How are Things?

Tag: child

  • Monday 28th July 2025

    I feel an awareness of anticipatory sadness; tomorrow the 29th marks two important anniversaries.

    It was the day I and my son were evicted from our home.

    And it was the anniversary of my wedding day.

    The two days are very far apart, as you might imagine. My wedding day was probably a day that saw a lot of people laughing at me. I was older than the average bride. And fatter, too. I can only guess at the sniggering my attempts at ‘blushing bride’ might have inspired. One thing that made the day particularly hard was that my mum was very, very sick. She had Early Onset Alzheimer’s and on the day wasn’t able to be there; in fact, I’m not sure she knew who I was.

    It is really hard to remember that. So much of that day was hard, and sad, and a struggle and I, I don’t know how to say all of it and keep going tomorrow morning.

    So I might leave that go, with just the comment that it is in itself a novel of sadness.

    And the eviction happened last year. My by then ex-husband left so much junk behind that I received a furious phone call that evening. I was shell-shocked and brutalized getting to my family home. They were so angry with me over the amount of junk he had left for them that they threw out all the things they had agreed to keep until my own sale closed. I saved what I could, it cost me hundreds, but there was so much lost; mementos, things from my son’s childhood, Christmas decorations…

    There had been a little mechanical teddy bear that read The Night Before Christmas. She had been exactly the thing my son loved each Christmas. And I lost her, and she got thrown out on a skip and forgotten, when I loved her so much.

    I got through all of last year with just grit and putting up with things. But somehow when I think of that bear, which I must have loved, I can’t but cry. They threw her out with a sense of anger, of disgust, and she was innocent of all of it.

  • Friday 25th July 2025

    It’s Friday. I made it. I got through the interviews, and the meetings, and the work, and taking care of my son, and now it is Friday. Today, my son went to spend two weeks with his father, and I will get to sleep.

    His father lives with his parents, and has since we broke up, which was in 2021. He exploded our lives with viciousness and resentment; he had in fact been doing that for years, but had never pointed it at my son. It was an ordeal for me that had been going on for the best part of a decade.

    But then he did it to my son.

    My son. He was his father, but he was/is my son. I took care of him, I fed him, I worked from 5am during Covid so I could take of him, I dealt with all the schools. I was the parent. My then husband was also in the house.

    When he did that to my son he screamed at him, yelled at him, then walked out of the room as calm as a swiss knife returned to its slot, leaving a terrified child and myself in freeze/fawn mode, but aware that something was very wrong.

    I am not going to talk about that tonight.

    It is years later. He still lives with his parents, a situation I approve of as at least I know there are two other sane people in the house. I will speak to him every night on the phone. It’s alright. It’s all alright.

    He will be out of the house for two weeks. I will work, work out, and get to cry a lot. I will get to think about myself for a bit, and just… rest. The music can change tempo, be slower, kinder, more reflective.

    You know you have lived a life not many would chose when the idea of being alone is so utterly restful and kind, so peaceful!

    Peace, just peace.

    Good night all.

  • Tuesday 8th July 2025

    I woke at 5am for some reason believing it to be Saturday. My brain is craving release. I managed to get up today and get some work done, then took my boy to art camp. Yesterday saw me hunt for him in the car park. He is 13, not a big deal, but today they ensured that no child from his group would be let out without a parent coming to pick him up. Of course I was the last one there, so I managed to cause a lot of delay for all the teenagers minding the place. Lordie.

    Today was the release of the brand new, all shiny, will-solve-everything financial system in my workplace. This thing will, and I quote, see the institution hopefully do away with lots of administrative staff. It was supposed to roll out at 9am. That became 1pm. At 2.30pm there was no sign, and I had to collect my son and make it home to work from there.

    At home in the afternoon, maybe it was the coffee, maybe the consciousness of the extra needs of my son, but I was alerted and somewhat agitated. I got as much done as I could by 5.30, then made dinner.

    By 6.30pm I and my son were online, playing our very first round of Dungeons and Dragons. The DM is a friend from work and there was a third person joining us. My son finds it hard to regulate his excitement, even his voice, so I had to tell him to ease up on the volume a few times. This was enough to see him upset, thinking that I was making him feel left out. Maybe I was. The truth is that I have no friends, no activities and no hobbies other than this, and the chance to do something, anything, just for me, is rare. And he didn’t like it. I hope we get to do it again, it was a good space for my brain to be in.

    And now, the laundry is out of the machine, the clothes are laid out for tomorrow, and I will be at my computer by 6am at the latest to see if I can sort out the financial issues of my unit. Talk to you then.