Power…

Today, I woke in a slightly better frame of mind. Yes, the rejections still hurt. I still have no idea why my work was rejected, whether it even made the shortlist or ended up in the bin on first reading, but it is just one more rejection, another one to write up to experience.

I said to a friend this morning that, maybe one day I will either figure out where I am going wrong or somebody who doesn’t know any better will like what I write and take a chance on me. Her immediate reaction one of disbelief. I immediately assumed that she meant that I should give up now, that my dream was never going to happen. This hooked in to that little child in me who was always wrong, never good enough and I almost cried.

Since I was feeling pretty down and rubbish about myself at this point anyway I took her reaction as confirmation of my beliefs rather than how she meant it. Her disbelief stemmed not from her lack of belief in me and my dreams but rather my lack of belief in me.

This she said was my major stumbling block, that I never believe, even after all these years, that anything I do is good enough. That I seek validation always from external sources, that I give my power away and crumble, I don’t stand up for what I believe in. I hide behind a barrier of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of my own shadow but most of all fear of who or what I could be if used the power I have.

I argued that I don’t have any power. that to a large extent I am powerless, no one listens to me, I only have to look to my family and home for proof of that. No matter how many times I ask for something to be done I am ignored. Eventually I do it myself.

I give in on other things too, like what pictures we will have on the walls, they are all my husbands, mine or the ones I like are all relegated to the loft. He does this because he knows he can, he knows that I will just capitulate and walk away, that I am unable to successfully put my point of view across. This extends to all areas of my life and comes, I know, from a childhood of being silenced, of not being listened to and I carry this with me always and expect not to be heard so I don’t even try.

My friend tells me that if I want my voice heard in the world I have to first make myself heard at home. I have to claim my power and to do that I have to take my inner child in my arms and tell her she is safe and that I the adult is dealing with life now.

The trouble is that being powerful has always meant something different to me, it does not have good connotations or associations, people with power in my world have always been the ones that turned it upside down, that caused the pain and the hurt. Is that, I wonder because they had not only their own power but mine too, had I handed it over to them on a plate, giving them permission to treat me they way did? Perhaps, but that I think is a discussion best left for another day. Today, I will settle for just having one person listen to me.

 

 

Where does it end?

How do you know when it it time to give up? With each rejection the dream gets further and further away. I don’t know where I am going wrong, no one will say, just sorry we don’t want your work. If I don;t know what is wrong how can I fix it? How can I keep going trying to fix things when I don’t know where they need fixing? Is it the whole thing, does it just need a tweak here and there, or do I just give up?

Last week doubt crept in, today I just feel useless. The rejections just pile up and I wonder why I put myself through this. Today I think I will just give up.

I have yet in my life to find something that I am good, that I can do and make a living out of. Everyone I know seems to just sail effortlessly from one job to the next, whether through promotions or career changes. They apply for jobs and they get them. They put in for promotion and they get it. I have struggled to get any job I have ever had and then had to cling on by the skin of my teeth to keep it, sometimes jumping before I am pushed. And on and on the relentless search goes.

So I turned to writing, something I have always been told I had a flair for, one of the few thing I was any good at in school, yet this too has turned into a huge failure.

I guess I am destined to just be one of life’s failure. If I didn’t have three children who needed me then I would cut my losses and call it a day, say good-bye to this long list of failures and hopefully find peace. But, I can’t, I couldn’t do that to them so I fight on, each day I get up get them ready for school, pack lunches, make dinners do the laundry, pretend to be living when really all I want is an end.

 

One hour

That is all I wanted, one hour in front of the TV to watch the only program I ever watch. Tonight was the last night to watch it on catch-up, I missed last week too for the same reason I am missing it tonight. Because in this house I am not important enough to have choices or rights.

Tonight he came home from work, I said I wanted to watch TV at nine o’clock, he made as usual no acknowledgement that I had spoken. I went to help the little one get ready for bed and to settle her nerves about her first day at a new school tomorrow. When I came down he was sprawled across the entire sofa, remote in hand watching TV. I said that I wanted to watch something and he looked right through me and turned the volume up. When I said again that the program I wanted to watch was on in a couple of minutes, I was told tough he had got there first. He pays for the TV and he is entitled to watch it when he comes home, I apparently have all day.

