Acquisition.

In the last few days Maddy has acquired the ability to add up vertically across tens and also to read. Startling really. I think she’s done it even quicker than Fran did and certainly with a lot less effort. Of course, with Maddy you never know if she’ll still remember next week, but i took todays sudden explosion into sounding out new 4 letter words and reading out sentences as a good sign. She finish ETC1 anyway, which has been a long old slog really but then ended at considerable speed. When she suddenly “got” the adding up and carrying too, i decided today was a “good brain cell day”. 😆

Fran was busy with some ECYr4 stuff; not convinced it will stretch her much actually, but i’m distracting her while i work out how to do division the MPH way, as (surprise) it isn’t how i was taught. Um… Alison? Yesterday we strayed into long multiplication and i had to stray back out again as i got into danger of saying “because you just do”. Ah ha – we have RaineDrops visiting this week… Barbara can do it! Fran is also reading Castle Diary (and Famous Five and something else.. lol…) – she pronounces it to be “brilliant”.

Amelie and Josie mainly tormented each other, or their sisters, or me. Not my best bit of parenting there today. 🙁

And here follows a long and self interested waffle about my counselling session so far, which you don’t have to read at all, unless you are waiting for next years Big Brother to start and therefore have nothing better to do. But i’m putting it here, because it is part of me and my life – and its my blog, so i can if i want to 😉

I had another counselling session today; so far i seem to have managed to come away with something obvious but extraordinarily meaningful to me from every session. The first was almost her last sentence that week to me “depression is always to do with loss; if you are depressed, it is because you have lost someone or something.” That got me thinking very hard, because the first time i really remember feeling utterly beside myself, completely full up with sadness, was when i was 7 and my mum told me about the twins she had miscarried when i was 2 or so. She was utterly bewildered by how upset i was (why did she tell me? I have no idea) – sometimes the most obvious bits of your life don’t begin to jigsaw together till you look at them with the aid of someone skilled (and i would say M is a very skilled counsellor). Seems like maybe my life got bound up in the whole baby/perfection/grief thing from quite early on, especially when you add my anxieties about my toes in to it.

So anyway; that got me thinking about the reactions (via depression) i’ve had to some life events over the last 15 years or so and looking thoughtfully at what i’ve “lost” that has triggered them.

The last session we talked about control and blame; i got a bit blown away by that session, but eventually the lynchpin of the session came back to me, best explained by a comparison she drew. When things go wrong i can’t really control, i know i do tend to blame myself (i guess i’m specifically thinking of Fran and Josie’s births here, though we didn’t discuss that at the time) – her comparison (in reaction, not gravity of situation) was that a typical response from a child when it suffers abuse is to blame itself, because to take responsibilty for something bad which happens exerts some control over the circumstance, and therefore brings it into a place where you can try to overcome or own it. Not sure i explained that very well.

I think that probably does relate to those 2 births and perhaps more recent circumstances too; i go looking for ways in which i fail and i take those upon myself and beat myself over the head with them, because then at the very least i don’t have to acknowledge that sometimes sh*it will just happen. In retrospect, i’m not sure i’m being very fair to myself 🙄 And given i’ve established that i like being in control, situations which leave me lying on my back with my abdomen cut open, are probably likely to be mentally problematic 🙄

Todays was a long old meander (we’ve not even started discussing the real reason i’m there yet, mainly cos i can’t actually get 2 words out about it without dissolving into incoherent tears) – but the crux of it was, when i thought about it, is that my life has evolved into blog posts and i’ve somehow taken on board a huge portion of living with Aspie like people and spiced it up with “re-read that blog post 6 times and edit it for correctness that has been defined by other people before pressing publish” – and i’ve started to do it in my life and in my head. Instead of being me, instead of feeling, and being spontaneous and open hearted, i’ve listened to some extraordinary repressive stance on how i’m allowed to be. Why exactly have i done that? I’ve got no idea.

I’ve listened to people who think they are allowed to project their opinion of how i’m allowed to act and think. I’ve not just started re-reading my life before i publish, i’ve started letting myself censor it, because of something i think i care that people might think. Wu-huh?

So that was an eye-opener; but todays soundbite, todays thing to carry forward was that “if i’m generous enough to let people lump their baggage on me, because it suits them to make someone else hurt, they’ll spot it and they lump you with it.” It’s been happening to me since the playground and it’s been happening again for a couple of years. And i’ve simply got to stop letting it. So long as i don’t go around deliberately hurting people, i’ve got to accept that i’m allowed to be as i am and if people don’t like that, i’ve got to accept that that is their issue, not mine. I’ve got to stop listening to people who tell me what i can write, or think, or feel, or do. But most importantly, i’ve got to learn to walk away from those situations; i’ve got to stop modifying myself to be “acceptable. It isn’t doing my self image any good. Not quite got that one sussed yet. But i’m working on it.