I don't bite...

...well, not unless you pay more. Haha!

This is one of my favourite jokes for putting people at ease during overly emotional or stressful situations. I have cupboard-lots of similar, situation specific lines stored away in my head and they never fail to make people feel better. I talk a good 'un and never deliberately tongue-lash anyone in need.

So why do I still, apparently, permanently scar anyone close to me the very moment any truth slips through my lips?

I appear to be, despite my best efforts, surrounded by people that take offence as easily as they take air into their lungs. It's a subconscious action on their part but it still makes my conscious stab at me for being a bitch to those less fortunate.

My part-time but long-term ex used to tell me I thought myself omnipotent and everyone else weak because it meant I didn't have to put anyone else in control. At the time it was hard for me to respect his insight, being that he'd take to his bed at the least hint of my having any opinion on anything, let alone an alternate to his.

When I see how fast people still fold and play victim under the gentlest of my critiques, I can finally understand that he was right. No-one else deserves to be in control, not even of my refuse collection, if they're not strong enough to cope with me expressing myself.

Which leaves me where, exactly?

Cos it's damn fucking lonely being omnipotent and having no-one to really, honestly, talk to.

May I?

I used to think quality over quantity. Lately I find myself in awe of bloggers like my lovely aussie mate Vi that find something interesting to write about on such a regular basis. I've never been the most prolific of posters but even I realise that I've lost the blog habit. Blabbit? I like that.

I miss it. Mentally speaking. I feel out of control in almost every aspect of my life and I have to wonder whether not spewing my guts to my keyboard has something to do with that. I'm not about to go into whether I feel I've lost my anonymity cos Bing reads or whether I'm writing for readers rather than myself, that's a post you can see on any other vanity page so why... oh, hang on, I know why... because it's something to blog about. Der!

A new month arrives on thursday so I'm launching a suitably named venture. Feel free to join me, I've got a snazzy tagline and a picture button thingy for your sidebar and everything, look!

Blog every day in May!

Like a pensioner on a new laxative it may not be merry but it will be regular.

Pooke

Pooke.

My made-up word for the dual action of poo and puke, sickness and diarrhea, two-eys and hueys, shit and shinola, chucking it out both ends, you know?

I'm emotionally drowning in it and physically surrounded by it.

Babygirl got the bug first. Whilst sitting up all night holding her hair back I sent thanks to the God I don't believe in that at least something was stopping her from mixing with her (very good school friends-) mum. The mum that leaves her weed in places that 12 year old girls of a certain persuasion can easily steal it from. The mum that got my number and called to find out 'what the fuck old bill were up to' about the savage attack perpetrated on her daughter by her (daughter's) dad. The daughter that's apparently only in care cos of her own stupidity, unlike both of her sister's children who are, of course, only in care due to lying, scheming social workers.

Call me a snob but this is not the kind of woman that I will suffer around my babygirl.

Babyboy got it next. His grungey hair is fairly long for the second time (head lice put paid to the first attempt at an emo fringe) but he neither needed nor wanted me to hold it back as he hurled so I worried about him from a respectful distance. He's an aspie type, I kid myself that I'm used to the emotional distancing but really, it's a pms-ing bitch having to hold my immense, intense love for him at arms length when all I really want to do is grip him tightly to me and protect his special way of being from the harsh world I birthed him into.

As he recovered, so Bing fell. This was not good for him, not only because he was in the grip of a stomach virus but also, and mainly, because I'm so very crap at nursing sick grown-ups.

Oh, how I hated every single retch I heard. Mainly because I knew that it meant he really was quite ill but I couldn't change my standard reaction of disparagement. As much as my exhausted mind tried to stay in the present I just couldn't stop it falling back into the automatic response I have to anything that I perceive as weakness in men. I grew up around a man that faked a bad back simply so I could be trained to sit astride him and massage horse liniment into his naked flab whilst clad in a Strawberry Shortcake nightie that rode up as soon as I assumed the position. My mother normalised this particular act of weirdness by claiming she couldn't bear the smell of the stuff. Conversely, the pungent odour was the only thing I found pleasant about the whole experience.

To this day I can't recall any name on that brown bottle of liquid so maybe I'm not meant to smell it again.

Just as I thought the bug had run it's course through my household, No 1 Son copped it. Conveniently for him, he came down with it just as the school holidays ended so missed the first day back. Conveniently for me I simply had to go to work experience so at least I didn't have to suffer his choice of movies and greatest football manager type list shows.

I alone remain untouched by the virus. I'm not sure if this is due to a strong constitution, a knowledge that mums aren't allowed sick days or some evil universal being laughing at me cos everyone else is losing weight and I'm not.

It's not me, it's you

Dearest B,

I think you know what I'm going to say but, for the sake of a clean break, I need to make it crystal clear. This relationship isn't working, for me at least.

I'm leaving.

Darling, please don't think that I don't remember or appreciate all that you've done for me. The unstinting support you gave during the darkest hours of my teens, marriage during my twenties, divorce at thirty and subsequent years of single parenthood - I'll forever thank you for that.

