Meltdown

If I'd been a friend of mine I'd have told me it's been coming for weeks. Babygirl going up to secondary school, kids being home for six weeks, my starting college again, meeting a lovely new bloke. All change!

All change causes tensions, all tensions must have an outlet. Be nice to yourself, I'd have counselled with care and wisdom. Take time to look after your soul, assert your needs and meet them before they assert themselves all over your arse, I'd have smiled.

But I'm not a friend of mine, I'm my own worst enemy, a nemesis rooted deep within myself that drowns out good mental health knowledge with a loudhailer that screams incessantly.

Of course you must do it all yourself, you know no-one else can be trusted for fucks sake. Just keep going, the kids will be grown up before you know it, what happens if your armour chinks eh? History repeats itself, that's what. Do you want to be like your own, weak mother? Don't you want your precious, exhausting, beautiful, challenging children to have at least one strong parent that keeps the world - the world you chose to bring them into by the way - in order? What about all those promises you made, years ago when it was just you and them in the dead of the night? Didn't you mean it when you told the babies they were how you'd always give everything you had to ensure they knew safety, security, love? Are you giving in? Giving up? You worthless, weak woman. Did you lie to your babies?

So I squash that I'm a person that needs her own space, time to herself and instead I spend the holidays constantly surrounded by people whose needs come before mine and I don't ask why their dad isn't having them any more than the usual few hours on a sunday. At least if they're with me I'm in control. Then I force myself to take my mother's phone call, drive them over to see her because they love her, miss her and jesus I've already removed their father from a huge part of their lives and I can't keep denying them family relationships just because I find it hard to maintain boundaries.

The very atmosphere of her house suffocates me, I have to leave quickly and remain strong in my refusal to let them stay longer than an afternoon. Broken record technique, breathe deep and slow, these are my limits. She's not having them and she's not tricking me back into her life with her offers of overnight breaks, does she think I'm fucking stupid? God but staying resolute in the face of her passive aggressive victimhood is so fucking exhausting and when the tiny little warning light of burnout flickers behind my eyes I put a black cloth over it by not going to the extra martial arts events that abound at this time of year and calling that resting. Which it is, outwardly and physically.

And I'm aware that I'm under stress so I'm taking my own advice and being nice to myself. I'm always treating myself in the small hours when everyone else is finally asleep - a large drink, a sweet biscuit, maybe a packet of crisps between cigarettes. Positively bloated with fucking niceness I am.

Brava, bitch. Drinking and smoking just like your father, eating yourself obese like your mother, fine job you're doing of being a better parent. All you need do now is introduce an abusive stepfather and you'll have the hat trick!

Ah, but the abusive stepfather is in prison. I beat him.

Really? Maybe you ought to ask the little girl in your heart if she agrees? Why, if that's the case and you've been so fucking victorious, she still has nightmares? Just why does he take over your sleep no matter how much you drink to try and blank out the surreal shit that your mind conjures up each night?

I've sorted it. She beats him in the dreams now. He throws her phone in the stagnant pond and slashes everyone at the party but she runs out of the gate and up the hill to get help and the ambulance comes and saves everyone then they help her clear up all the blood and stick her skin back together when they see she's been ripped open. None of it makes sense but she beats him!

So you think she's ok now, do you? Will she still be ok when you move on, start thinking about letting a man into your life, into your children's lives, into her life?

No man can tick all my boxes, it's in defence of her that I want too much.

But what if someone does come up to scratch? What if he has things in common with with her tormentor? Things that you can't blame him for and can't be changed, things like a name? And what if he comes along just as you're most exhausted and alone? Do you give up your principles and risk being your mother's daughter, putting your children second behind your own needs? What then? WHAT THEN?!

And now I know what happens then. Something snaps and there's a punching, kicking, throwing, incandescent rage filling up the whole world with it's flailing limbs and wild animal screams and it sounds very much like a confused, scared little girl. But it's coming from me.