I pray with every last beat of my heart that my beautiful little boy doesn’t ever have to remember that sometimes Mummy was too sad to take him to the park.
I realise that this is completely unlike any blog post I have ever written before, and I am not quite sure if I am writing this as some form of therapy to try and rid myself of the guilt and regrets that eat me up each morning, or as an explanation to people who are both strangers and those close to me as to what I have been through over the past year or so.
I’m assuming most of you guys know a little about me. I became a first-time mum at the age of twenty; (a fresher at University and with the baby-face of a fourteen-year-old, it was safe to say that I received my fair share of judgemental looks as I waddled around like a penguin with haemorrhoids).
But as yet again I sit here with a hospital band still wrapped around my wrist, I can’t help but wonder how it all went so terribly wrong.
I promised myself that this would be my year. My new start, leave the past where the bastard belongs. Its fucked. I’ve already messed up more times than that neighbour a couple of doors down who I strongly suspect is growing marijuana in their attic.
It’s not easy to explain why you feel so low. Because you wake up in a morning unable to look at yourself in the mirror? Because each morning that little twinkle in your partner’s eye is slowly burning out? Because no matter how much you can have everything you ever dreamed of, the pieces in your head just won’t fit together anymore.
I was determined not to let my true feelings show out of fear that people would think I was a bad mother or that I wasn’t coping. The truth is that I really wasn’t coping at all. Being a parent is goddamn hard, anyone can tell you that. I only wish that someone had told me it was okay not to be okay.
I know that the hardest part of trying to deal with my mental health is the effect it had on the people closest to me. It is so easy to hide away in your own little world and pretend to yourself that the only person you’re hurting is yourself, but you’re lying. You’re lying to yourself, you’re lying to them and you’re lying because it’s easier than accepting the damage of the tornado you so easily created.
I lost myself a long time ago and i’m not sure I ever will be able to find myself again. I didn’t walk to a dark and isolated place intentionally, no one does. You stray from the path just a little and suddenly find yourself in the middle of nowhere.
People can watch you from the side and not understand how you’re lost because they can see the way out. You’re walking in the wrong direction and you can’t see a thing because it’s darker and you’re starting to stumble and trip, and all of a sudden you’re falling and the rocks you try to cling onto start to crumble away. You ache and you’re weak, you can hear people’s voices and see people’s faces but they are too far away. They try to pull you out but you’re too far away. They ask where you are and you try to explain but the right words won’t come out and in all honesty you don’t know yourself. You’re trapped and no matter how loud you scream or how hard you cry, you remain alone.
To anyone who is going through or has been through something similar, you’re not alone.
And to Max- I promise you the world, park trips where we run around so much your little legs start to ache and I’ll carry you home, kisses for as long as you’ll let me and an open heart for even longer x
