Escaping the Void

I can't get myself out of this damn pit. I wish I could explain. I feel this perpetual emptiness. Is this what nothingness feels like?

I don't feel overcome or overwhelmed. I'm not gasping for air or feeling choked by angry fists. But I feel smothered. I feel like I can't quite catch my breath. I'm dead but I'm breathing. I'm empty but I'm heavy.

Is this what lifelessness feels like?

My fear of PND by Erin McIver

Erin, Lottie and baby Kieran

There’s a fine line between “Baby Blue’s” and Post Natal Depression and sadly, after my first pregnancy, I didn’t realise I crossed that line. I don’t know when it happened or what exactly tipped me over the edge. Believe me it was the scariest, most psychotic time in my life but thankfully I know what the contributing factors were so hopefully I will never be faced with it again…or will I?

A-Z of Parenting Challenge

This is my favourite challenge yet! I was nominated by Stephen over at Yule Times for the A-Z  of parenting. The challenge is to use all 26 letters of the alphabet to describe what parenting is to us, in a nutshell!

Rules:

• Tag the blogger that nominated you
• Use a word starting with all 26 letters of the alphabet to describe what parenting is like for you
• Nominate 10 other bloggers to complete the challenge next
• Have fun doing it!

Life is passing me by

Life is passing me by. I feel it. I want to fix it but all I can do is acknowledge it, be aware it's there but not know what the hell to do with it. It demands to be felt, this feeling of emptiness, this thought that I'm waiting, just waiting. I don't know what I'm waiting for but, I wait nonetheless.

Life is passing me by. I feel it. I am merely existing. I'm not living. I wake up, I take a piss and I feel the same familiar sense of dread drown my lungs. I wake, only because the sun streaks through the window and demand I rise. I work, only because we are in this prison, this programme, this unacknowledged knowledge we squeeze to the back of our minds, this slave trade of work till we die, struggle, find it hard to make ends meet. Wish the days away to go home to empty walls, houses that aren't homes and feel comforted only by the very same emptiness we long to escape from.

Not what I thought

It's not the life I thought it'd be, the life of parenting. I do love it, really I do but I had pictured it so very differently from how it has turned out, in both good and bad ways. I guess I had this ideal stored away in my head of how it would be, how it is 'supposed' to be and when it flipped to mirror the complete opposite of what I had envisioned, it was a little crushing, a bit of a shock. 

I wanted to be a mother. It felt right. I was ecstatic when the little blue + washed over that tiny pee stick window. I felt a love I can't even begin to express soar through me when I saw him wriggle on the ultrasound screen for the first time. My heart imploded with joy when I felt his forceful little kicks every night and the feeling of holding him in my arms for the very first time, words could only diminish. 

It's Not A Reflection of You

We've all been through a heartbreak, a loss, an unrequited relation of some kind or other. We've all experienced feelings for someone which aren't reciprocated. Several have felt abandoned by a parent, or someone they looked up too. Many of us have felt the sting of rejection by a partner, lover or friend.

We have been confronted with the confusion and the hurt, the disappointment when it didn't turn out as expected. Wallowed in the rejection, abandonment and despair, that feeling like you have been thrown to the side like a broken toy, lived and relived every scenario out in your head and questioned, What's wrong with me? Was it something I did? How couldn't they feel the way I did? Why wasn't I good enough?

To my first time mum self...

18 months ago I became a mother. 18 months ago I was lying in a hospital bed cradling the tiniest little human in my arms, those moments unexplainable through words, utterly surreal.

Feeling bewildered and a little green around the gills, I shoved my building anxiety in a drawer and, like I always did when any obstacles surfaced, buried it, kept marching on, and tried to forget about it.

The adrenaline I was high on began to fade that same evening, and the nervous anxiety slowly crept its way into my mind. I was sat alone with Arthur, shaking, fighting not to fall apart in the swamp of realization and reality and the comedown. In love but terrified, in company of a fresh out the bun baby but so alone. Inexplicably happy but exceptionally depressed all the same.