It’s as a nine year old, a ten in nine days nine year old, counts on her fingers – ‘nine plus seven so that’s ten, eleven…’ – I realise that while I still ask similar questions and she peppers her sentences with like and I watch my own baby out of the corner of my eye and we both count on our fingers – ‘fourteen, fifteen…’ – that outwardly I probably resemble an actual grown up.

‘Sixteen! I’ll be sixteen when she is nine like I am now. I’ll, like, really very nearly be able to drive!’

Girlish and excited and, like, so desperate to grow up but still able to indulge in the beauty of ring a roses and toy cars and pretend and life without all the complications and responsibilities.

New friends to play with are even better than Mummy and the child who is usually burrowing her head between my shoulder and chin as she hides was suddenly all I want you to put my shoes on now and play jumping with me now and lets place chase while I try to say your names because this is fun nownowNOW!

I take one foot and the other is taken by the nine, ten in nine days girl. Today I realised that these shoes are probably a little too small and tiny toes wriggle and squirm and limbs are all over because everything else is so distracting and I try to marry foot with shoe as best I can. It’s then that I realise that I am being looked to for advice ‘these shoes are just so, like, tiny! Look how small they are! They’re so hard to put on, how do you…?‘

Don’t be fooled kid. I am twenty seven, twenty eight in forty seven days, and I don’t even know. I just aim shoe at foot and hope for the best.

It always looks like mummys know what they’re doing right? I’m sure it’s a lie. We mostly pretend and shroud ourselves in an air of grown up mystery to make the younger feel like we got this shit when invariably, we don’t. 

Don’t we?

I am realising, slowly, that being a grown up is something that I am finding a particular struggle at the moment. There’s a lot about being a grown up that is, like, totally awesome. Genuinely, being woken up by the foghorn yell of ‘morning Mummy! I’m awake now!’ while being dive bombed in the face is brilliant, I’m the most anti morning person in the world and even I can’t not love that. 

More awesome is laying contorted on one side of a toddler bed, nose to nose singing a tuneless duet of Twinkle Twinkle as I look down at her and its all beautiful and she looks up at my mouth – which does that weird I know someone is looking at me so I’m going to go all over animated and strange thing – as I form the words so she knows what’s coming next. Those moments, all clouds of mingling breath and closeness and shared giggles and ‘just one more tuggle mummy please thank you’ are just wow. 

It’s been a long time coming and my god am I putting my absolute all into savouring every last second, to live in the moment for the moment and ignore everything else.

It’s the other stuff that sends me into a panic spiral, like the washing and the shopping and the cleaning and the cooking and is the door locked and the oven off and the light bulb upstairs just blew and when is that bill due and there are no clean socks again and doctors appointments and it is this week that the boiler is being fixed andandand… All that shit slays me because I am yet to work out how to allocate the headspace for everything.

Initially my days are begun with a big cup of pretend where I pretend to smile and enthuse and enjoy until (hopefully) it kicks in naturally and I can enjoy until I need another dose of pretend and repeat times infinity forever. It takes every last cell of my being to plaster on the pretend but I do it because I have to and I want to and it’s what’s important and maybe the more I pretend the more it is likely to just happen spontaneously one day like a miracle of normal. But all of the other stuff…?

It’s too much. It’s too much to see a full sink in the kitchen or a pile of dirty washing in the bathroom. It’s too much to pour the last drop of milk or to wonder what’s for dinner and how and when and who and what?

I think that’s why I need to escape sometimes.

The post Escapism appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

These secret weapons consist of (but aren’t exclusive to):

Cats.

Lets see if we can find a cat! This is a fail safe when the ten minute walk to the shop has already taken over an hour. With the crazed look in her eye of a child on a mission ‘me strooooooke cat, where are ooooo cat’ (as all the cats stampede to find cover) we make it back home lightening fast.

Chocolate.

Yeah, alright, I’m not saying I’m proud. But it works. As do biscuits. And, if I’m really REALLY desperate, ice-cream.

Climbing frames.

Gone are the days of aching arms pushing a swing for the fifth hour in a row, climbing frames are where it’s at, especially if they have a slide. Secretly I like this and all the more so now I don’t have to hover anxiously with open arms ready to catch a stumble on the steps.
After just a few days refining her technique Beans went from dubious climbing to being able to scale the cargo net in double quick time and that in turn seems to have improved her balance generally. She’s certainly fearless in the face of anything if there is the promise of a slide once she’s overcome the obstacle. Not only that but she learned to jump and to swing off a bar (I still don’t like to watch her doing it mind you).
To the untrained eye she is playing happily and I am being a good Mummy by letting her scale new heights, in reality I can have a little sit down while watching her learn all these new skills and revelling in the joy of the all over workout that’s she’s getting meaning she’ll undoubtedly sleep like a champion all night.
The holy grail are the climbing frames with bridges, little houses for pretend picnics and tunnels to crawl through.

