It’s just not me

I like to be organised and tidy, but if you saw my home you would accuse me of not being honest about that!

The thing is, it’s true – however I am in a constant battle for space and living with people who do not pull their weight around the house.

A large part of my depression is due to the blockages in the house.  What do I mean by blockages?  Large piles of stuff in certain areas, literally blocking my access to books, files, art supplies etc at best it can take me around fifteen minutes to access something I want – I can’t just decide to fetch something and take it away and be immediately productive.  Sometimes the blockages are quite dangerous and have heavy stuff there, so I can’t access thing without inconveniencing Paul in helping me get to them. 

As time is going on, more of these blockages are occurring around the house in more areas that used to be mine and they are blocked by things that are not mine!

A simple idea of getting on the exercise bike needs fifteen minutes of preparation beforehand, because people have used it as a coat, hat and glove stand and used the seat as a place to pile books.

I fight hard to tidy things away, but other blockages means I can’t move some things from one place to another easily without causing another major blockage.  Paul is definitely reverting at a faster pace than usual to his pack rat past, because it is him who is causing these blockages and piles to occur!

Since we have decided to separate he isn’t even trying to stop himself anymore just to keep peace.

He doesn’t care how this affects my productivity in all areas of my life, he doesn’t care how this is actually affecting my independence around the house by accessing things – he just cares about his own convenience of stacking things!

It drives me around the bend, because I am quite OCD and particular about things.

But being the woman of the house, who gets tarred for how it all looks smells, etc?  Not the man I can tell you, not the kids… it’s always the woman’s fault!  That’s just society’s psychology.

If there is a woman in the house, she is the one to blame for how good or bad the house looks inside, she is the cleaner, she is the organiser, she is the one who gets the bad rep for the shittiness if she lives with slobs and happens to be sick!

It’s how I was raised, I was brainwashed by my mother than if I don’t get a handle on Paul quickly, visitors will think I am the dirty cow – I am the lazy woman who allows this to happen and I have to tell you it has always made me paranoid that people will think about me like that!

Because it really is not me!

You know I rebelled a couple of times living here – I actually decided to play them at their own game – throw wrappers on the floor without bothering to pick them up because I got pissed off.  Those wrappers stayed there for days until I got mad enough to literally knock myself out and clean the whole room over an eight hour period, only for the room to look similar a day or two later.

It is normal for people to leave used tissues anywhere they like and throw their wrappers on the floor if it is by the bin, it’s excusable to them – sorry, and for me it isn’t!

Was given the disgusting excuse of how ordinary poor folk live like this – I am sorry but they don’t!

I’ve lived with poorer people than this in the past and they certainly aren’t dirty or messy!

They have their pride, he doesn’t!

The kitchen is fully Paul’s abode, the kitchen is the most disgusting place in the house except for the tops of the units and that is only because I insist in a food preparation area Paul you’ve got to keep it clean!  In the past he didn’t care, I trained that out of him at least!

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because I can’t access my books and art supplies in Paul’s bedroom anymore because he has caused huge blockages – I can’t access half my crystals – I can’t access any art supplies except for a box of sharpies and inks – I can’t access my new laptop – I can’t access the memory files – I can’t get to two thirds of my writing files or my musical instruments – I can’t access the tin food cupboard or the plates if I am hungry when Paul is out – I am finding more and more things out of bounds!

The amount of things I have had I have given away to charity in charity bags of mine over the past few months in order to try and shift things to make room and still there is no more room.  He stacks things differently in a way it takes up more space and I am left in wonder as to how the fuck he managed to do that?

Paul has a very strange incomprehensible phobia of putting up shelves, to make space.  He tells me to put shelves on the walls will make the walls fall down – this is a stone house…

Doesn’t make sense to me!

All I know is, several times this week I have wanted to review previous works done and I can’t find them!  I have also wanted to do some more art, but I can’t access the stuff!

I am going crazy… you have no idea how much at this point right now I actually want to SCREAM!

I really feel like jumping up and down on the spot screaming and screaming and screaming because of it – I want to scream at Paul for it, I want to scream him into action.  But I won’t, because I am passive and I don’t like negativity and whenever I try to assert myself with Paul he screams and usually takes out the mess blame on my son, which in turn starts him screaming and hurting himself and the Paul feels better because everyone feels as shit as he does and he knows that it’s just a screaming match and nothing else will happen.

So he can sit easy for another few weeks until I blow up again!

I don’t leave my bedroom unless to eat anymore.

Around September, I think I gave up. I’ve hardly done anything, because what’s the point? I am using energy without seeing rewards! I vacuumed three days ago and cleared my own personal corner in the living room. But, you can hardly notice now. I saw a banana skin left on the 3 seater that Paul and Henry shares, took 3 hours of nagging to make them throw it away in an actual bin! I’d have done it myself, but there was a pile of junk in front of the sofa where it was and Henry was sitting at the other end blocking access and wouldn’t give me it!

The horrifying things I have found around the house when cleaning I can’t mention, due to humiliation and disgust! One major thing is I have weak lungs and we do have black mould, but Paul won’t help me with it. I cant have my arms above my head for prolonged periods due to black outs and its above the window. Paul just doesn’t care, I sometimes wonder if my depression and apathy is actually a sort of empathic soak and not really my own problems at all. I am like a sponge, I totally absorb the energy around me and reflect it back – when around the wrong people, I become the wrong sot of person, but quickly become a different person around different energies.

That’s me.

That’s life here. 

I hate it.

I hate it so much!

It’s not me to be like that, dirty, apathetic, depressed, giving up – it’s not me at all!

Thanks for reading.

Why bother?

Here’s a little heart to heart, I am not sure where this post is going, but this is the gist of it so far;

Dreams die when you are told no all of the time, or you have to wait or this can’t happen or that can’t happen, because, because, because.

It’s not always money that gets in peoples way, sometimes it is other people, sometimes it is health, and sometimes it is the environment, sometimes it’s the fact that with so many obstacles you lose the will to try anymore, lose the will to fight.

My dreams got smaller and smaller over the years, especially since living with Paul.  My dreams have got so small these days that I am even frightened to dream about what to plan for dinner during the week, even the smallest things – because, ultimately, I will hear a no or a broken promise again.

Or I may get half of it, because the rest was forgotten.

A simple thing like, I think I will have a side salad with the Bolognese tonight, the salad will be forgotten; so I go and make it myself without making a fuss about the fact it is forgotten again – then I am asked, what you doing?  When I explain I am told to sit down whilst Paul begrudgingly leaves his dinner to do it for me, because for some reason he doesn’t want me to do it for myself – then he snaps at Henry because Henry too, would like some salad as well or a fizzy orange drink.

I am made to feel guilty when I get upset that he takes over everything all the time, I am made to feel really bad because he is rushed off his feet and made to feel bad for complaining that I could have helped… it’s a bizarre situation to be in.

The fact that I don’t want him to do everything for me – but he won’t have it – but at the same time he constantly gripes about how tired he is, how busy he is, how inconvenient everything is… yet I have said I will help.  It is like he enjoys being a moany martyr.  Henry tries to help but he gets the exact same reaction from Paul.