So tomorrow, once the kids have gone off to school, I will not be cleaning or cooking or changing the bed linen or doing laundry, nor will I wash up the breakfast dishes. I am going to sit and watch back to back TV, I may even play devil’s advocate and watch Jeremy Kyle. After all, I don’t work so I have nothing else to do.

 

Living a lie..

How do you convince someone who steadfastly believes that depression is just wallowing in self pity that it is a real illness? That I am not doing this for fun? That just because it has been over eighteen months I should be miraculously cured? That I should be able to just pick up the pieces and get on with my life?

I want to get on with my life. I am trying very hard to, but each little knock back seems to throw me completely off balance. Teetering on the edge of the precipice, hanging on for dear life wondering if the next jolt will be the one that sends me flying over the top.

The house is clean, the children are well looked after, meals are cooked, there are always clean clothes in the wardrobes and fresh food in the fridge, I have not given up on my job but it is becoming increasingly hard to keep functioning, because that really is what I am doing, like a robot I am programmed to get up each morning, to cook clean and drive children around, listen to their stories and help them solve their problems but it is automatic, ingrained, a habit which I cannot break.

Sometimes, I think the only way to make my husband realise that this is serious would be to throw in the towel, to just not get up in the morning, to let him come home to a dirty house, laundry littering the floors, empty cupboards and fridge. Maybe then he might realise that I am ill, that I am not faking it, or putting it on because I don’t want to step out into the real world and get a proper job. But I cannot do that, something in me makes me keep going, like a band of steel riven to my very core, it keeps me on track and will not let me bend or soften. My children need me and I will not let them down.

He won’t read about depression, he threw away the leaflets I brought home from the surgery, refuses to even acknowledge that it exists. In his view I have everything so I have no right to be depressed.

I do have a few very close friends who are there for me, who do understand and listen but they have their own busy lives. They are friends not partners. That I think is half the problem, my husband’s idea of marriage is having a clean house, well-mannered, respectably dressed children, sex on demand and someone to listen to his tales be they work problems or his adventures on his motorbike, stories about his colleagues or celebration evenings when they have closed a deal. It only works one way, he has confessed that he has little interest in me and my day, I don’t do anything and he gets bored listening to what the children have been up to. I would like to have the house full of people at weekends but he does not like any of my friends and refuses to engage with them on the rare occasions we do meet up, and his friends are mainly drinking buddies or motorbiking mates with whom he shares a hobby but little else.

He wants me to be more interesting, though in what way he has not specified, I am not sure he even knows.  He wants me to arrange a social life for us as couple with people that he will like. I have no idea how to go about doing that, he hasn’t liked anyone I have met over the last few years, the people we socialised with before we had the children have all moved away. Besides which, I no longer have any social skills, I am like a rabbit caught in the headlights even when out with people I know well never mind a group of strangers, I don’t know how to behave in a pub or at a party any more. I can just about handle going to the local coffee shop with my friends, but if there are too many people there I freeze.

This morning, I went to my yoga class but I was slightly late and the studio was full, the teacher (not my usual teacher) said she would put a mat for me in the middle of the room, I freaked out, I couldn’t do it and I left. The yoga studio is one of the few places I feel totally safe, but I still like to be in a certain place and can only really relax if there are no men around me, there are one or two women who also give me the jitters but my usual teacher knows all this and when I am late coming to class she makes sure that she has kept my place and that  the people around me are the ones I know and get on well with.

My husband knows none of this because he does not want to know. He wants me to go back to being the carefree, chatty young girl I was when I met him. What he does not know either is deep down I have always been cripplingly shy, that it took a huge amount of effort in those days for me to talk to strangers. He would regularly take me to parties and abandon me with people I didn’t know while he went off with others to admire someone’s new motorbike or to join another conversation. He says he loved the fact that he could just leave me and I would talk with anyone, actually I listened far more than I ever talked, and often just sat in a corner watching the world go by until he came to tell me it was time to drive him home.

He loved the fact that I joined in with his hobbies, that I did the things he wanted to do without question. We never did anything I wanted to do and over time I have forgotten what I liked, the things that made me happy. I suppressed who I was in order to gain his approval and love. I became someone else, someone he wanted me to be. I cannot be that person any more, the urge, desire, yearning to just be me, to do what I want to do becomes stronger every day. Yet for every step forward I take on this path I can feel his weight bearing down, pressing harder, rehashing the past, he wants me to be who I pretended to be, the doormat he fell in love with. I understand that this is where the deep well of depression begins, with my struggle to break free to be who I am meant to be but each day I am fighting a force greater than myself, a force that wants to keep me pinned down, he has broken my wings and he does not want them to mend because then I will be able to fly again and this time I might just escape.