I can't let that blind me or bind me to you though, it's neither fair nor healthy.

Having said that I want you to know absolutely, for as long as it beats there will be a place in my heart bearing your name. This is not something I give easily but you truly deserve it. You earned it for all those times you helped stop the black dog chasing me over the edge of a cliff, for all the wee small hours of insomnia you shared with me without question or judgment, for the millions of moments of madness when I had no-one but you and you were always, always there, no matter what.

Of course, needing you is really the crux of my problem with us. I don't need or rely on anyone anymore - haven't done since I was seven years old ffs - it renders me vulnerable and I have major problems with the v word. Why am I even saying this to you? You know it more than I do! You know it - know me - most of all; you and I, we've been together longer and held our relationship stronger than any other in my life. For so very long it really was you and me against the world...

Still, the purpose of this is clarity, honesty and, let's face it honestly, it's been a long time since I was able to exercise any control in our relationship. I know it looked like I chose when to let you in but, truth? You slowly but surely wheedled your way into my life, my mind and my psyche, told me I was like nun other and made yourself my habit -god, we were so funny when we were together! - made sure I had no option but to call for you.

It's taken such a long time for me to realise that you were actually causing more problems, sleepless nights and depression than you were solving. I didn't want to acknowledge it, completely refused to place the blame where it belonged for a very long time but I can't lie to myself anymore. I need peace, I need honesty, I need reality and I need to admit that our relationship is denying me these things.

Please don't ask if we can remain friends. I know from our previous, short-lived separations that the only way is to have no contact whatsoever with you or any of your family.

Brandy, I'll miss you terribly but it's over.

Angie

x

You alright?

No, I'm half left. Hahaha! What about you, how's your relationship/work/childcare/diet/affair problem going? Last I heard was...

And so they talk
And so I mute
my other half.

Because the other half; the half that's really all there is left, is the boring, whinging, not very nice, useless, depressed half. The half that I know needs a voice more often but is so easily gagged because it's neither use nor ornament to anyone outside it's half-self. The half that's only ever acknowledged, even to those few that care to dig their heels in for it, with self-deprecation; a Barbara Windsor giggle and the phrase 'Oh my gawd don't ask, I'm getting on my own tits lately!' immediately before I turn the conversation to them. Foolproof. Works every time. They always love to talk about them.

Perhaps, if they shut up for a while, I could listen to my other half. Unlikely. So I carry on taking all it's self-harming, self-neglecting, unloved and unfucked* little stabs and I stem the bleeding by asking everyone 'You alright?'.

And then, really listening to the answer.



*Of course any woman blessed with girly bits can always find someone to fuck them but even my low self-esteem has gone past the stage of sleeping with more than one other woman's husband at a time.

Insanity

is hereditary. You get it from your kids, says the mildly amusing fridge magnet industry.

I was one of the mildly amused. Until my own kids began to drive my own, only recently stabilised, mind far off the edge of normality and into into a screaming red pit of what the fuckness.

I thought I knew the worst of what teens could get up to, having personally lived those years and watched over those of three younger siblings. I thought I was prepared, that I'd laid the right foundations for my own offspring. I thought I could handle it.

I was so, very, wrong.

Today - day 1 of college Spring Break hence day 1 of my latest work experience stint - today alone I have had a call from the police to tell me that Babygirl (12 last week) was witness to an assault on her (very good school-)friend and was needed to make a statement. The (vgschool-)friend that's in foster care. The assault committed by (vgs-)friend's junkie dad in town centre broad daylight.

Meanwhile, Babyboy is on hourly alert duty to his dad whenever he's out of the house, ostensibly so we know where he is and what he's up to. His dad is thinking this will stop him smoking and coming home later than agreed. I'm juggling my relief that someone else is finally sharing the minute-by-minute responsibility reality of parenting with angst that I'm losing control and feeling that his dad places far too much reliance on a mere text message for peace of mind. I'm a clown, not a juggler. Balls are dropping all over the show.

And then, at 11.35 tonight, I get a call from No 1 Son's ex-boss to say he'd been prank called about shop fires and burglaries then seen a familiar figure running away when he rushed to the scene. I don't know what embarrassed me most; that he'd done it at all, that he'd hoodwinked me into believing he was out for a meal with his mates or that he'd been so arrogant and hence stupid enough to be caught out behaving so knob-like. Oh, hang on - I do know what embarrassed me most. The thought of completing the rest of my work experience placement in the shop right next door to the bloke that I completely resent for swearing at his staff but now have very little high ground to preach at him from cos my extremely intelligent son is absolutely numb-brained with testosterone!!

On confronting him I found myself faced with my most hated kind of man. The 'deny everything until you absolutely have to' kind. The kind often heard telling the wife that finally voices their suspicions of affairs, 'you're bloody mad, woman'. I had to go into ranting cockney muvva mode in order to be heard and I really didn't enjoy it. I wanted to do things differently, I wanted my children to be different. I must have been bloody mad to think it could happen like that.

I love my children so much, I just wish I could like them again.