So Henry and I sit back and let Paul do everything for us, whilst he moans to the whole world about how much he does for this family who does nothing, because we can’t and I have to sit there and stomach it time and time again, knowing the truth!

I mentioned before, I feel I have no purpose here, because my purpose in every way shape and form has been stripped from me.

For years Paul and I have both denied we were over around 2013, it is only recently when he thought he had found another woman, which we both agreed yes it’s over between us.

My battle for eight years was my health, but my new battle since getting energy and health stabilised is now fighting Paul for my right to do things for myself!

He won’t let go and what is more, he won’t help where it really matters – the things I genuinely cannot do at present without his help.

Mostly buy the cleaning materials I need to whip this house into shape.

Both Henry and I are very concerned about some neglect of the house, the leaking roof in the utility room and the leaking chimney brest in the living room are not priorities and recently, as Paul is getting more tired and since he is struggling with our budget, my rabbit is not getting what he needs and I have offered to use my own treat money to compensate for him, but Paul won’t hear of it – but he won’t do anything about it either.

I have heart wrenchingly told Paul, then we have to give the rabbit up then because he needs to have more than we can offer him, but he won’t have that either.

Paul’s budget for the rabbit tightened when Paul realised I was healthy enough to start cleaning him out myself, every two days, but that’s too expensive and too often according to Paul.

Henry heard this conversation unfortunately; he came down the stairs when he heard us.  Henry got involved too and Henry is more assertive and aggressive than I am and when he felt the same as I did, Henry’s response was his usual fiery temper.  Which meant both Paul and Henry went at each other’s throats again.

Both the rabbit and I recoiled, I went dead quiet like I always do when things explode like that, because I hate conflict and I know if I was to so much as whimper whilst they are at each other like that, I would make them both explode more to the extent Paul will either leave the house for an hour or Henry will try to self-harm to get his point across. 

This is one of the reasons why I find it hard to do anything, because even a small suggestion could be blown out of proportion and I am made to feel guilty for wanting more for the family, even if it is a bit of bleach and a clean rag.

I have said before, it is fine for Paul to live like this but I am not used to it.  I was raised under OCD conditions, my mother’s house was like a show room at all times, never a crumb to land on the floor without a vacuum on it no sooner had it landed. 

I practically live in the bedroom now, not because I am bedbound now, but out of choice; I can’t stand leaving this room anymore, because to be honest with you, my stomach churns at the mess of the whole house.

I suggested to Paul, OK, you are struggling for space I will get rid of a lot of my stuff, my books around the house, the unused art supplies and the leather futon nobody uses and that will make room but then he asks me – how do you suppose we get rid of it all?  I said charity, but who is going to take all this to the charity shop?  I don’t have time, I can’t afford several buses to get there – we can’t afford the alternative skip.

I give up once again.

Every little bit of fighting spirit and will power is just being sucked out of me with every month I live in this place!

It was ok when I knew I was wanted, but Paul has made it abundantly clear to me that yes, he’ll tolerate me here as he feels he has a duty of care for me, but who wants to hear that?  Who wants to know they are tolerated by a duty bound martyr?

Am I the one being unfair?

He took away my role as mother years ago.

I can make no decision about the boy at all, I can’t play with him how I used to because apparently it is my fault when he gets hyperactive, I can’t talk about our mutual hobbies together, because some are things Paul disagrees with and he will lose his nut when Henry obsesses over them again.  I can’t cook or bake alone in the kitchen anymore with Henry to teach him (Henry wanted to be a cook), because it is a dangerous mess out there and Paul generally takes over because he is scared with my disabled left hand that I may have an accident!  I can do nothing.

I can have my opinion about Henry anytime I like but I am always over ridden, Paul rarely tells me in advance if there are any appointments for Henry because he presumes the role of parent and completely forgets I am also the parent!

So what am I here for?

I have no value here and every time I open my mouth it starts a war or a pity me cycle!

What hurts is, when I find something I can do behind Paul’s back, he undoes it just as quickly – like he didn’t even see what I had done, so it makes me feel as though any energy expenditure is constantly unrewarded and for nothing.

When I started to use my exercise bike again regularly, Paul got into the habit of using it as a coat, umbrella and shoe stand, so I have a lot to clear around it before I get to use it again.

The house stinks, I am the only one who opens any windows here and Paul has put obstacles in certain windows so I can’t reach them, he thinks I haven’t noticed his trick, but he has.

He tells me the windows shouldn’t be opened now until spring because of the heat or eat crisis, it will be too cold in the house if I opened it for just one hour a day!

Paul and Henry are both nose blind because they live downstairs a lot – I live upstairs, my window is opened a couple of hours a day and when I leave the room I have to say… it’s not pleasant and is there any wonder I lose my appetite a lot these days?

Three days ago I decided to shut myself in my bedroom all the time, only go downstairs to eat dinner and pet the rabbit a few times a day, that’s all.

I can’t bear being down there anymore, especially with the vitriol between the two of them that seems almost constant these days.

They are bitter because I put my Amazon music on up here to drown them out and when I use it, nobody can use Alexa downstairs that music subscription comes out my treat money.

To think when I first moved in I thought the world was literally my oyster, I dreamt big, I had endless energy and ambition and I was ecstatic to get away from my mum!

I don’t know where all that enthusiasm has gone, but I worry about dreaming about a piece of candy at the weekends nowadays, because that is too big a dream at times.

I had massive dreams in comparison.

Maybe I can dream big again someday, eh?  Maybe…

I’ve never reached for just comfort in the past, I’ve always wanted the best that I can be, the best that I can have.

But now, comfort is the dream as I am definitely not comfortable here.

Paul is fine with making do and coping and adapting to less and less – I am not like that.  I always have this spark of… we can always find a way to get more?  Sell this, do this and do that… but it’s shot down by him hard, because ah, it’s too much effort or whatever. 

You get yourself into a rut when you live with people like that; people without ambition are dangerous energy vampires to the more ambitious folk.

I’ve learned the hard way – you can’t teach someone like him – he likes things handed to him on a plate without any effort.

I am not like that.  Well at least I wasn’t once, these days I think I am too apathetic to try, I am too tired and it is making me feel old and bitter!

I am scared I am going to become like him soon, because… why bother?

Why bother if I am going to get shot down and stopped again?

My son Henry is only 12yrs old; he is getting the mind-set of why bother… that’s too young!  Too young!

I want to bother, I keep tying to pull myself out of the dirt – but I can’t help but feel that Paul is there with a big stick poking me back down into it if you get my drift?

Thanks for reading!

Things are different but hard

Disclaimer, this is a very long post, nearly 3k, sorry.

Things are definitely changing in my life, I have a little more personal freedom – not much, but it’s a lot for me and I haven’t had this amount of freedom for at least eight years now.

My physical health is improving enough where I am no longer staying in bed most of the time; in fact I am able to do a little exercise and chores on a daily basis now.  I believe it has everything to do with the new high protein diet.  I do however choose to escape into the bedroom for up to three hours a time these days, because I am not coping with Henry’s behavioural problems and the arguments in the household.

