him and it's really sweet. I'm just really very lucky really. And god knows he's been there when I've needed him like today. Even if I am stubborn and don't admit when I need it. Beef, you know who you are. Thank you. You have no idea how much it means to me.

God what a day. Enough of the ranting. I need a bath and a destress before bed, and some bloody sleep! Will no doubt rant again soon.. but for now. Catch you on the flipside. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Night x

The eternal trade off.

Sanity vs raising children.

Ok, so maybe this is going to be a bit of a self indulgent moan/rant... but I'm going to do it anyway :P

Raising children on your own is the single hardest thing in the world. 18 years, minimum, of stress, tantrums, heartache, anger, frustration, tears and sacrifices. The 'eternal trade off' I speak of.. is control. I have no control over my life anymore. The demonites have it. Everything I do is dictated by them. THEY let me go to work, when they're not ill, and when family finances allow me to pay for them to go to nursery. The family finances, again, being controlled by them (obviously not directly, otherwise all my money would be spent on primary coloured random objects and things that make obnoxious noises, plus a satellite subscription to every children's tv channel known to man as well as a never ending collection of 'special movies'.) I should really clarify, that special movies is the new my eldest demonite gives any new dvd, and not special movies in the 'wink wink nudge nudge' way. Having children is not my all encompassing cover up for a humongous porn collection.

Honest...

No really.

Stop looking at me like that!

But anyway. As I was saying. You sacrifice so much when you have children. Sleep. Money. A social life. Control. Treats. Relationships to some degree. It's very difficult to get 'you' time or alone time with someone special when you've got children replicating world war III in their bedroom and trying to claw each other's eyes out before attempting to commit suicide by climbing out of the (thankfully childproofed) first floor bedroom window.. or to go out and do anything social without the risk of a mini-tantrum-armageddon in the middle of the *insert any location here*...

Sanity??? What sanity???? I laugh at the concept of this 'sanity' you speak of. *narfnarfnarf*

I don't mean to moan. And it's impossible for anyone who isn't a parent to imagine the scale of the job parent's have. But anyone who does will know exactly what I'm on about.

When you have children, your life is no longer your own. You are 'parent'. You are now sole carer for a life, that without you, couldn't and wouldn't exist.

No pressure then...


*disclaimer - I love my demons. I wouldn't be without them. Ever. For all my moaning I still love them to pieces and cherish every day I'm priviledged to spend with them. But fuck me they're hard work...

Carnage.

There are some days where you sit back and you think... how did I get here? Why am I here? and.. wait a minute.. what the fuck was that noise?

Thankfully. Today isn't one of those days. Today is a fairly A-typical... no... B-typical, day in the life of Emotard. I say B-typical, because as once informed by ye olde boyfriend, who wasn't then my ye olde boyfriend... at least I think it was my ye olde boyfriend.... uh.... well .. anyway, as I was informed by someone who may or may not have been my ye olde boyfriend, A-typical is the opposite of typical. Which isn't what I mean at all. It's a typical day, in the way that my life is never typical. So for me typical is a-typical. But as today is pretty a-typical, it's therefore a typical day for me. Hence b-typical.

Oh god I've lost you already haven't I?

Get used to it.

My life's never been particulaly easy, or simple, or stable. So A-typical is pretty standard for me. Today, for example, I set off for work, had to turn around to pick one of my demon A up from nursery as she'd thrown up. Brought her home, leaving the demon B at nursery. Then I had to take my bass guitar, which demon B had broken to a friend, praying he could fix the aforementioned bass. This is in the car that I have borrowed from my disowned then reowned father, which is getting more and more faults by the day, todays of which included part of the interior falling off and the reverse light breaking. Oh and some random electrical noise and things moving of their own accord. And today has been a pretty quiet day...

Not bad for a day I should've been at work. But instead I had another day off work, added to the long list of unplanned time off I've had because of demon illness.

I should clarify. I have demons, but not inner demons. Or poltergeist type demons, or some kind of unholy creature of darkness demons... well.. maybe I do have inner demons... but that's another story :D

The demons I refer to are my children. Ashli, aged 4.. and Kaitlyn, aged 2. Affectionately referred to as the demons, demonites, heathens, evil dictators, twisted unforgiving unholy beings of unadulterated evil... or Ash and KK. My 2 daughters, my minions, my future army of evil... that or the 2 horrors who will be wiping my ass when I'm aged 80 if they haven't disowned me for being a crazy cat lady before then. I know which is more likely..

My daughters are my world. They are the only thing I need on this planet other than sustinence and oxygen. Men? Bah. Who needs em. Money? Meh. Such a common concept. No. All I need is my 2 little demons. Trained and willing to take over the world by my side, or in my honour should I fall foul to foes such as the 'career' or the 'love'. I train them well. They aleady have a penchant for mindless destruction (hence the bass guitar... *rolls eyes*). Soon they shall be ready to do my bidding... soooon....

Ah crap. They're not going to be ready to do my bidding unless I feed the little feckers... ah well.. dinner calls. World domination plans shall continue after we have feasted.... on.. uh.. fish fingers. Or something.

Hmm...