Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

Mid spring 2014

Nearly 4 weeks have passed by since I wrote to you last, and I was quiet for a long time, simply because I could not bring myself to lift my hands to the keyboard.  The extent of my motivation levels was to put my hand over the mouse, and click the drop down on my history bar and continue clicking through Times Live; The Mail Online; Facebook, all the while reading the bylines of Oscar related stories, the missing Malaysian plane, DA and ANC spats, The young royals down under, and any related shares on Facebook.  I’ve discovered what flower I should be, what dessert I am, what Harry Potter character I align to, and that I should be living in Cape Town. 

The truth is, is that I had a 9 month melt-down, mostly because I have way too much time on my hands to sit and think, but lack the fire to drag the sports gear from the bottom of my cupboard and actually make use of it by releasing my misery onto the pavements or bicycle tyres.

Granted, my excuse does keep me from running away- I have 50 minutes free before lunch with the girls, and an hour and a half free after lunch before end of day pick up, and the concept of changing out of a set of clothes in the middle of the day to put on sweats, run around aimlessly from 2 until 3, head home for a shower and put another set of clothes on, well, that just doesn’t make sense to me and the issues I have with washing, where to hang it to dry, and letting it lie around the house for hours on end.

As you can see, I am a crafty, self-diagnosed misery addict.  I know what you will tell me, and what I would tell you if you were in my shoes.  I tell myself the same thing every single time.  I went through a worse phase about 6 months after I moved to Jozi in 2003, and I had a difficult time making friends, and I truly felt so alone in those months. It is not easy moving to a new place- a new city, village, school, wherever- when you don’t know more than 4 people, who already have their own lives to get on with.  At that time, my job didn’t help the situation, and I really struggled for a long time.  (I have to say a quick thank you to L, who let me paint reams of calico into unsightly easy-to-discard tablecloths through a difficult time.)

It was only when I was re-united with the love of my life, had a change in job, and one of my best friends moved to Jozi that I was able to stop with weekly therapy sessions.  Since then I have been lucky to always have Anton, my family and work, and later my girls, and most of the time, this sees me through most stages of my life.

Sadly I have to confess, now, that I don’t have that balance, and I am not a natural at being a stay-at-home mum.

After 9 months of not having to be up and out the door by 5h40, I still fall back on my oldest habit in my life- lying in bed reading until the cows come home.  During term time, I don’t do this, but with the girls on holiday-again- I am enjoying letting them watch television until I am ready to put my book down.

Breakfast is a bowl of fruit and yoghurt well after 8 o clock, and as long as they are playing together, I leave them to their own devices.  By this time, the TV is off, and the tablets have been packed away, so inevitably the Lego gets turned out across the bedroom floor, the pencil crayons are emptied ceremoniously on the table in the lounge, and my scrap paper collection gets drawn on, stuck on with stickers, cut up into millions of little pieces and left to languish among dirty cushions, that this stay-at-home mum is not overly desperate to clean.

At some point after I have had my second coffee, put washing in the machine, started the dishwasher, read the news online, read through the Facebook shares of the hour, participated in the “Which dot-dot-dot are you” quizzes, and Skype chatted with Anton and a few other besties back home, I will realise in what state the girls bedroom is.  My desire to tidy up after them hits an all time low, at which point I begin to mentally write a letter to Lego, lamenting my issues about standing on teeny tiny Lego flowers and have them slip underneath the shoe rack, never to be found when I need them again.

 

But I digress.

In the last few months, I have lapsed into my self-inflicted misery almost every month, thanks to the absence of the Pill coursing through my endocrine system, and it reminds me of a blog post I read last year about the evils of putting fake hormones into our body, and it reminds me that each and every one of us are not made of one DNA structure. 

While I weigh up the pro’s and con’s of the Pill for me (and secretly fear the moment that I will actually have to go to a French gynae for a prescription), I also spend time considering my habitat.

At the beginning of this month, Anton spent a large part of his day at work- he was up early, left home early, and was only getting home at 7 in the evening.  However, his early departure meant that I was full on Mom, mediator, carer, chef, translator, and transport person for 3 weeks, and I have not felt so alone in a long time.  One Wednesday, Alex asked me to contact her friends’ Mum to ask if we could meet up in the park.  By midday I had had enough of the kids claustrophobia, so we went out to the park anyway, when the friend called to say they will head out after 2, so for 2 hours I sat in the sun, and watched my girls play, waiting for the arrival of the friend.  By 3, she had not arrived, so I rewarded the girls with an ice-cream on the way back home, and my heart a little more heavy.

Aside from feeling like the worst mum in the world, I also was desperately sad to not be surrounded by people clamoring to be with us.  The thing is though, I put up obstacles, like I refuse to put the buggy onto my bike so that I can cycle everywhere with Beth tucked in.  Instead I rely on the bus, or the tram, and my own 2 feet, while I stress about Beth cycling ahead of me.

 

Can you see what I do?  I have the world at my finger tips- free doctors, cycle paths everywhere, inexpensive sports clothing, TIME, and I make a sorry excuse to not indulge in every single remedy to a healthy happy attitude.

 

Before you pick up your phone to Whatsapp/text/mail me to check up on me now, I can safely say that I am (once again) over that desperate sadness. 

Last of last week, I ditched my lovely friend H after we had arranged a Sunday trip.  Anton was driving to Germany to play cricket, and I had initially decided I was not prepared to be solo carer again- be it at home, or on the edges of a cricket field, so H and I hatched up the train trip to Colmar, to get out, but at the last minute I felt that even two 90 minute car trips with my hubby would be better than nothing, I cancelled with H (I still feel awful about it), threw my picnic bag into our car and went off to Karlsruhe to watch the Strasbourg Strollers play some cricket.

Turns out there was one other family of spectators, including a 15 year old girl from the UK, who by the change of innings was happy to take the girls off to run around and play, and I could indulge in chat with the British Foreign Officers’ wife.  Finally, on the way home I was able to open up to Anton about how I had been feeling for the last week, and share my thoughts; something that I had not been able to do during the week, for fear of sounding desperate and accusatory.

What I have decided, is that I will start looking for work- I will put feelers out, so that by the time the girls go back to school after the long summer holidays, I will be better equipped to find work in the catering field.  By working, we will afford to send the girls to the cantine for lunch; Anton might not have to do as much overtime as he is, and I will have my own money to be able to buy decent shoes for the girls, and actually have my hair cut by a professional. It’s the small things, at the end of the day that matter the most.

I am still a very long way off getting back my confidence levels, and I do still feel trapped and isolated, purely because I cannot express myself like I could back at home. How long do I get away with feeling sorry for myself though?  One thing that I have discovered is that my confidence lies mostly in a plate of food, and quite simply, it makes sense that I return to work in the only way I know how to.

I keep thinking of my alter-ego, that very dark gothic or ‘emo’ young girl inside of me.  I long to cake my eyes in dark black kohl, and dye my hair purple, walk around with Catcher in the Rye tucked into my bag, and earphones blocking out the noise, but you get to a point in your life where that does not answer to the little you’s at your side, and instead you need to look to the sun.

Will you be at my side for this walk?