I am trying my best to do the housework, but Paul and Henry have got into the habit that I have been sick, so when I have made the efforts to tidy up, no one appreciates it and undoes my work around the house almost as soon as I have done it.  There is no respect for me in this regard.

I clear an area and Paul or Henry fills it again, in less than half a day, I have to say, it makes me wonder why I bother.

The other day, I spent forty five minutes cleaning the carpet in the hall and clearing away coats, hats, garden equipment and the vacuuming the living room, clearing up shoes, clothes and robots all over the floor.  Paul and Henry were both out – they came home and threw their coats wherever they liked, it had rained heavily and the mud was trapesing all over the floor, they sat down and not one of them mentioned about noticing I had done anything.

When I asked them about if they had noticed, all I got was an “ooh sorry, yeah, thanks”; But no effort to amend their slobby mess in the hall.

There are things I am desperate to clean, but with the finances being really hard on us, Paul is reluctant to buy the cleaning materials I am used to.

We have mild bleach and antibacterial wipes and a sponge for the bathroom, but that is all.

I struggle living in this house because a house usually reflects the quality of the wife or mother of the house – believe me when I say, this house is not a reflection of me at all!  I have been sick for years and Paul was a hoarder/pack rat before he met me and I had to struggle and deal with this problem of his for ages before I got sick and I nearly sorted the whole house out.

There are things Paul leaves for months, no matter how much I complained when I could leave the bed, he still never got around to doing things.  There are four rooms in the house that I ban everyone from going into, if they are guests because I’d die of embarrassment over it – Paul doesn’t have the same inclination as I do.  He doesn’t see what’s so bad about things, though he admits it needs to change.

The dining room has been unusable as Paul’s hoarding is coming back; this has been unusable for three years now.  The kitchen is just plain dangerous and dubious.  The utility room is dangerous and the roof has caved in and there is fibreglass hanging from it, every time it rains the whole room gets soaked and that is where we do our laundry – or rather where Paul does the laundry as it’s too dangerous and narrow for me to get out there, as whatever Paul can’t throw away, old broken electricals etc. gets stored out there.

The other room isn’t a room a guest would go to anyway, that’s the big bedroom, which is now Paul’s room and the room where we store Christmas decorations, DVDs, towels, linen and clothes.  It’s basically an enormous disorganised store room.

Paul is very tactical, he knows with my balance problems and weight, that I can’t get to places if he puts things a certain way.  This means there are lots of places I cannot access around the house unless he assists me; this makes me completely dependent upon him to help me.  The thing is, with this new diet of mine I am slimming down and I am gaining better balance, dexterity and agility as well as energy.  This is starting to cause ructions between us, as he doesn’t like the idea I no longer need him, despite knowing we’re separating soon.

I am a house proud woman; I was raised by very domesticated OCD housewives through my mother, paternal grandmother, various cousins and aunts I was sent to live with over the years.  I am meticulous about the house, I am an organised person who is driven nuts by the idea of piles upon piles of things and a throw it anywhere attitude. 

I am the kind of woman who goes into cafes and wipe the table down before I do anything and wipe up after myself too, I am that tidy it’s my nature.

I am the kind of person who has dinner, take the plates out and the sauces.  Whilst Paul says, leave it on the table I will deal with it later.  The plates are taken out and washed immediately, but the sauces can be there for days.

My little bit of freedom is that I can now do a little per day around the house, but living with people like this I often wonder if I should bother at all?

I have also paid off a debt, which means I now have for the first time in three years £25 a week to treat myself with.  I haven’t seen this kind of money for three years!

Paul won’t let me spend the money on anything but treats for myself, but the thing is, I need to.  I need to consider putting £10 a week away for savings, for travel money to the doctors and hospital.  Paul doesn’t know that’s why I am saving the money.  Because of the heat or eat crisis, I have tried to give Paul £5 here and there for treats for me and Henry, he accepts it but doesn’t like it if I extend that to say… fruits or meats I may want to add to the diet too as he sees that as part of the family money.  He doesn’t want me to spend money on the family or the house.

He admits he is proud and he doesn’t like that he can’t provide for me.

I want him to spend some of my money on getting the cleaning equipment I want but that is hard for him to digest, Paul tells me, he will clean it himself with what we have.  I am still waiting…

To be Frank with you, I can’t wait until I move out.  But Paul doesn’t like the idea of me being alone, because of my inclination towards avoiding meals and going into bouts of depression where I could self-harm.

I wasn’t depressed like this before I got sick and lost control around the house.

My depression was mostly to do with being sick and in constant pain, then it got worse because of my helplessness, followed by seeing the declination of the house hygiene and my son’s mental health and then the severe poverty, where we relied on a food bank for Christmas and for other occasions.

I don’t care that Paul is starting a new relationship with another woman, I care that I will lose my son, because Henry wants to stay here with his dad because he knows I go with the flow  and I probably wouldn’t stick around Rugby town when I move out.

I go where I am wanted or needed.

I am very flexible.

I am able to start going out once a week without it affecting any budget, this is why I have chosen to go to the library once a week on a Saturday afternoon around 1 to 4pm or thereabouts. but not today.

I will take my laptop so I could get extra writing done there for my novel, because I can’t write in a smelly, untidy house where Henry and Paul have screaming matches every fifteen minutes.

Perhaps as I get fitter, I could eventually walk to the library like I used to instead of getting the bus and then maybe go every day? 

I remember around 2014 before I got sick, that I regularly walked 9 miles per day, I miss that!  I also had enough energy left in me to be meticulous around the house, chasing a toddler and doing 45 minutes of Tae-bo a day too, this is not counting whatever I did at the recreation ground near the house, I used to power walk or jog around that five to seven times three times a week!

Paul was in constant exhaustion as he followed me everywhere, because I have a weird problem.  I don’t like going anywhere alone, ever.  Unless I have a dog, then that’s different as I don’t feel alone with a dog.

I can go out on my own, if I have a dog.

I’m weird I know, but there is something that makes me anxious when I am not in a small group.  I like groups, I thrive in them, but make me alone or put me into a situation where I am having a 121 or a 2 on 1 discussion with people I hardly know, I get so tense.

I tell you, it’s this weird… I will willingly go and talk to an audience of a thousand strangers about any subject you want as long as there is one person back stage or on stage that I know is there, the more people I know, the better; than say, go into a small confined room where I am far away from a door with two complete strangers.

It’s a trust issue.

If people are friendly with me around three or four consecutive visits, I will relax to them very quickly and they go into my trust circle, but if they are rude or mean in anyway, they will never get into that sense of security with me.

It’s just the way I am.

I am very much a pack animal and without my pack I am lost.

My fitness efforts are part of my project to get myself fit enough to find myself a pack, so I can feel like I want to live again.

I think finding my tribe or people who want to be in my life, as the key to my happiness.  I did have a wonderful community here in Rugby before I got sick, but when my sickness got so bad I couldn’t leave the house anymore, people dropped me over a time.  Nobody wanted to come and visit someone who was so sick they could hardly talk and they couldn’t get off the sofa.  Especially as I wasn’t diagnosed with anything that was potentially fatal!

