A letter to explain

Dear depression,

This week-I'm going to kick your arse.

Depression,  you have taken too many years from me, reduced me to a shell, a puppet, smiling though I'm empty inside.  You've hidden, deep away, for months, then returned with a vengeance,  slapping my self control round the face and whispering bitter insults into my mind. You've tried to destroy anything good, everything good, til my Husband came along, stronger than you, and my friends, you cannot ruin my friends.  Because,  and hear this, they know what your up to. They know exactly what you're trying to do, and they said no.

And I say no.

So pills and sunshine,  fighting your exhaustion and rationalising your irrational. Ice cream, hugs, and loving arms. These are my weapons. And depression?  Believe me.
I will win. For I am never alone.

Forever free,

Meg.

Letter to the Brave

Brave girl,

I catch your eye in the mirror, make up half done, hair fuzzing like a mane around your ears. You don't look brave. Anything but. Your toddler bursts in demanding a drink and your smile snaps back into place, in a minute darling.

You aren't anything special, no stunning beauty, no weeping in the corner, no dragging the world down with your pain. So, why? Why is this averagely average woman brave? What could she possibly do? She laughs, she jokes, she cuddles her kids, even when her heart is hollow and her pelvis snapping in two. She got back behind the wheel when every frayed nerve was screaming not to. Last week she drove across a bridge of a doom, a bridge that she'd narrowly avoided a panic attack on just a few days prior. Before that, drove in rain so heavy she could barely see. This woman, this seemingly nothing, can look in the mirror and smile at the face looking back. She has turned her heart and is ridding herself of the darkness that invaded her soul. This woman is brave.

Braver than even she will ever know.

Concrete Words-The Tainted

For a while I was tainted. Now I'm getting over that and I have become a 'tainter', I break most things I touch and, am mostly always, sporting some cut, or bruise, from some clumsy accident.

In just a few short weeks I have dropped and smashed my very shiny, beautiful, new phone, dropped and chipped my husbands shiny new iPhone, broken myself building a lightweight, plastic climbing frame, and, as of last night, burnt the finger prints off my middle finger by touching a barbecue. A lit barbecue.

A large portion of these misdemeanour's is simple stupidity, my brain fails to catch up with my actions and pain happens. A smaller portion is my sense of super hero-ness. Lit barbecue? No problem for me, teflon hands! Pregnant with a dodgy pelvis? Walking 3 miles can only help, surely? Have a new, probably expensive, technical item? Dropping onto a hard floor from a certain height can only help it run better. No?

I do not like being a 'breaker of self and shiny things'. Unfortunately, as time ticks by and days roll forward my lack of spatial awareness and butter fingers only get worse. Especially as I have no fingerprints left.

Keep your technology away from me, please, unless you want to see if it bounces.   

Letter to...

Dear man,

As I lay there, crumbled and twisted, literally trapped under my own stupidness, you crawled through the chunks of windscreen. You lay, belly pressed to glass, chatting to me about my hobbies, my interests. Tucked me under a manky old jumper. You searched through the shards of plastic to find my brand new phone. You told me I was going to make it, and I believed you.

As the car was lifted and my hand finally freed. It hurt. Really hurt. You stayed. You strapped.  You told me not to move. You cared, really cared, about the 17 year old bloody mess before you.

For you. I was a job. A horrible job but a job none the less. For me, you made the worst time in my life survivable.

Thank you.

Five Minute Friday - Listen

Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker here for five minute Friday.

So, my ears are open and I'm listening. Straining to hear the words behind the words. To see that look in my friends eye that means her 'I'm fine' is not fine at all. I listen with arms and heart open and tears running down   and sorrow hidden behind a mask of composure. I listen and I'm hear and I want to fix things. I really want to fix things. So many people are going through so much. And I know, I know I can't fix the actual problems so I sit. Offering tea and sandwiches. Letting these problems know I'm here, I'm fighting. I'm listening.

The Frame - Concrete Words

The Frame.

Let me tell you about a frame, a little, blue, giraffe encrusted number sat in the deepest corner of my living room. A frame showing the first ever picture of my first ever son. A frame that reminds me of all the things I was going to be as a Mother. We were going to go to the park every day, we would eat our 5 a day, birds would flutter through the window and help me do the washing up. Sadly, sat here at 12.42pm, pyjama clad, watching that first born demolish a plate of sausage and chips, the reality of Motherhood does not, at all, meet with naive promises of late.

That innocent, womb-fresh babies face has morphed into a nearly 3 year olds sliding mask of pure expression. He's happy, he's sad, he's angry, oh so very, very angry. He wants to play, he wants to watch Cars, on repeat, all day, he wants to eat, but he does NOT want to eat vegetables, thank you Mummy. He is, for lack of a better word, challenging. But on those hard days, those days where the room is too small and his voice just too loud, on those days where I would happily trade him in for a pet camel, I glance in the corner and see that little blue frame. I remember those promises. I remember his innocence wrapped in a purple blanket, I remember all the things I was going to be, and I remember the things I am now.

Forever and on he shall be my son. I will remember his tiny fingers, counting his tiny toes, watching in awe as he opened his eyes to the world. I shall teach him how to be strong in himself, to take what the world throws and toss it right back, to be strong, to be confident, to take the bins out, unprompted, on the right day. Mostly, I will love him.

And those, my son, are my promises to you.

Linking up with sixinthesticks for #concretewords.

Bravery - Take 2

This bravery issue has been bugging me.

What, if anything, is brave?

After a few days musings these are my conclusions, prepare yourself. Lets go...

I think bravery is a far more complex thing that it first seems. A watered down word used to describe everything from necessary injections to carrying on when you have no other choice. A word chucked about here and there, the meaning, the actual root of the word, diluted and buffed away over time.

But to be brave, completely, truly and honestly means to sacrifice a part of yourself. To swallow the actual fear growing in your chest and carry on. For different people this can mean different things. To do a presentation to an audience of blank faces, to climb so high your head is spinning, to hurt yourself to save another. Every day there are brave acts but their often so minute they get forgotten.

To be brave is a big thing, a huge thing, but often shown in a tiny, tiny way.