The best and worst of Christmasses

It's been a funny one this year. A large chunk of December is lost in a blur in my head, November too if I'm honest. Sometime a couple of months ago, I can't pinpoint when, it became difficult to do anything at all. Which is a familiar feeling from a while back at a different time in my life, and I'm extremely disappointed with myself for returning to being that way.

Looking at what's happened this year it's hardly surprising though, I heard from my mam who doesn't usually choose to speak to me in January because her cousin had died who I liked. March brought the death of my Grandma, my dad who I'm still terrified of ringing me while I was on the breastfeeding line so expecting a mother with some sort of feeding issue not he who I hadn't heard from since spring 2005. I braved the funeral, as usual I managed to draw my mam out of herself and she chatted despite 'not speaking to me', but at the end my parents made a point of leaving without saying goodbye. Foolishly, or perhaps inevitably, I wrote to my parents afterwards asking if we could try again, and got the familiar rejection letter a couple of weeks on.

This shouldn't still hurt four years on and about the fourth time around, but I don't think that as long as they are alive and refusing to talk to me I'll ever have any sort of resolution. I just kind of learn to live with it.

I made up with my Grandad in May. He's 88. I don't want to spell out what he did to me when I was a girl, suffice it to say that I saw going to see him as an act of heroism on my part, but of course he's in denial that anything happened and thinks of me as a naughty little girl, plus my parents have had his ear all this time 'your dad says you just stopped speaking to them for no reason. How do you think this makes your mother feel?' Errr... pardon?? Me stop speaking to them? Hahahahahaha. I did manage to move on and get along with him, at the end of the day he was pleased I showed up and therefore prepared to accept me regardless of how 'naughty' I'd been. I went again in September and probably will head back in January. It feels good to have moved on and let go of some burdens.

I was reeling from all this when my friend fell off his bike in August. My life since then has more or less involved worrying about them. His wife is my best girlfriend, maybe I should write 'sister' to spell out the significance of this women in my life, and her kids. She has no parents, they died. We've managed to fill in some of the missing pieces for each other, or she has for me anyway. I still, five months on and with her husband home, just want to make it all go away for them and put his spine back together, but nobody can, except God who is choosing not to. I know I've mentioned this recently, but it's extremely painful all round. Besides which I miss my friend. But feel extremely selfish for saying so.

So zip long to the last few weeks and my mood slump. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago when I went to sign on for an hour on the breastfeeding line and realised that I *could not cope* with an hour of people needing me so couldn't do it that I accepted I had a problem. I trotted along to the GP who increased my tablets.

My kids have suffered in this. I pulled them out of school which, although the best thing for us, can't be ignored as another major life change to come to terms with. I need to try harder to get a bit of time to myself. Martha has suffered the most and is in a very weird mood, has been for a couple of weeks. I must try to spend more time with her on her own. The boy has gone a bit wild, but not really more than usual. Flossie has actually been ok and seems a bit more settled now, despite her highly strung personality she's actually a lot more secure deep down, which I have to say I put down tot he fact that I co slept with her and breastfed on demand for 2 years .... got her off to a cracking start in life, and our relationship on a firm footing. Likewise Rosie at '2 and a little bit' is happy and fairly oblivious to everything.

But it's still been the best of Christmasses in a way. Once everything was done, and I had to accept I couldn't do it all so it was scaled down, it's been lovely to just spend time here with the six of us. I saw my friend and her family on Christmas eve in Starbucks, they had to manually operate the lift to get her dh up there as it was being repaired but they did it, and got him down again, and it felt 'normal'. Followed by him being rushed to hospital later that day apparently with dvt but he's been released on time for their christmas with blood thinners..... once that was over and there was nothing I could do I was free to focus on our family and somehow we had a really lovely peaceful time. I think I appreciate the simple but really important things a bit more now. And of course my tablets have had time to kick in.

So babysteps. I'm not taking anything on til I can cope, for now I'm taking my tablets, being nice to myself and putting everything I've got into repairing things with the kids. I can do this, I've done it before. This is just a hiccup on the way to recovery and normality.