I was just recovering from pneumonia and having multiple chest infections over the years that meant I became very disabled, it badly affected my mobility and I gained a lot of weight. 

In 2017 I decided that perhaps food could be my medicine?  I read a book called “The Wahl’s Protocol” which enlightened me enough that I went on an elimination diet, no gluten, no lactose, no eggs, no soy and as paleo as you can get.  I did see some improvement but not a lot, but I then developed certain deficiencies.

I then decided to try going slowly back on everything; it was fine until I started back on soy and mustard.  Then I decided to listen to my body from when I used to be athletic – go back to a high protein diet.

It’s the protein I need.

It’s the protein fixing me.

I try to get 75g of it per day at minimum, but it’s hard on our budget and I am writing this on the 28^th October 2022 – today I haven’t been able to eat much at all.  I had some chicken barely enough to fill half a sandwich and a protein shake and a little light snack, but I was unable to keep things down today.  I had barely 800 calories worth of food, this is becoming regular these days and it’s scary.

Paul think its stress, because I can’t cope with Henry’s behaviour and Henry’s behaviour is worse at the dinner table, where things get so heated between everyone, my stomach goes into knots and I physically cannot eat more than a couple of mouthfuls for a couple of hours.

We have discussed that I should have a separate meal time, away from Henry.

Henry appears to be developing such bad behavioural problems that it is almost like autism, the thing is, he didn’t have any of the signs of this when he was younger.  He is nearly thirteen, but his behaviour is so erratic and sometimes dangerous that it puts tremendous stress on us, especially me.

I half believe he is putting it on, so he doesn’t go to school.  He also finds his behaviour hilarious and doesn’t seem to understand that this behaviour is not funny, the more we show our concern and try to calm him down or even ignore him, the worse he gets.  We can’t win. Paul believes there is something genuinely wrong with him, but I think he is playing us a fool.

Why do I say this?  Because Henry is a huge attention seeker and because I used to work with the mentally disabled, that are far more severe than Henry and they were adults and I can tell you now – Henry’s behaviour is extreme and Henry is an A+ student, he only acts like this when he wants attention or when he doesn’t want to do something.

This is something the school has noted.  Henry is fine in certain classes and when he is around his favourite people, but put him into things he don’t like, he goes berserk literally.  He isn’t violent, he just plays up – acts the fool, reverts back to a toddler, if you get me?

For example, whilst at home if he gets his favourite dinner he is happy, naturally.  But he starts to grin really big and make repetitive noises such as heeee heeee heeee almost donkey like and starts to bounce on his bottom rapidly and shake, then he will hand the food into his mouth without using knives and forks.

This gets him noticed, this causes a reaction from Paul – Henry sees this reaction and likes the attention, so does it all the more and does other things that Paul will notice and comment on, making Henry get all the worse.  Till it escalates and they scream at each other, Henry hits himself and runs away, Paul makes chase, scream, scream, scream, Henry comes back at the table going on about how everybody hates him.

It is happening daily.

It’s exhausting.

I have suggested that we talk to Henry calmly, I am ignored.  I have suggested not giving attention to bad behaviour but noticing and praising the good behaviours instead, I am ignored.

When Henry has lunch when Paul is out, he never acts like this.

This is why I have severe reservations about leaving Henry with Paul.

Henry doesn’t react badly like this, when Paul is out, Henry is attentive, vain, clean and tidy when it’s just me and him.  Around Paul he loses it, he doesn’t want to take care of himself, he doesn’t want to do anything good and I can understand why.  Henry gets more attention when he is bad and is completely ignored when he is good, except by me.

I over compensate for Henry’s good behaviour, because I know it is lacking from his father.

There are times when Henry and I speak together away from Paul, because both of us do not want to trigger another screaming match by being overheard.  Henry often talks about how he doesn’t feel wanted or loved and because I am anxious about any shouting going on around me because of my PTSD, I am eager to be out of ear shot of Paul when he tells me these things.

It’s difficult here.  This is why I am finding it hard to do much.

I am constantly drained; I am running on empty lately.  Whenever I sit or lie down, I am inadvertently falling asleep very easily.  I have black circles under my eyes and it’s not lack of sleep or dehydration.

Sorry for such a long post, but I needed to get this off my chest.

Thanks for reading. 

Starving fat girl

What did I mean in the former post about “problems starting up again”?

Ok, well I have an undiagnosed digestive problem, IBS and IBD of unknown causes, where sometimes my body swells and shrinks day to day.  Sometimes it mostly affects my spleen, where my spleen will swell and become painful and pushes against the stomach a lot, so I can’t keep food down even if I push myself to eat that day.

Consequently I have been having issues with malnutrition, because I have days like this at least three times a week on average!

Just because I am fat, doesn’t mean I am actually eating anything!

It can be quite bad, like yesterday where I wake up and the first thing that happened immediately after I drank a small sip of water was to bring that up with bile.  I know it sounds disgusting and it is!  But this is what I have been living with for years and there are two reasons why it’s been left undiagnosed.

One major reason is we can’t afford the taxi fare to go to appointments about it and secondly the hospital we go to is in so much debt that they are reluctant to help anybody unless its life or death and we can’t afford to go further afield.

I take omeprazole since I was pregnant with Henry, because for some reason or another, after I gave birth to Henry my body didn’t rebalance itself again like it should have. So I am prone to heart burn.

Whenever I do manage to eat, I can’t move around or go for a walk for around twenty minutes, just to make sure it says down.  Any physical movement after a meal can make me purge.  Which makes quick lunches in town, near impossible!

My doctor knows I want to lose weight and he is a little anxious I am trying to exercise when I have these nutritional problems right now.  He told me that I probably wouldn’t be so big if my body wasn’t constantly in starvation mode; my body is storing anything it can get its hands on and I have a lot of water retention too which is affecting circulation.  I am constantly cold.

My doctor has urged me to go private if I can, but we just can’t do that.

He has sometimes wondered if it is an imbalance of friendly gut bacteria, because he learned once that my mother was known to be so OCD in cleaning, that sometimes she would add a tiny dash of bleach to our vegetables when she washed them!

I did find a marked improvement in keeping food down after several weeks of adding fermented foods to my diet, but because our benefits got cut we could no longer afford to maintain that diet for me. 

We still are clueless about it all and only time will tell, what it is.  Soon Paul retires and so our money will improve a little, but as we’re separating soon, who knows what is going to happen with all this!

All I know is, I rarely eat breakfast, I have lunch occasionally, I always eat a dinner and I have a snack a couple of hours before bed.  I struggle most days to eat more than a whole “normal” sandwich in one sitting.

So get the idea out of your head that all fat people constantly eat, because in my case it’s simply not true!

I think the biggest meal I can regularly eat at the moment is a 3 egg scramble with a single toasted bagel and a banana right after it!  That to me is a huge meal!

I practically live on that every two days; because it’s something I can keep down.  I also drink a large glass of cranberry juice for the vitamin C.  Because my doctor said that three eggs in one day is all the vitamins and minerals your body needs except for vitamin C, which you can’t get from eggs.  So I do this, because its really high in protein and it’s got everything I need in it!

