Anxiety

My anxiety has a physical feeling. It's a butterflies turning to sick feeling in my stomach. These last few months I have had this feeling from a couple of times a day to, in some cases, all day. In most situations I cannot tell you what the cause was, or how or why it went away. Or why it came back a little while later.

Anxiety doesn't totally stop me doing things. I function, albeit in a slightly dizzy distracted way. I muddle through with the things I have to do  and often it really is a muddle. In the last few weeks I have forgotten to take things with me, failed to do things I should have remembered and overall felt overwhelmed by the nature of parenting two busy bubbly daughters. I've felt a failure in most regards and I have let myself and everything else slide. There is something to say I have impossibly high expectations of myself (more of that another time no doubt) but recently I have felt like nothing I do is good enough.

My anxiety or low mood, whatever you want to label it, is cyclical. When I am at my worst it is pretty obvious to people who know me. I talk less, cry more, don't ring my mum and write nothing whatsoever. I cut myself off.

I did go to the GP and I've been talking to someone about things. It is a slow process.

The last few days I have felt more myself. Things are clearly getting better because I feel like I can make some changes. So I'm trying. Baby steps and all that. But I worry that this will come back in all it's miserable anxious stupor. So these changes need to improve things not just now but for the future which is a big ask.

It's hard for me to write about this. Partly because I don't want you to think I'm a terrible person who can't cope. Partly because I don't want to you think I'm asking for your sympathy.

But the reason I'm writing this is to add my voice to talking about mental illness. I'm bubbly and chatty (some might say loud) with a wonderful family and home. What have I got to be low about? Well the fact that I don't even know says something about the nature of mental illness.

So here it is. I'm ok by the way.

Sharing

You may expect from that title that I'm about to talk about my children's lack of ability to share.

But no. It's actually mine.

I was 38 last Thursday. Happy Birthday you say? That's very kind of you.

But for every time someone sings Happy Birthday to me, I have to sing it again. For my husband. And my Dad. And probably Jarvis Cocker if he happened to be passing (but I don't feel quite as aggrieved about him). Because we all have the same birthday. That's just weird isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, I know that until the age of 21 whilst I "shared" my birthday with my Dad the spotlight was somewhat pointed in my direction. I can't imagine he really wanted the Mr Happy birthday cake we had when I was five. Or to watch 'Supergirl' at the cinema with four nine year old girls. Or to be woken up at the crack of dawn on his own birthday for, let's face it, about 20 years.

Hang on I'm talking myself out it this, maybe it was a bit worse for Dad than me...

But the husband sharing your birthday thing is frankly a bit annoying.

When people ask me how we met I regale them with this lovely tale:

We went to primary school together, then years later met again in a dubious (popular with students) pub. He was quite good at pool. I wasn't (which at least meant my 20p lasted a long time). He said "Are you coming out on my birthday on Saturday?" I said "Really that's my birthday too". Oh how we laughed. On our birthday we went to Spalding's dodgiest night club with friends and watched some actors dancing barefoot.

Some might say it was fate. I say I'd rather we had a different birthday.

He freely admits that the likelihood of him making me a birthday cake is slim so I mostly make my own. Unless I get to have some of Dad's. Which implies more cake. And to be fair the girls bought me one this year anyway. Perhaps things aren't so bad after all...

But I usually have to arrange nights out and book my own babysitter. Although that isn't such a bad thing for a control freak I suppose...

If nothing else I am absolutely sure that sitting down to discuss matching birthday budgets does rather take the romance out of it all. But then I suppose it does for Paul too somewhat. And god help him if he didn't spend as much on me as I do on him - that's some added pressure right there. And he does buy me lovely things. Hmm.

In actual fact this year was quite special overall because Dad turned 70. So we had a day just for him with nearly our whole family and lovely food. And despite the fact it was his special day really, Paul and I still got our names on the cake. And it was the third birthday cake we'd had in four days so I can't really complain.

Ok I give in. I quite like it really. And Paul is definitely older than me. I mean it's only 12 hours but it counts right? I'll stop moaning. Until next year...