Hello again: Putting My Head Above the Parapet
Tuesday 14th of January 2014 | Category: Opinion | Written by: Mr Boos MumIf my blog posts were puppies (bear with me…) I’d like to think they were little spaniels. Enthusiastic and positive little things, hungry for love and attention but happy to play with a ball in a corner if people are otherwise engaged. But if this blog post were a puppy, I fear, it would be one of those lollopy dogs with droopy, please feel sorry for me eyes you get on greetings cards. And its tail would be between its legs. You see, I haven’t been here on this site for a while. A long while. And to say I am embarrassed about it would be a bit of an understatement.
Apart from my Juggle of Modern Motherhood post for the wonderful Mum Network blogging carnival and another post introducing myself and the blog, I haven’t written a new post for this lovely community since late summer. Yes. It’s that bad.
Why? Well, life did get in the way a fair bit, I must say. But the real reason? I did something I swore I would never do when I started the blog: I wrote a post that became a stick to beat myself with. I wrote a post where I set out a new standard by which to live. Instead of trying to be a good enough mum (a bar I never reach in my own estimation) I decided I’d start to judge my parenting success by how happy everyone was. And guess what? We spent months being miserable a fair bit of the time.
It wasn’t entirely the fault of the post. Frustrations with my son’s care and getting through two formal complaints with the PCT and Social Services were tough going. The lack of sleep we seemed consigned to for life were tougher still. And ultimately, I realised, I wasn’t quite in control of happy I or anyone else was. Some days were tough, but I went to bed laughing and smiling. Others went well and I cried myself to sleep. Such is our life. Such is the life of a many a family with a child with additional needs. Such is the life of many a family with one of its members battling depression.
And there are lots of us, but sometimes we feel very much in the minority. That we’re the odd ones out. That while everyone else is making cupcakes and posting pictures on Pinterest that make the photographers on Good Housekeeping look like amateurs we are scraping burnt porridge off the bottom of our beaten up saucepans.
And so you retreat. You don’t want to put your head over the parapet, by meeting people, or writing a blog post, because you get worried that you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. You worry that you will feel your difference and failure so acutely that you it will cause you physical pain.
So you take the path of least resistance and stay quiet. The best way to ignore the mounting guilt is to ignore it, after all.
But then one day you wake up and you’ve had enough. You realise that this is a problem of your own making. You realise how kind and supportive people have been and are and that no one will blame you for not living up to the impossible standards that you (not anyone else, mind, you) set yourself in a post very few people probably read.
And you remember why you blog and why it’s important to you and how cutting yourself off from the people who have done most to help you in the last 10 months is a spectacular own goal.
And then you write this post and hope all is forgiven.
I have a feeling I’m not alone. What are you putting off or keeping away from? Is it making you happy? If so, I’m pleased for you. If not, why not think about putting your head over that parapet. It might just make you feel better, you know.
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