Occasionally my late night snack, which is around 9pm are usually two or three roasted chicken legs, a tuna bagel or a fruit salad.

Yesterday all I managed to eat was vegetable soup, three slices of bread, a banana and 2 oat biscuits in the whole day. Very low in protein unfortunately, because I had too much pain and struggled to keep things down.

Thanks for reading!

Shove me in a box…

“You can’t have and do everything, you’ve got to narrow yourself down”; Have you ever been told that by anyone in the past?

I have endlessly, particularly by Paul – he has constantly lived in fear since we moved in together that I am overdoing everything, stretching myself too thin and he has tried to endorse a cut version of me. Purely because he fears I will burn myself out!

I never realised until now, just how little by little, I have lost myself.  Around seven years ago I became severely depressed and suicidal; I couldn’t find joy in anything anymore.  I didn’t realise until recently, when I have been soul searching just why this might be the case!

Why am I no longer happy?

Why even when I was being badly abused in a toxic parent/child relationship, I was still happier then, in myself, than I am now that I am free?  Because I realised, although I was isolated and abused, I was allowed to have my hobbies and a lot of them!  I was able to skip from this to that and know that the house was always spotlessly organised and nothing needed to be cleared away and cleaned before I could use it.

Although my life with my parents was terrible, I had the environment perfect for creative growth.

My heart and soul sings when I am able to read books at the drop of a hat, write stories and songs and poems and practise any musical instrument.  I could do art and I always had a dog next to me, I was never without a dog when I lived with my parents.

I could sing anywhere from the hours of 9am to 9pm without being hushed, as long as I isolated myself in my room or in the garden to do so.

I could get the exercise I need without clearing the floor and vacuuming first and have the right music to motivate me to finish the work out all the way through!

I could listen to any music and watch any movie I so desired; although I was isolated, threatened, blackmailed and all the rest, I was free to hone my skills and entertain myself however possible, as long as I just don’t go out and as long as it didn’t interfere with chores or whatever my mother wanted from me, which were minimal anyway because my mother had OCD and everything was perfect all of the time around the house.

But here, I don’t have the same freedom.  In my own house, I don’t have that.

There is always a complaint at how loudly I sing, it’s ok to sing, but do you really have to sing opera or songs that reach a high note in jazz?

It’s ok for you to have these musical instruments, but you can’t have your keyboard constantly set up outside of the box, there is no room for it – let me bring it downstairs for you every time you want to use it and wait until we clear the dining table and you can use it there!

It’s ok for you to do your watercolour painting, but we need to clear your art table up as we’ve had lunch on it today, it will only take fifteen minutes and then you need to fetch it all down from boxes from the spare bedroom before you get going on it… is it any wonder half an hour later especially when I’ve had a bad day with my sickness that I decided after all of that nonsense I don’t want to paint anymore?

Especially when there is never any room to store the art to dry and the work ends up with piles of toys on it and lost for several weeks… there is no respect with my efforts. Nobody cares, but me. I have very little personal space and I am made to feel guilty when I fight for it.

I have a 4ft by 4ft corner in the living room with my desktop computer and a chair; I had to fight for that space and to maintain it as tidy as it is like it’s some kind of ongoing battle… and it is!

They can take anything away from me, but not this space!

And they do.

Sometimes I need to pee, but I get hemmed in this corner by fortresses of lego or robots, then they leave the room abandoning me to try and get out of it, because really, they don’t care.  Or they barricade me in this corner with an ironing board and baskets of laundry and I have to wait a few minutes whilst they rescue me out of it, just so I can go to the toilet.

It’s nice he does the laundry, I really appreciate that – but I need space to do the work and I have been struggling for two years now in getting Paul to help me set up the spare room as an office, because I am too weak to move the huge cabinets up there myself to make room for my desk.

The mess is depressing, the lack of freedom to just up and go anywhere in the house is… if you can understand it’s… it’s just… I don’t know.  It makes me want to give up, stay in bed and rot away.

The only place I can absolutely guarantee a clean and tidy place with the freedom to move un-obstructively is between my side of the bed, my side of the bedroom, the upstairs landing and the bathroom; but lately, the bathroom is getting obstructed as Henry is becoming a teenager and floods the floor, so I can no longer trundle from bed to toilet in fleece socks without seeping into a lake and sitting on a toilet with a wet bottom because for some reason or another, Henry doesn’t just wash himself, but the whole room!

Is it any wonder that I sit back and wish to leave?  That I can’t cope anymore with this kind of life?  Because nobody I live with uphold the same quality control of how the house should be as I do?

Because I was stupid to think I could change a hoarder.

“We’re not obsessed with everything like you are” is the response I get when I complain.  “We don’t have time, we’re tired, we can’t help it” is always the excuse I get and I am drained by the whining and then I don’t want to create – I just want to sink back in bed and hope that I do actually die of whatever is making me sick! It’s probably the black mould, I never had asthma before I moved in here!

I was offered a free writers retreat holiday the other week, I refused to go because I was genuinely afraid that if I went, I’d enjoy the freedom too much and won’t want to come home again.

I am a musician as much as I am a writer, I am a composer and lyricist, I am an artist and photographer – but I can only be a writer whilst I live here, there isn’t any room for the other stuff and I miss my piano and keyboard so much, the glockenspiel, recorder and kalimba are available easily, but the house has eaten my harmonica and portable electronic drum!

Oh I still have it, it’s upstairs in a box, but I can’t get to it, it’s barricaded behind loads of boxes of things we never use and I can’t carry it downstairs to use it, without thirty minutes of tidying up first and then there is the issue that I am disturbing someone.  Or that “they” want to play my keyboard too as though it’s some kind of novelty game;

I am thrilled in particular that Henry has an interest in playing the keyboard, though he never practises, but why is it always when I only just bring it down for me after months of not seeing it? 

Maybe I am just a selfish asshole, but I can’t help feel I am being boxed as much as the junk in the spare room is!

Sometimes I feel I am in the way, that if they could, they would, shove me in a box and put me out of the way.

How I miss my music.

I need to find a way out of all of this, before I grow old and bitter and become a mega bitch; it’s slowly happening, I used to be happy for everyone, never a glum thought crossed my mind – but lately, I am getting envious and I am starting to turn green and have ugly thoughts about things.

I feel like I am losing my soul!

Happy reading everyone!

ADHD writer?

I realised for years I said I was hypoactive but really it’s hyperactive – didn’t know they were two very different things!  I certainly don’t have any problem with my sex drive, not that you’d be interested anyway – but, there you go!

Why am I babbling on about this?  Because I wanted it to be clear that I have a hyperactive mind and when my body allows it a hyperactive body too!  Because of this I find it hard to concentrate on things for longer than fifteen to twenty five minutes a time – a long stretch for me – in fact, even ten minutes occasionally is stretching the boundaries of what I can do!

I have to change tasks or I suppose they call it fidget, if I am made to do something for longer than fifteen minutes.

When I am writing – anything, no matter how my flow is or not, I have to stand up randomly, dance whilst writing and even sing!  I need a lot of stimulus all the time when I am writing, but preferably nothing that means I need to communicate with others verbally.  For example, I need music or I need background television turned on something akin to what I am trying to write. 