 

Putting hope aside…

I stand, the shattered mirror at my feet. The fragments stare back at me accusingly, some reflecting only sunlight blinding in its brilliance as if to remind me of what could have been, how much more would have been had it been whole. How its completeness could have shone in glory, reflecting not only light but love and life itself.

Others lie face down, their dullness melding into the carpet, yet the sharp edges berate me, tug at my very soul. The empty wall brings a sense of relief, I no longer see myself pass, the mirror can no longer collect dust reducing its sheen in the sunlight  denouncing my prowess at cleaning.

I watch the blood trickle down my leg, where a splinter has embedded itself, drip  onto the carpet and disappear taking hope with it and I let it go. For hope is futile, damaging and dangerous. To hope is to set oneself up for rejection for failure. To keep that little flicker constantly burning requires energy, sustenance and love, it demands that others live up to our expectations, to conform to our wishes, to do as we would do. Each time they disappoint it is like a knife in the guts.

So I endeavour to learn to accept the fact that another does not see things the way I do, that for him the world revolves round himself and his wants and needs, that I do not necessarily feature high on his list of priorities. Even though he committed to spending the rest of his life with me, to marriage, to partnership, that is not what he wanted at all. What he wanted was a live in housekeeper, one he did not have to pay for or perhaps a replacement mother, someone to pick up after him, to soothe and console him when he is feeling down or worried.

So I put hope to one side, the hope that maybe he cares a little bit, that one day he might show it or say it, that I matter to him. That I am more than his verbal punch bag, that there is more to this relationship than his need to make himself feel better by putting me down, criticising me, ignoring me, refusing to communicate or compromise. Today I let go, I will not be victim any more.

As the mirror lies in shards at my feet so too does hope but I gather strength from the pieces, the light they reflect, I may not be whole but unlike the mirror I can put the pieces back together. I can redraw my life and I can choose not to let anyone have power over me, to put me down or tell me I am not good enough.

 

Shattered

As I try to knit myself back together,

the yarn slips and slides,

never quite catching the fabric

slipping through holes

I cannot see.

The seam splits wide

allowing the seeping darkness

to explode,

fragments of colour

shattering the mirror

reflecting my life

as never before.

I can pick up the pieces

put them together and

carry on

or I can rearrange them

create a new path,

a new life, a new me.

Now is my chance

to choose who I want

to be.

 

 

Unravelling…

I am unravelling at the seams, like a favourite old jumper that has been constantly picked at for comfort, in anxiety or just because it is there, I am falling slowly apart.

Always under pressure to perform, I rarely make the grade. I thought I had gained strength over the last few months but once again I find myself teetering on the abyss. The temptation, to let go, to fall tumbling into the darkness and never emerge again is strong, I am not sure how much longer I can resist.

My husband wants me to go back to work, not just some mickey mouse part-time job but full-time. He earns enough to keep us but is frivolous with money and exercises little restraint when it comes to his needs or wants and so he wants the financial pressure taken off him, he wants me to be earning too. I am not ready yet. I have tried, applying for jobs and getting as far as the interview process and then crumbling. Deep in my heart I know that this is because I am not ready to face the world again, the fear of failure so deeply ingrained that I cannot move past it or see beyond. All I can see is me failing once again.

I also know that I would be thrown back into a whirlwind of working, childcare, housework, taxi-ing children around with little or no physical or emotional support. That is partly what sent me crashing in the first place. Yet my husband will not take heed of this, as far as he is concerned millions of women do it and he doesn’t see why I should be any different. I try to tell him that all the other women I know who do it have a husband who supports them, who takes turns to look after the children, who share cooking and housework evenly. My women friends are not expected, as I was and will be, to work full-time and run a home single-handedly while their other half spends his evenings in the pub, his weekends doing what he wants to, half his holidays on boys only jaunts. In his view housework is for women, he will on rare occasions do the Sunday evening washing up (hiding the pots and pans so he doesn’t have to do those), but apart from that regards weekends and holidays as his time to do what he wants to do.

Going back to work would also mean having to give up my yoga, the one thing that keeps me going, gets me out of the house three days a week. A place where I feel, grounded, centred and safe, where no one criticises, where we are all different and can laugh at the way we find some poses easy while others can’t even work out where to put their limbs. It is a relaxed easy place, with no pressure to perform or to be anyone or anything else, somewhere where I can just be.

