The last few weeks have been a challenging old roller coaster of ups and downs.
I thought I was becoming adept at managing things and then suddenly, I’m not.
And then something amazing happens, and we feel light as air.
Then there are days that are just days. Nothing hugely amazing, or awful... just another day.
The roller coaster is a wild old ride.
As I have said a lot to people, I still kind of get bemused I can’t see things coming that take me down. But like a roller coaster suddenly dropping out beneath you or turning sharply.. apparently it’s all part of the ride.
Those things can also be mysterious things that pop up out of nowhere and that are lurking on the back end of an amazing dinner, or after a lovely family movie night when everyone is just too tired, too frazzled, too everything...
I’m probably not proud of the fact that my own inability to deal with things like a functioning adult, can sometimes cause and/or exacerbate thede to peak meltdown level.
I have also learned, however, that I need to laugh at myself and with myself when that happens.
Because sometimes, it’s totally my fault.
Not deliberately ... but it is.
Take last few Fridays, for example.
A couple of Fridays ago I had bought dinner from a gastro pub and had the most wonderful food and wine at home with the kids (sod you COVID for not allowing us to escape ... but yay for innovative businesses...)
The night ... who knows why or how... then descend into emotional turmoil with a non-coping teenager and me realising I don’t have the skill set or the knowledge to be able to help her. And that knowledge is crippling.
And as I lay on the bed cuddling a fatherless child who is almost as tall as me now, I realised that despite their size they are still so little and so young. And still hurting. So much.
I had a complete emotional hangover on Saturday but we got through the weekend.
Then it was last week. It was just a long week. Not reason in particular. Remote schooling, remote working, single parenting and all that...
The happiness peak came talking to someone who completely understood my situation in no way that I thought anyone every would. Their wise counsel and experience and quite simply, their time, they gave me... I got off the phone call feeling so capable. So understood.
Then it was Friday again.
I was tired.
And I happened to be speaking to 4 different friends on that day who all had to leave the conversations we were having because their husband or wife had come home, was calling.
It was fine. It’s what happens. I can’t change it and I don’t want my friends to stop calling me or telling me that.
But then I walked in from taking a phone call outside in the dark, to find the children who had been interrupting my call saying they were hungry, hadn’t taken any of my suggestions as to how they could start dinner and actioned them, and instead, just repeated their demands for food when I appeared indoors
Then a message group I was part of began sending around photos and messages of husbands and wives and kids when it become apparent that, quite coincidently, 4 of the 6 members were all eating pizza that night.
All those gorgeous smiling faces of husbands and wives and families together... I just burst into tears.
And as I stood, sobbing in my kitchen alone, my thought process went along these lines.
Oh my god I am just so lonely today
Why is it so hard today?
I love my friends and I am so happy to see them happy.
This is so lonely.
Oh, there’s my Lexam on the bench.
Who puts antidepressants on their bench?
Probably should be in the cupboard...
Then I’d forget.
wait...
Did I take that this morning?
I don’t remember taking that this morning...
or, come to think of it, yesterday... *sudden epiphany* Ooooh, maybe THAT is why I’m feeling so crap...
Perhaps they are doing something after all ...
After facepalming myself and taking a dose, I went to sleep. But not before completely losing it because apparently the words ‘pop your pjs on, do you teeth and get into bed please’ must be uttered individually and repeatedly to each and every offspring over the course of a 40 minute period ...
Then, because, the weekend had rolled around again.. and it was nice weather, I thought I would go climb a mountain.
This served a number of purposes.
Mostly it was escaping our house.
But it was also exercise, something we hadn’t done before.
There were also people who we knew also climbing the mountain.
Mountain climbing, it turns out, could be social without socialising in this time of covid restrictions.
Also, it’s basically impossible to talk and walk up a hill.
Well, for me anyway. And I was definitely more than 1.5m away from everyone as I slowly, ever so slowly, plodded up the hill - bitching and whingeing and complaining every step past about the half way mark.
This particular mountain lulls you into a false sense of security with really lovely undulating sand track walking for about 1km before it turns into 2km of what I believe to be at least a 45 degree rock scramble.
I am a bonefide flatlander.
Born and raised on the Riverina Plains where it is known to be the flattest place on Earth.
One of those who was bringing up the rear of the walking party (mostly, I think, to make sure that my slow walking pace didn’t mean I was actually going backwards) noted ‘look, it’s a flat bit here...’
I might have spat back: Bullshit! I need to take you home if you think this f**king flat! while stomping one foot higher than the other.
And it was here, where I once again became my own worst enemy as I bemoaned everything from the sky being blue, to the functionality of legs, to how on Earth people do this sort of thing for fun.
I was not good company.
But they were patient, those village people, and for the most part they completely ignored me and just told me to keep walking.
And then, we made it to the top.
It was as good as I’d hoped it would be.
Only then could I laugh at myself.
My sweatier-than-a-bush-pig, unfit, whingeing self that had, despite all of that, got to the top.
So I laughed, because as a grown functional adult, I must have sounded completely ridiculous to my fellow walkers. Who were mostly my children... who mostly got up that mountain like little goats... one even in a dress.
Granted, she acted like I felt on reaching the summit.
Then I got to do trivia online with a bunch of amazing people who I could laugh with and I could remember that even after being such a petulant child on a mountain I still thoroughly enjoy adult company.
So now we come to this week.
With the benefit of hindsight of the last couple of weeks it means I am:
a) making sure I take the drugs
b) not walking up mountains
c) trying to remain light hearted as best I can about things
d) there will be something I can think of to go here ... and all the spaces down to z if I think hard enough.
I have spoken to a GP and psychologist in the last 7 days who have both helped prepare me
for what lays ahead with a considered ear, a smile, some professional advice and even a swear word to or two in the form of ‘yes you f**king can!’
Because while the last couple of Friday wipe-outs have taken me by surprise, this week’s won’t.
Father’s Day is this Sunday.
And no amount of positive thinking, fresh air walks, reduction in alcohol, good night’s sleep or anything else that making sure I have good mental health suggests will change that.
And so I’ll go with gritting my teeth, laughing, trying not to let myself spiral into the depths of endless responsibility.
I’ll also take the drugs.
Enjoy the wine.
Go to bed each night and get up each morning and think, ‘righto... let’s do this’...
And on Sunday, we will lie in bed and have hot chocolates and remember an amazing father on Father’s Day.
We will probably cry, and laugh, and people will argue over memories they remember differently, and I will tell each of the children how loved they were by Pete and how much they are still
loved by me, and our amazing villagers.
Because I do often write these things and think they always seem negative, but if I need to find a positive of a Father’s Day without my children’s father, it is the villagers.
Without them, we would be completely disfunctional.
But we are not.
Because they keep turning up.
For every roller coaster dip down into the doldrums, those amazing people are winding the cranks to make sure we clack, clack, clack back up to the top of the hill again.
They have offered us their time, farm space in a time of Covid isolation so we can just sit in a paddock, they have delivered food, and coffee, they have voiced counsel and patience and all of the things.
So on Sunday, when we celebrate Pete, I am going to celebrate my village and the roller coaster they help me ride.
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