I will pause as I write and make notes, I will observe the wildlife through a nearby window and I will pet my pets.  After around fifteen minutes of writing, I will check social media and stay there for around ten minutes before hopping back into writing, sometimes quite literally!

I am going to buy a standard desk and put it next to my sitting desk and have the laptop and my desktop on at the same time, so that eventually I can update my cloud with my stories on them and get up from the desk and use the laptop and type whilst standing up – this would benefit my health immensely, whilst catering to my ADHD.

In between writing and social media there are two or three online games I play whilst taking a break from those – such as ovipets.com, candy crush and paper Io.

Sometimes when I get physically jittery, I will randomly get up and walk around the garden once and come back to writing. 

I basically just can’t sit on my buns all day and write; fifteen minutes can sometimes be torture!

On days when my main isn’t so bad, I become really hyperactive as a writer and can write in excess of 4k words in that day and sometimes I have been known to reach 12k in a day!

But these days only tend to happen when my physical pain is significantly low for the day!

I get a lot of people who disbelieve that I can do this, that I can push out more than two thousand words in a day, especially when as far as they are concerned they think I haven’t left twitter for hours!  When in actuality, I have it opened on a tab on my computer and I am only really going back and forth from twitter approximately every fifteen minutes sometimes more, because I get side-tracked with games and other things too!

I just needed this to get out there… I need people to know just how I do things, because it is frustrating that nobody seems to believe me at times.

What makes it worse is my memory.

I endeavour every day to post a word count list, but I often forget to do this and I even forget to add the hand written notes and the laptop additions I do at night after I have shut social media down. 

I am even forgetting to update my goodreads.com account regularly these days, because I am so absorbed in reading and writing and then after two weeks I’ve added that I have read three books seemingly over night, when in fact it was over the two week period!

I am all over the place, I seem disorganised and frantic, but actually I feel quite serene, happy and I am a pedant in organising things – it’s just other people who don’t respect my stuff and move things, that cause chaos in my life!  I am incredibly OCD about things and it drives me nuts living in a house where someone is not meticulous like me and will throw a spanner in my neat and tidy works!

I had spent three weeks once re-arranging all of my books alphabetically and within certain genres around the house, for people to want to browse through my books and dump them wherever they like; same for my DVDs.

I have a pile of papers next to my desk and when I am in bed asleep, as my sleeping schedule is anywhere between 3am and 1pm, usually 5am to 11am if I am honest – I find that someone has opened a window in the living room near my desk and the papers have been blown everywhere and they’ve tried to save my work by not looking at the page numbers and randomly compiling them together again, with a shoe print on one or two and then they wonder why I get mad!

Sometimes a note will blow away without me realising it and ends up under the sofa for months and things like this or little files I have in another room get knocked over by people and they fall out their little plastic pockets and behind a dusty old cabinet and nobody has told me they couldn’t be bothered to rescue it and I find it weeks later covered in spider poo.

It’s hard to be a writer here with that going on, it’s even harder when you have ADHD, OCD and another problem I don’t have a name for, when you’ve found your stuff being disrespected like that you get so upset and disheartened you can’t bring yourself to work that day because you have to try and clean it all up and retype it or cry yourself back to sleep because you fell into a depressive nap.  Whatever that mental problem is, I have that too!

So there you have it, that’s how I work.

I can’t help it and I have tried to change, but its impossible.

Thanks for reading! 

Oh to Hell with it…

Even though I have said I am not doing NaNoWriMo this year, I have joined it anyway for the community spirit; I have joined the UK, Leicester region there, let me know if you are in that region and maybe we can say hi to each other?

My personal goal is to finish six novels by 1^st November 2022 to be sent for the first time ever to a literary agent – this is a goal and it may very well be unrealistic, but I am hoping it can be achieved!  The writing of six books is very realistic for me, because I tend to always be in writing mode anyway – the writing I have shared with my blog, or at least my word counts are not accurate according to Paul, who realised that I have not been sharing my handwritten notes in those word counts and I write more by hand than by computer!

What I meant about being unrealistic was my idea that an agent would take on all six projects in such short notice!

I understand no literary agent will take six books at once, I am not dense, they will be sent with reasonable gaps between each book!

I am a perfectionist and my own worst enemy regarding my writing – I was often told by tutors in my past that I overwork things and rewrite when it is not necessary, this is something I have never really learned to stop doing!

I do have OCD in many things in my life; this is another difficulty I am trying to overcome.  The OCD with my novel writing has got a lot worse since seven years ago it was suggested to me that I need to redraft some work, a notion that was alien to me at the time and now I redraft each novel at least three times a year and when you think I have over ten near complete works, this is nightmarish to some people – who may even find what I say unbelievable!

Paul has told me this is why it is important to send my work out there, so people know just how manically I do write and how it is part of the fibre of who I am!  I am never not thinking about writing, I am constantly in creative mode!

My brain cannot switch off from work of any creative type! 

When I am not writing, I am thinking about writing.

When I am not doing that I am drawing pictures or painting or planning art projects; then when I am not doing any of those things I am crocheting or knitting!  My mind is constantly creating something – it is not work for me, I don’t regard this as work and Paul finds that irritating, because to me, this is a lifestyle!  I can’t feel pressured doing any of this, because it is a lifestyle for me!  What I do feel pressured about is other people’s expectations of me when they know that I am working on something!

I don’t fear the blank page because of lack of ideas; I fear the blank page because my brain will fill it up with unplanned stuff before I can write down what I wanted to in the first place!

I don’t struggle with ideas for new projects, I am drowning in them!

So with that said,  I am now going to get back to my novel which is a steampunk adventure with an adult female main character – a novel of which has caused me to only have fourteen hours sleep in four days!

Happy reading!

To pants or not to pants that is the question…

“I don’t think I really want to wait for NaNoWriMo to start this new story idea, but would it be considered cheating if I started this early?”

This was posted on my twitter @CreativeTardy yesterday and I can only imagine my friends sitting there staring at their screens in disbelief shouting “oh, for fucks sake, just start, will you!”

Well, you see, I have never been one for breaking the rules… well… certain rules.

“Bloody Hell, what rules?  Fuck rules! Just get on with it, creativity has no blooming rules”! 

OK, tone down the language please.  No these are not real actual replies on twitter… but, I do know there are friends who talk like this to me from time to time in private.

I frustrate them no end, I can see that it takes a lot for the poor dears not to slap me one when I get like this!

 Usually I plan my stories a little.  I have certain ideas about what I would like to include in the story and the types of characters even if I have no idea of the direction of the book, I usually have some sort of idea about some of the future of the story before I write it – sometimes I don’t know how the stories end, sometimes I don’t know the middle but I know its beginning and end.  I don’t usually pants it, as the NaNoWriMo vernacular goes, I am or was a planner.

I am thinking this new story idea called Dragon 2 will be totally and completely pantsed, but I am fighting against it at the same time.