Chase Mummy.

OK, this one involves me making a fool of myself when in public but it works every time. Whether I need her to hurry up or to come upstairs for her bath or into the kitchen to eat tea a firm ‘no’ instantly becomes a ‘yaaaaaaaay’ when I utter chase me? I run like a mum (ie, slowly) while she pounds the ground with her feet screeching ‘going to get yoooooou mummy’.

Tangled.

Or Aladdin. Or The Princess And The Frog. Thank you Disney for ninety minutes of bliss.

On a really, really bad day she has chased me to the climbing frame for a chocolate biscuit picnic in the little house before chasing me home to watch Tangled and fall into a climbing induced sleep while I recharge with a cuppa.

Parenting, it’s all about knowing the cheats.

The post Cheating appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

Music used to be the prevailing background noise in my life but was all too quickly replaced by a louder internal monologue of self loathing so really (not really), I consider myself lucky to spend the amount of time that I do waiting rooms at the moment.

Waiting rooms always have the best music, the kind of stuff that is so ironic it means you have to laugh or you’ll cry.

This place has a newly installed intercom thingy, one of those microphones that means that the receptionist can hear you from the other side of the safety glass as you declare yourself arrived from an appropriate distance because safety first in these offices potentially dangerous mad people.

“Sorry, the microphone isn’t working” she bellows, gesturing at the speakers on her side.

“…not working” she points and then does that mime thing like she’s cutting her throat.

“Did you say 3 o clock?”

It’s 9:55am. I shout back, from my safe distance that “no, I said 10am” – holding up my fingers to indicate ten but at the same time probably looking like I’m showing that I have no concealed weapons.

I sit down and wait to be called while the receptionist resumes her conversation with the man who has come to check the microphone. Through the thick glass. Shouting.

“I’ll put the music on out there and see if I can hear it in here” she yells, annunciating sharply: ‘mew-zick‘.

She pushes some button somewhere in her office behind her glass and the dulcet tones of Now That’s What I Call The Best Mental Health Unit Album In The World Ever Vol.582048 drifts from hidden speakers.

Whut whut, put your rave hats on patients. Psych yourself up for that dreaded psychiatrist appointment as you sob-laugh your way along to Track One.

I mean, I do love this song. I am yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love this song. Thank you Goo Goo Dolls for helping me through some rocky times but there is a time and a place and really, this is neither.

When everything’s made to be broken…

Chuckle chuckle, sob sob, wringing of sweaty palms.

You bleed just to know your aliiiiiive…

Brilliant.

Somewhat disappointingly I’m called through before I’m able to find out what the next song is. Gutted.

I had a psychiatrist appointment last week, a private one. No suicide soundtrack in that waiting room and a ninety minute delve into my psyche. That’s a party in itself let me tells ya.

This dude was NHS and therefore not costing me the equilivant of a months rent. But free did unfortunately mean not quite scraping the top layer from all of the layers from the top of the iceberg. It meant a different diagnosis and different advice, all of which I am still processing.

I’m not great in these appointments. They make me nervous and reciting everything makes me hurt and above all the pressure bares down hard because I need this, I need this to get to the next step so that I can get better. My brain chooses these times to go on sabbatical, deciding to recline on a  towel on a sandy beach and work on its tan leaving me totally in the lurch. Thanks brain.

I struggle to take in much information on the spot and it’s usually hours and days before it sinks in properly, once my brain is back with its tan lines and holiday photos and has finished unpacking.

It’s not the best sign though when thirty minutes in I find myself thinking I’m going to have to do this all on my own, all over again.

It’s not great when a bombshell is dropped that is so destructive that whoomph this is all you will take away from these forty five minutes of purgatory because everything else is just shrapnel now.

For confidentialities sake I’ll call him Dr Fuckwad* (PHD). Dr Fuckwad with my thick file of notes with my maiden name crossed out in biro and my married named scrawled below in felt tip and all of his questions and the stifling suffocating atmosphere of his office with his name on the door.

I have generalised anxiety disorder he deduces, not depression at all. He is pleased that I am not self harming because, says Dr Fuckwad, it would be much harder to help me if I was so I should keep not doing that please.

Dr F confirmed that the six weeks of hell I endured was indeed withdrawal *ahem* I mean discontinuation effects and that I should stay on the medication because it works and sure, I can’t actually feel emotion or hunger or anything, nor can I poo – I mean like at all. I haven’t had a good poo for over two years and that is exhausting let me tell you – and as a result I have piles that honestly deserve their own names (ideas on a postcard please) and possibly even hand embroidered little outfits.