I am not ready to go back out into the world of work, I have no idea when I will be. I wonder will I even know or if I will just live out the rest of my life in a state of perpetual fear?

 

A day of rejections

Today, was a day for rejections, three in total. Two lots of writing rejected and one job application.

Apparently I am overqualified for the job. I didn’t really want it, but it still hurts a little.It was merely a nod in the right direction, a sort of indication I suppose to my husband that I am trying at least to earn my own money, that I do not intend to be dependent on him forever. I am actually quite happy to be pottering around at home, doing the odd bit of housework, yoga, writing and meditation. It is a good way to live but I know it cannot last forever, with three children fast approaching university age we do need to increase our family income.

I  have no delusions about earning a living as a writer, but it is a good way to while away the time. Maybe it is too soon for me to be embarking on another dream so soon after crashing and burning. I am not quite as strong as I thought. I have, I will admit, been disappointed over the past year at the rejections but kept ploughing on figuring  that I was only beginning the journey and there would be many more to come. But two in one day is a first and in conjunction with a rejection from my first foray in to the real world bowled me over.

Tonight I am wallowing, eating cake and chatting to a friend on Skype. Tomorrow I shall pick myself up, dust myself down and carry on.

 

Home

Today, I had a child off ill from school and I am likely to have her off for the rest of the week due to the school’s strictness in applying public health guidelines. My child is ill because someone else ignored the selfsame guidelines and sent their child to school, lying to the school staff in the process as work obviously took priority for them over other children’s welfare. I will abide by the guidelines even though it means that it will disrupt my routine over the next few day. I do not feel it is fair to my child to send her back when she may still be feeling under the weather or to the other children in her class.

I do wish others would show the same respect. Although this is a minor illness, my daughter has had more than enough time off school this year, her asthma has flared up several times necessitating two weeks off and missed days here and there. A lot of illness are potentially quite dangerous for her, and while I do as much as I can to protect her, I cannot wrap her in cotton wool. She has got to learn to live in this world, to look after and protect herself too. But I believe that others owe that same care too, they are all aware of her illness. I suppose if I too had the pressures of a job to hold down I might feel differently.

Recovering from depression is not easy and the last week or so I have found myself backsliding. I half expected this as I had been home for the Easter holidays and always feel down, alone and bereft when I return. Although I have lived here for almost half my life now it does not feel like home, it is merely where I live. Home is where I feel good, where even if it is pouring rain and the clouds are around my ears there is joy in my heart. When I look out the window and can see the beauty of nature, the world as God intended, not row after row of houses. Where all I hear is the gentle slap of waves against the shore, the lowing of cattle, the call of ewes to their lambs, the sweet sound of birdsong, not the constant roar and rattle of traffic.

It is at times like this that my routine becomes even more important to me. It grounds me, gives me a reason to get up in the morning. In effect it keeps me sane. Tomorrow, I will miss my yoga class, I will not see or talk another adult all day, no one will ask how I am. I book my yoga classes and pay in advance so I have to go. That is part of who I am, if I have committed to something then I will not let others down, I will go through with it even if I don’t feel like it. This is how I have always been and it is one of my traits that has got me to where I am today, both the good and the bad. I rarely miss yoga, no matter how bad I am feeling I go and always without fail come out feeling better.

So yes, I am angry not only that my child has to suffer an illness because of someone else’s thoughtlessness but also because the fragile thread by which my life hangs has been partially severed.

 

Winning

We stand on the line,

hope in our heart,

eyes set on the finish,

we do not think of the process,

what we need to do,

as we wait for the whistle.

On the first blow

off we go,

only to be called back,

a false start

sets our heart racing

long before our feet.

Finally, we set off,

feet thundering

arms flailing,

eyes firmly on the finish

we do not see the hurdle,

we crash and fall,

hurt and humiliated

we pick ourselves up

and follow the pack.

Arriving last

we are downhearted

tears threaten to flow

but we can not let it show

for we must learn to lose

cheerfully, gracefully.

No one tells you

quite how much it hurts,

the winners never know

what it is like to lose,

not just once

but time and time again,

yet we plough on

hoping one day

that our efforts

will earn us a place

on the podium,

that somehow

sometime life

will make winners

of us all.

©Searching for the Light 26.03.2012