I am, in my personal life, a little bit of a control freak – I don’t like micromanaging people, I am not that type of control freak, but I like things organised and simplified in my own personal life and I don’t like surprises!  I am prone to panic attacks when surprises jump out at me, my brother often described me to his friends as the “rabbit in headlights”.  I am the sort of annoying person who always asks for reassurance and a reminder of what to expect at certain events and so on and Paul has a lot of patience with me as he tells me for the fifth time that day that it will assuredly be such and such.  I am only like this in certain things, not everything.  I am not constantly like this throughout my life, just things that could potentially… terrify me. 

Funnily enough, I am not somebody who suffers from stage fright or being surrounded by large groups of people, especially people I know even a little bit.  I am not like that.  I am more likely to be jittery around small circles of people I hardly know or never met and I am more likely to be this way around my birthday, Christmas, parties hosted by other people I don’t know well or anything regarding health… occasionally I can be like this when food shopping, I don’t like being around small groups of strangers alone, at all.

Never really understood why – but Paul reckons it has a lot to do with things that have happened in my past with my mother.  My mother is usually antagonistic with strangers especially if she feels there are no witnesses to dispute what happened!  She often dragged me along with her for whatever ride she hoped to have from the event she caused.

I like to be organised – artist friends are astounded at how neat my areas are when they used to visit, how as I painted I would wipe up spills and go back and forth from the kitchen cleaning the water jars I used as I did my work.

Reader friends who note my bookshelves look twice at my shelves and cannot believe that my books are in genre and alphabetical order and that I had at the time eleven bookcases around the house, now I have twelve.

I also have around thirty box files all with different genre story ideas, poems, research files etc., those are not in order at the moment because I am struggling for space and that is damaging my mental health no end, the torment knowing that those are not in order when everything else is – it makes my writing work very hard!

They mostly reside on the upstairs landing balancing on our very wide bannister at the top, that acts like a half wall and guests who use our bathroom sometimes sheepishly quiz us on why there is a box marked vampires and another marked dragons by the bathroom door?

One such visitor joked that they thought perhaps I was some kind of cryptozoologist as a secret life.

No, but it would be interesting…

I know I was a pantser before 2006, but I was told that planning is key, strangely enough my writing habits have been declining slowly ever since! So I became a planner, I know being a pantser should be as easy as it was in the past, but I don’t really know anymore.

Anyway, back to the NaNoWriMo story – I would like to start in a few days’ time, but at the moment I am trying to decide whether I should plan the characters and some of the scenes now or let it flow naturally?

Paul suggests naturally – but I have never worked that way before… I have had a lot of dreams regarding this book; a lot of the dreams suggest it will be very successful if only…

Happy reading!

Self Isolation Experience

As the world is forced into self-isolation, many aren’t coping, both physically and mentally; but there are some (introverts not included) which to them, it is a way of life; many not by choice or design and I am one of them.

It has taken me a time to write this, because I was not sure what to really say on the matter until now, purely because up until now, I didn’t think much of the world would understand the frustrations and things that I do in self-isolation before this moment in time.  Now I think or rather hope, that I would become crystal clear in what I am about to say and with a depth of understanding from those who are now forced into a similar situation by forces not of their own design too.

The isolation I have been forced into throughout my life by my mother, is entirely different to this pandemic, there was no fatal disease which could have affected me during that time, nor was there any government ruling set about to enforce my mother’s commands, though saying that, to me (at the time I was living with my mother) her word was law and any deviation from that law was harshly punishable.

My life in isolation day to day was like this;

There was no real schedule outside of dinner time, my day to day life was higgledy-piggledy and often turned upside side with the craziest stuff going on most of the time, there was in a word (insecurity), there was no predictability in my day.  The only things I could rely on to be part of my day were, cleaning and eating dinner at 4pm on the dot.  I was taught there was no comfort or security within the home, because nothing would remain the same day to day – in a literal sense.  My mother suffered from OCD which meant she cleaned everything thoroughly and demanded that everyone in the house do her crazy cleaning rituals too with her, with the exception of dad because he worked – even if I went out to work occasionally on the times she allowed me to, it didn’t apply to me.  Cleaning wasn’t so bad, but her obsessions to have a constant supply of household projects were both wasteful and sometimes downright silly.  She would move the furniture around the house a lot, just for the sake of it and often she would end up putting the furniture back in the same way it always is by the end of the day unhappy with her new lay out – sometimes those lay outs would last for weeks, but often it would go back to the same old design.  It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a table now and again, but it was entire rooms being moved in one day!  You was never warned when this would be, sometimes it would have started before I even woke up in the morning, sometimes it would start after dinner and there were even occasions she started it around midnight!

She would also have decorating projects, where she would re-carpet, or laminate a room and expect it to be done in a day maybe two days at most, painting walls was very popular with her, we did this more often than we should have.  Redesigning the garden was another love of hers, constantly moving plants around and then wondering why her favourites die so easily.  She never liked to leave the house more than three times a week herself for shopping or visiting, but would often insist in going out every day even for 20 minutes for walks.  Funnily enough even when we had dogs, the dogs would usually be left behind whilst we, the owners go for a walk without them – which was something that never made sense to me – as a consequence our dogs were usually classed as obese by the vet.

When going for walks, other than the neighbourhood gossipers, mum wouldn’t talk to anyone no matter how friendly they seemed.  Often she couldn’t be bothered with the neighbourhood gossipers and would literally drive to another street within a 3 mile radius and walk around there, so she didn’t have to talk to anyone.  But one or twice she would walk the same places so often, their own local gossipers would come out and talk to her, thinking she was another neighbour from nearby, when that happened, she would avoid the area for several weeks.  My mother never liked me standing with her when she was talk to other people, even when I was an adult, she would often require me to walk away and come back occasionally and she would give me secret hand signals to tell me roughly how long she will tolerate this person and what the conversation might be about.  She had her secret codes to talk to me, so others never knew how she was controlling me and my actions and even my own conversational input.

I was taught this by her aggression after events happened, she would tell me what she did and how I should have reacted and often told me that other people in the world would understand what she did, but because I don’t go out and is active in the world, I haven’t learned these basic social instincts.  I learned through my therapist that what she said was bullshit.

Sometimes mum would catch herself out, if we had a visitor sometimes she would absent-mindedly call me into the room, give me her secret signals which were both hand movement, sitting positions and various snorts which could be mistaken for her clearing her throat but I was taught that was a sign of displeasure and to please steer the conversation for her.  Sometimes people were so used to the idea that when they visited I was the tea maker that if I was called in and mum didn’t say anything to me about the tea or spoke to me at all, that they felt they had to remind mum to prompt me to make more tea for them as obviously, that was the reason she called me in, wasn’t it?  As rude as it may seem, they often did this; most of our visitors were family or rarely long-standing friends and Jehovah Witnesses.