The bombshell is coming. Wait for it.

Really, I promise it’s worth it.

Now, my reluctance to stay on these meds for any period of time boils down to:

1: all of the points above
2: they numb me and therefore how can I learn how to deal with any emotional issues that arrive once I stop them?
2b: how can I get better from something that I can’t feel?
3: they are not a cure
4: they are not a lifestyle choice but a tool
5: the longer I am on them the more brutal the withdrawal *ahem* I mean discontinuation will be
6: because I said so

I know I need them now. I know that for whatever reason I am a very, very ill person without them. So, Dr Fuckwad, I dutifully swallow one every morning of every day while I endure all of this and while I struggle to get well again. I know that I am not well now, that my life is, and has to be, on hold until I am well again because that is what is right and what is fair and good and proper. For everyone. I’m not happy about it but I’ll do it, deal.

But, the quicker I can get my nervous sweaty mitts onto some other treatment of the non chemical kind, the quicker I will recover thus saving myself and my family a lot of pain and the NHS a lot of time and money and for that matter, the benefit system too.

So, Dr Fuckwad, mate, lets do this shit! Lets be positive and proactive. Be my cheerleader, tell me I can do this and I’ll be OK and we’re going to get me the therapies that I need and it will be tough but it will be worth it because I can get back to life and myself and my baby. Yeah? Yeah!

My life has been on hold enough already, the husband can’t work, we would have had more babies – we wanted more babies by now – if I was well so lets just focus on getting me well. Lets do this thing.

“No more babies for at least six years please” says Dr Fuckwad.

(That’s the bombshell right there *thwack*)

Now I’m not one to shun medical advice, to put people (or babies or already made children or husbands) at risk but nor am I one to be dictated to. I mean fuck, six years! Am I going to be like this for six years, at least six years?

No. Nononononono.

Please no.

* I can’t even pretend to take credit for this name, twas my muse; a gorgeous vision, an epic writer, a local freakin’ celebrity and reader of my l-o-n-g and garbled text messages of doom.Cheers dude x

The post I’m Calling Our Next Baby Iris appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

Her feet point inwards and her eyes point downwards and her smile radiates warmth stronger than the afternoon sunshine as she watches my daughter. My daughter who is running her toddler run, golden curls trailing behind her, ice cream cone clutched possessively in her ice cream covered left hand.

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

She watches, shuffling with tiny steps so that her eyes can follow as she sweeps by and her smile grows and grows, all teeth and dusky pink lipstick and creased eyes and memories of her own babies or of how it felt to be young or…or was maybe nothing at all, nothing more than the moment.

In the dappled shade of the park at that moment and surrounded by hoards of children and parents coming and going and shouting and careering it was mine that she saw something in before she dragged her eyes back to the path and slowly faded away into the crowd.

The post Running appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

I am so easily distracted, so quick to get half way through a box or a bag before giving up because I’m not sure where I want to keep that yet or I’m bored or ooooh, look at that over there…!

My clothes were one of the last things that I unpacked and as much as I had the best intentions of sifting through them and sorting out everything that doesn’t fit or won’t be worn again or has never even been worn, well, I didn’t.

My drawers are literally crammed with clothes. Crammed. The third one down doesn’t even open anymore.

I know that I need to sort myself out, I know, but the thing is it’s just such a monumental task isn’t it? I mean, I still have clothes from (eek) when I was at university, so does the husband for that matter. And having a fast growing rapscallion toddler means we haemorrhage tonnes of outgrown clothes all the time. I just know that once I’ve sorted through it all, forced myself to part with something I probably haven’t worn since my teens and bagged it up I still need to work out what to do with it all. Sure, my drawers will open and I can actually see what’s in there and I can pretend that I never owned those PVC shorts or gold top but I would also have a clothes mountain that fills me with the fear.

Hurrah then for Music Magpie, it’s no longer just about old CDs and DVDs, it’s selling clothes online but its super quick and easy – there’s an app for that because there’s an app for everything – and I don’t even have to leave the house to drag hundreds of bags of my questionable fashion to the post office. Even I can manage logging each item as I pack it into a provided bag and a bit of I’m not buying I’m just looking, honestly, online shopping while waiting for the courier to collect the contents of my wardrobe. And the money that I make will come in handy now that the sun is finally shining and we all need to shed our winter layers and embrace a new summer wardrobe.

The post The Third Drawer appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

I have a long list of inconsequential bits and pieces, picture frames and a new chopping board and a rug or two, but I have also managed to convince myself that we need, actually have to have, a sofa bed.

