Tears and rain.

Weekend is a bit blurry, don’t think i did much other than play with whichever child came to ask. Did some Fimo with various ones of them, cleaned my bathroom 😯 and did the odd bit of online shopping; must make a list or will fall into the “oops, bought too much” trap again. One main present is safely sorted, 2 others ordered and one child is dithering to the point she is likely to end up getting socks instead! They all played loads of gamecube, Fran read lots of history books (Henry VIII, Captain Cook and someone i forget now being popular) and gave everyone lots of instruction on the Henry wives. Amelie currently obsessed by Jane Seymour. Must make an effort, Fran was doing her Henry project at that age 😳 Maddy did loads of drawing and writing and generally it was a very pleasant weekend. We collected a new desk from Kate, who doesn’t have space for it now she needs nursery space 🙂 (oh i am so excited about that baby!) and set that up so that we now have real, proper office space, on a real, proper desk, tucked nicely in behind the living room door. Looks lovely and makes it all so much easier. Max’s step mother and dad also came over to help me set up a new accounting system and we had a very pleasant day together; it isn’t something we tend to do anymore, but i do enjoy the very easy company they are. Back in the old days, i spent almost every weekend with them when Max was living there; it all seems like a different life now.

Weather was appauling, so we didn’t move from the house, but everyone coped.

This week has also been good so far; Monday we pottered in the morning, doing some crafts, bit of class tv, gamecube and chatting while we weighed up parcels and shifted them about so we could move (just the 60 on monday morning!) and then some HE friends came over to buy some jars of Hama Beads to have by as birthday part presents and we had tea and a chat. Then i chivvied the children through some work, got a shock (and i do mean a shock) when a certain someone announced with a flounce that she “hated herself” (oh i am so not looking forward to teen years) and later in the afternoon Michelle and Chloe arrived.

That was pretty much the last we saw of the kids; they all got on well, particularly while playing with Lincoln Logs and Fran and Chloe especially hit it off this time. Which left Michelle and i plenty of time to chat (i do love a new friend who can walk in the door on only her first proper visit and say “make me tea, now!”) and just for fun we rearranged the living room 😆 We now have the sofa under the window and it all feels much more homely somehow, plus there is space for a christmas tree 🙂 I kind of like the fact that i have a lot of friends who turn up and immediately start organising me (Michelle even made boxes for me – and vacuumed! – before she left!) – it’s like a skill swap – you come, you work, you leave having purchased goods (well, okay, not such a swap!) Wonder what Alison will do… “hello Merry, i’ll just do you a pretty coloured Excel sheet while i’m here…” – mind you, Alison does have the knack of leaving goods free, something others haven’t yet mastered 😉 😉

Michelle and Chloe also left clutching Fimo angels they’d made (i do give good craft!), which were really very good and we’re looking forward to seeing them both (people not angels) again soon 🙂

Weather truly awful that night; rain woke up several of the girls and i think Max nearly drowned on the way in on Tuesday.

***Bit maudlin***
Tuesday was mainly taken up with playing with Aunty Sue while i went for my penultimate counselling session. Left me feeling utterly wrung out and sad for the rest of the day. I’ve come a long way, but i’m still so sad and i know the next 2 weeks, leading up to when i would have been due are going to be hard. I’m really struggling with endless dreams that just break my heart on a pretty much daily basis, though they have changed in the last couple of weeks and mainly include a baby, rather than gory, nameless horror. Very tough though, very hard to shake off in the mornings, very hard not to punish myself over and over again. I’ve learned a lot of things about myself this year and one of them is that it is hardwired into me to be hard on myself, blame myself and see my failings, dwell on things and be hurt by things.

I’ve learned that i see myself through other peoples eyes all the time and i trust those words, good or bad, more than my internal voice, unless i’m very careful. I recognise now that i can’t change that totally, it is my nature for whatever reason, but i can manage it and to do that i need to evolve some mechanisms for coping with that side of my personality, so that it doesn’t actually stop me from enjoying my life.

A couple of days ago i was reading something and it asked a question that has its roots in The Matrix. Now i’ve never watched this film, so i may have it wrong, but whatever the film is about, the question was this. “If someone plucked you out of your life and gave you two options, which would you choose? The options are ‘take the blue pill and all the bad things that have happened will still have happened but you won’t know about them’ or ‘take the red pill and go back down with the all the hurt but all the knowledge it has brought’.”

I’m amazed, i can hardly believe it, but the moment i read it, i knew i wouldn’t take the blue pill. However much it all hurts, however much the scars are still red and sore, i’d choose to carry on. If i can’t actually alter the past then i’d rather acknowledge it and learn from it than obliviate it, i owe that baby that much at least. I’m not glad about what has happened, but i’m fairly sure i’ll end up a better person because of it. I feel better; i feel a bit more self-possessed from what i’ve been through this year, i feel more “this is me and if you don’t like it you can **** off” and i think that probably amounts to a slightly thicker skin.

There are days when i feel a bit like Frodo at the end of LOTRs, home and content but “wounded with knife, sting and tooth, and a long burden” and i know none of that will ever really go. But also, the dread that has circled around me since my friend died when i was 18, that something terrible was coming and that everything bad that happened was just a warning, one step to the side of me, has gone. I don’t fear the future anymore, i feel like i have dealt with utter and total tragedy for all of us and i’m not frightened anymore. I know bad and terrible things might still happen, but i’m not waiting for them.

The next month is going to be really hard; i’d have been due on the 14th and i’m dreading it. I know it will just be another day, i know it wouldn’t have come then, it would have come by section a week earlier, or sometime over Christmas, but even so, December feels utterly horrid at the moment. It will be the end of 2006, the year i have long dreaded as the year the pattern would be broken. I wish i wasn’t leaving my babies making days behind and i wish i wasn’t leaving them like this, broken-hearted because i wasn’t sensible enough to take more care. And i daresay i’ll do things and say things over the next month that people won’t approve of, or perhaps will sneer at, but you know what? I don’t give a ****. And that’s progress.