Although we had visitors and talked to neighbours my life was socially isolated in that I was only allowed minimal conversation with them and was often shooed away with mums secret language to me, we would visit one person a week on average, sometimes we would visit more depends on either what mum wanted from them or what the person was going through at the time.  Again, we could be sitting at another person’s house for several hours and during that time I would probably have said less than ten sentences in all of that time by mothers prompt.  It was usual though that she would encourage me as entertainment occasionally, where I was made to play spiritualist as it were.  As I have a clairvoyant talent and I also do various readings, such as tarot and things.  This was the only time I was allowed to talk as much as I liked to whomever I was supposed to be entertaining.  Another thing I was allowed to do was to talk as much as I liked about philosophy, religion and spirituality; but even there, there was a limit to how much I could say and for how long.  Sometimes mum would give me permission to mock her, be cheeky to her to liven things up and make it seem like I had a personality of sorts.

It all may seem very strange to those who have had a normal life and upbringing, but to me at the time, I thought it was normal stuff, because my mum would often tell me, that this is how the world is.  Everything is finite, there is a finite way about people that as someone who is not worldly, doesn’t understand and that is why, when I socialised independently I got myself into embarrassing situations because I misread the person.  Often I reacted to other people based on how my mother interacted with me and the other person, obviously being unaware totally misread me or felt I had a split personality as I would often drift in and out of conversations quickly, thinking I have displeased them in some way, but no one understood what I was on about and to be honest, they shouldn’t have as it isn’t normal.

My activities also included gardening, I gardened a lot, I would garden a small collection of flowers but most of the florals I wasn’t allowed to touch or even learn about as my parents were possessive of them, as strange as it is, they would not teach me a thing about them at all, not even their names.  My main gardening duties were the fruits and vegetables that my mum wanted for that year, I was also allowed a small area entirely of my own which included herbs and a couple of small tightly controlled trees, which at the time I never knew would have been called a bonsai version – which generally just meant heavily pruned and small in size.  I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody that I did the gardening as much as I did, I was only allowed to mention my designated section, not the other work I did for my parents – that was their glory and they fiercely protected their reputation for being amazing gardeners.  So I had learned from an early age that I had to swallow my pride and see all my hard work as the credit to someone else other than me, I even had to lie for my parents to make them sound amazing and even praise them for the work.  Basically I knew, that I was praising myself but mum was prompt in reminding me when visitors had gone that I was not to feel proud of myself for what they had said, because I would never have done it if it weren’t her wishes for me to do so, so I had no right to take pride in my work because it wasn’t really my work.  I just cared for it for her that is all, the credit will always be hers.

My dad was very sweet, he would occasionally tell people that I did it and taught them whatever about certain things, but mum would often attack dad for it when visitors were home as she felt shown up.

I was taught to cook for my family from the age of seven, everything from full English breakfast, lamb stew to meat and potato pies.  I would cook the main dinner for the house approximately three times a week, sometimes more, but I mostly made lunch which would be anywhere between 11am and 3pm depends.  Come what may, main dinner was always 4pm, except for Sundays and special occasions, where it would then be a 2pm dinner.  Some Sundays I would visit my paternal grandmother and would have to consume two full roast dinners in one day, one with gran around noon and another when we get home to see mum around 6pm, because mum would anticipate we were fed at grans, so would knock Sunday roast dinner back by 2 hours.

My other gran didn’t have a specific day for being visited, because she was a fully mobile and energetic old lady who would quite often visit us and stay the night, or sometimes she would manage to steal me from my mother for the day or for a night at her house; which I loved, despite the very different and contrast environment of her home compared to my mums.  My gran was the total opposite of my mum, not house-proud at all, just saw home as a place to sleep and store stuff she liked.

When I was with my gran, she demanded total independence from me.  I had to be responsible for myself and as she was elderly, I had to help her, which meant going out alone and fetching things for her, walking her dog called Star and giving messages to other relatives around the area as they were all more or less neighbours within 10 streets of each other.  I had to make her tea too and occasionally she felt that if I had a problem with how messy and unclean her house was, then I should deal with it how I see fit – which meant I was housekeeping for two people – my mum and my gran.  But with gran, it was a choice, it wasn’t expected.  At least with gran I got recognition and whenever I finished anything she would comment that I am such a good girl, now how about treating yourself to something from the chippy and getting me something to eat too?

I liked it when gran stole me from mum, because sometimes it would be for a few days at a time and gran never liked staying indoors for long.  She was an early riser and out the door within half an hour of waking up, going to random places, visiting other relatives on a whim, going to car boot sales and whatever, wherever, anywhere within a 4 hour car drive one way, was doable in a day!  Life was an adventure with this gran.  Where my mother was obsessed with not going out much unless necessary and cleaning and decorating her house, my gran (her mother) was obsessed with going out, living day to day and avoiding housework full stop!

I think my gran had such a carefree attitude to life because she nearly died on several occasions throughout her life, she was born with a heart condition, lucky to live, had her first open heart surgery when she was 14 and has a new operation approximately every 2yrs throughout her whole life, more heart attacks and deep vein thrombosis than you could count along with haemophilia because of warfarin use.  To say my gran was a very lucky person is an understatement!  This includes finances too, she wasn’t rich, but she was never put in a situation of being too needy as she had the luck of the devil as she calls it.  At her direst she would often feel it is time to go bingo-ing and would often win big prizes, sometimes she didn’t even have to leave the house, as she often did government bonds and would get letters proclaiming big prizes, once for 20k!  I was one of the 5 grandchildren gran offered to take to Florida’s Disneyland but mum wouldn’t let me go, so she chose someone else, gran was angry about that as I was more into Disney than the other gran kids.  But what made gran more pissed off was the fact that mum put it about the family that she never even asked me!  Mum often lied, but was rarely caught out.

It is hard to stomach hearing someone slag off at every opportunity someone you know to be almost super hero like in quality to you, always spilling nasties out about them to someone who doesn’t know them.  Mum absolutely hated my gran, but only tolerated her because of a promise she gave to my grandad on his death bed, when grandad begged mum to look after my gran for him.  Grandad knew the hatred between gran and mum, mum never forgave grandad for putting that on her.  As mum said, if it wasn’t for what he said, she would have abandoned gran the moment he died.

People often asked why tolerated gran mum if there is so much contempt, but mum would never answer them, she used to use me to steer the conversation to something else.  The contempt was plain to everyone, because mum constantly spoke down to my gran and I think gran only tolerated it because of two things, she knew I needed a break from mum occasionally and stayed for me, and secondly, nobody else would tolerate her either as they were too busy.

Sometimes mum would try and stop my relationship with gran for a while, by sending me away to other relatives to live, so our relationship stalled.  Gran caught mum out a couple of times as she would drive all the way from Burnt Oak, North London, to Market Drayton in Shropshire to visit her daughter and to see me, just for the day, which is why mum decided to concentrate more on dads family.

When I wasn’t required for entertainment, cleaning or companionship, my days consisted of playing games on my PlayStation or the internet, writing vampire stories and reading horror books and books on spirituality.

Basically, I was kept too busy to harp on the fact that I was both lonely and stuck indoors most of the time, which I think is a key thing for self-isolators to learn.

As my mum often did, she did a spring clean of the whole house once or twice a week, gardening, if you don’t have a garden do window box or window sill gardening.  Read books, knit, sew, make your own clothes, draw, paint, write something, read magazines, play your with pets, do something with your kids, re-arrange your furniture.  There is always something to blooming do, so do it.