Now photo frames and the like are easy to pick up, cheap, and they won’t send the husband mad – he usually doesn’t even notice – but a big piece of furniture he needs to be onboard for. But it would make our lives so much easier and there are some really lovely ones that would look so inviting scattered with quirky cushions and a throw…

Reading bedtime stories on a rickety chair could become a thing of the past, we could actually snuggle in comfort for what is invariably the most quiet and calm moment of our entire day. We could finally have people to stay, bringing and end to the expectant ‘now you’re settled at home it would be lovely to come and stay with you sometime…’ uttering from family and to my own embarrassment at not being able to comfortably put them up in the manner of a good housewife.

For years now we have dragged out the inflatable double mattress for any (poor, unsuspecting) overnight guests. The thing is the bane of my life; it’s a pain to store, it takes forever to inflate and then after its been laid on for about thirty minutes it starts its slow deflate ensuring that its sleeping occupant is laying on nothing but the floorboards and a thin layer of plastic come sunrise. Hearing the groans of someone who has had a bad nights sleep as they limp into the kitchen for a cup of tea in the morning, muscles stiff and protesting, is enough to make me vow to give up our bed to guests and sleep in the car for the night because it would be infinitely more comfortable.

So yes, we definitely need a sofa bed. And picture frames, lots of frames.

The post Head In The Clouds, Feet Up On The Sofa Bed appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

Beans doesn’t think so. My goodness, this child loves to bounce. In fact, she wants to bounce all the time and she wants to jump high enough to reach the moon, arms stretched up as far as they will go and little fingers pointed into the sky.

Currently trampolines are the best thing ever for so many reasons; for her it’s the obvious – flinging herself wildly high, and for me, it’s good old fashioned safe (the enclosures are brilliant and so reassuring when jumps become really enthusiastic!) fun that gets us outside now that (at last) the sun has remembered how to shine a bit of springlike warmth onto our pale, winter warn faces.

Although my propensity for leaping has waned somewhat as I have got older (even swings make me feel a bit queasy now and I spent the majority of my childhood back and forth, back and forth while the chains creaked) it is just as much fun to witness the delight of my very own little person having the time of her life with fresh air and exercise included as she perfects her jumps.

But the benefits go far beyond fresh air and acrobatics, the humble trampoline is actually does wonders for kids and adults alike (if you have a stronger constitution than me that is).

It’s clear just from watching a two year old throw themselves up and down for a good hour that they’re getting a great workout – which is usually followed by a great nights sleep, hurrah! But, importantly for little bodies the low impact nature of bouncy fun means an optimum muscle workout while joints are protected by the shock absorbing trampoline pad.

Jumping is also brilliant for improving balance, spacial awareness and anticipating what will happen next, all really important skills for rapidly growing children improving their gross motor skills daily.

There are role play opportunities too which is a great way to nurture and encourage budding (if occasionally crazy) imaginations. We bounce to the moon and then back down to earth. The trampoline takes on all kinds of forms as different games and challenges are created.

Plus, they never get old do they? Bouncing is fun and valuable exercise for children of all ages so it’s certainly one toy that doesn’t have a mere six months of use before being discarded as babyish.

Turn taking skills, cause and effect, balance, strong bones and muscles, endorphin boosting, a damn good workout and a good nights sleep plus touching the moon, I kind of want to disregard my protesting motion sickness and take up trampolining myself!

The post Bounce! appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

Whitney Houston blares from the radio, piped in through speakers set into the ceiling somewhere, the disembodied voice an attempt to muffle the coughing and spluttering and miserable receptionists and sound of germs multiplying.

My left foot taps along with the bass line, fuelled more by agitated anxiety than love of the song. Although it is catchy.

How do I know if he really loves me?

Because he says with me during major depressive episodes and brings my child up while I contemplate suicide alone upstairs, that’s how. *

* This may not be the correct lyric, don’t quote me.

Seven weeks ago I quit the meds and in that time I have spoken to three different GPs and my therapist and my mum christened the newly operational 111 service on its very first day because once again she had to mercy dash to mine (it wasn’t snowing this time but it was 1:30am, sorry mum) when the mental took over and once again the drop from my bedroom windowsill looked particularly inviting.

I went back on the meds five days ago by the way – I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment. I know when enough is enough and I’ve battled long and hard enough to want to draw a fast, firm line through such fucked up thoughts.

The thing is, antidepressants take time to kick in.

On the day that I relented made the ‘positive decision’ to start them again every breath was like sucking setting concrete up through a narrow straw. (I don’t like straws as a general rule; someone always swipes my drink for ‘a sip’ and the next thing I know I’ve got the mangled, gnawed end of a bit of plastic someone else has chewed in my mouth).

Breathing shouldn’t hurt, having a brain inside my skull shouldn’t hurt, moving my eyeballs shouldn’t hurt…Everything hurt so much and it was terrifying and I was exhausted and, well, terrified so I pushed the little while pill up through the silver foil and held it between my thumb and my index finger and literally begged it to work

please. Please work, please help me. Please take all of this away. Please work

before washing it down past the lump in my throat with half a glass of Ribena.

The super fun (lie) bit about antidepressants, aside from the total all consuming numbness, is the waiting game while they make everything worse. Sure, taking that tablet did ease things a little but given the following should be the editorial on the leaflet in the box things are still far from awesome.

Suicidal intention? Depression? Anxiety? Hate yourself and your life and feel shitter than shit? In so much physical and mental pain that you literally can’t take another single second of the torture?

Take this magical pill!
We don’t know too much about it or how or why or when but we can tell you that they will numb you enough to plod through your days!
But first!
While they rebuild your broken brain up a little, they will in fact increase your suicidal intension, depression, anxiety, self loathing and pain infinity fold!
Hang on in there, don’t do anything silly, they’ll work in the end! Kinda.

The appointment was not fun (true). For someone so verbal about things when I can articulate through a keyboard from behind a screen I clam up hard and have to stop myself choking on every word that I force out of my mouth in person.

I also get total mind blanks and answer half of the questions I’m asked with a series of single syllable noises and ‘eeeeeeerm’s. The answers always come to me as soon as I close the door behind me afterwards, obviously (thanks again, brain).

It is beyond awkward sitting before a stranger as their gaze burns holes in my hot, sweat slicked flesh while trying to answer questions about Not Very Nice Things.

I’d rather have a smear test. While every boy that I have ever kissed, that blonde girl who bullied me in school and my ex boss (the one I had a bit of a crush on) lined up to watch.

Not because I’m embarrassed about saying how I feel (and not because I’m a big old vagina show off) or because I’m ashamed or because I think that the poor bloke stumbling over the questions that he has to ask, feeling just as awkward as me, probably, has never heard similar before but just because it’s hard.

So hard and so exhausting and it leaves me feeling like I’ve run a hundred thousand miles. Saying things out loud makes them real, it often begs explanation or expansion or explanation or reason and I have none of that.

And, y’know, that I’m obviously quite British and when asked how I am I’d rather reply a bright and breezy ‘fiiiiiiiiiine, and you?’ than a monotone and spluttered ‘I have all I have ever wanted but I want to jump out of the window and leave it all behind…and I don’t like when people chew the end of my straw’.

On the plus side, I am (finally) being referred to a psychiatrist.

The post How Will I Know? appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

I didn’t know what else to do. It was like a chasm had opened in my mind and it was pulling me in and although I was clinging onto my sanity with all that I had I just didn’t know, I couldn’t trust myself.

Earlier that night I sat in bed in my nest of pillows and blankets and one minute I was fine and the next…?

I don’t know what happened.

I had a pen in my hand and I knew exactly what I would write because suddenly everything was clear and yes this is exactly what I should do right now.

‘I’m sorry’ I would write. A cliche but true because I am and I always will be.

‘This is all I can do to make things better’ because it is isn’t it? It’s the fairest and kindest thing to do, set my family free from me and set myself free from the pain.

I rolled the pen between my fingers and in that moment the reality dawned and its cold plastic became red hot. I dropped it behind the headboard, the household wasteland of things never to be retrieved.

Out of nowhere in some crazy out of body experience I saw myself sailing through the air, snowflakes falling around me, smattering themselves through my hair and onto my cheeks, a picture of calm.

It was a relaxing thought and that’s what added another level of terror. So peaceful and resolute was the image that I mentally reacted in the same way as I would if I was offered another cup of tea. Yeah, that would be really lovely, thanks.

I stared unblinking through the gap in the middle of the curtains at the snow and the waving branches of the tree and the darkness, stuck in a space between blind panic and resigned necessity.

And so, an hour before midnight and in the middle of an icy blizzard, my mum pulled up outside to take me away to be safe.

The post Flying appeared first on Clara Unravelled.

What can we say about that really? Without overuse of the word amazing anyway. There aren’t the words, right? They really are that awesome, right?

Team Honk you are all incredible woman and we bow down to you…by captioning this beautiful screenshot of Mummy Barrow keeping her cool where many a lesser woman would have crumbled into the delicious arms of the delicious Russell Brand…

The post Caption the Honk appeared first on Clara Unravelled.