The calm

I am sitting in my living room, surrounded by boxes, waiting for the removal men to come and take away the seat i am sitting on. They will load it up along with everything else i own and on monday morning will unload at Cambridge.

I have spend all but one and a half years of my life in this general area. When I walk down the street I am on 'nodding' terms with the people I pass. I bump into old friends daily. Leaving will not be easy.

Since this last move i have grown close to one of my brothers again, we always knew we where there for each other but suddenly we where actually there physically. We have seen The long suffering wifes sister at least twice a week and have of course been actually living with my parents. Its not going to be easy moving on.

Dont get me wrong - i think this is a great move - its the right time, and there are benifits in a fresh start. An opportunity not to be know carries with it as many benifits as does being known.

Here I feel like I am chassing shadows, permently searching for pieces of my past I am not ready to let go of, will distance make it easier to be remade, reformed, molded into a diffrent image?

A watched pot, upset parents, and tears

Living in shared accommodation has its advantages – and its disadvantages. My mother had an old kettle that seemed to me to take a week to boil. Speaking to a friend who said that he had saved a “small fortune” by heating his water on the gas stove my mother went out and brought a new £40 kettle to be placed on the stove, and chucked away the old and admittedly battered electric kettle. While the electric kettle was slow to come to the boil, the gas kettle is painfully slow. Because it doesn’t turn itself of, you have to sit in the kitchen with it. Watching it. Waiting for it.

I am a creature of habit. In the morning I go into the kitchen, put the kettle on, put my porridge in the microwave, go to the loo, come back, take my porrage from the microwave pour my cup of tea. Not now. Now I sit and wait. I know its not long. Really I do. It is probably only two or three minutes longer. Yet it feels like 10-15mins. The watched kettle takes an age, the minutes dragging by painfully. Infuriated by the delay I make a search of the internet only to discover that a gas kettle does not save any money at all. It may even be more expensive. The damage is already done however, the new kettle has been brought and we must live with it. Or not have a cup of tea.

In other news the long suffering wife continues to do battle with other mums. Someone on her “list” sent out a recommendation of a book talking about how good routines are for children. Of course the long suffering wife had just been reading an article providing showing that routines create more tears, less sleep, and more stress all around. She duly circulated the article to the list – a move designed to generate feelings of hatred among the rest of the group only slightly less than her correct statement that cot death risks don’t decrees after six weeks but increase so it really isn’t the time to put your baby in a nursery.

Today I want to cry. I can find a reason. I want to stop the world and get off. Maybe it’s the kowladge of all the things I have still to collect from the old flat. Or the bankruptcy forms I haven’t finised filling out, or the pressure of work, or..Maybe its an accumulation of things, but whatever is causing it I want to hide under the duvet and vanish for a while. I am at work, its my lunch break – yet I wish I was at home, in a golden happy moment with my daughter smiling happily. I know I will not get home till seven or so by which time Grace will be struggling with colic (advice on remerdies not required). I know I will not eat till eight. I know I still have studying to do. I know when I do get home I will have to sit and wait for the kettle to boil.

I have read all your replies as ever – updates received on my phone which is far to difficult to reply on. I am listening even when I don’t answer. I am reading if sporadically your blogs even when I don’t post to your boards. Blah

Yours as broken as ever

The Broken Man

How it is....

The alarm goes of at 6.45am and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself out of bed. Breakfast and off to work. Work pressure is high but I try to study in my lunch break. I make it home for 6.30pm and take Grace while the long suffering wife cooks. All being well by 7.30pm we have eaten. I then need to work on boxing up the flat and taking things over to my mother's. We are moving in under 14 days.

I have cancelled all the direct debits, cancelled the mortgague payment, cancelled all the bills – the letters will soon rain down on me, the final demands – but I haven’t got the money to pay the bills. Paperwork needs looking at but I haven’t the will or the time to do it. At 1am I crawl into bed, at 3am grace wakes to feed. At 6.45am the alarm goes of and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself…and so it goes on.

It is the long suffering wife's birthday on the 27th. Grace’s dedication on the 1st. So much to do and right now all I want to do is sleep.

Last night the wife asked me how much I think her stomach will recover. If how it is now is how it is. She is doing the exercises from the physio – we are a long way off from where things will be but I see her struggling and there is no easy comfort I can offer. The long suffering wife was always going to struggle with a post birth body – she is a recovering annorexic on the wagon for some 10 years now. The tear of her stomach muscles though has made things so much harder, so much worse than they would have been otherwise. She has never had a positive body image and now I see her walking on a thin wire high above the world trying so hard not to fall, trying to cling on.

In a brief moment between feeds, between changed nappys, between packing boxes, between Grace with wind, I catch glimpse of my wife and daughter's eyes, brief moments, the merest hint of a smile and for a moment I lose myself in it and everything seems okay – and then I remember that there are things I need to be doing and so I drag myself out of my chair and continue the battle for survival.

Today I am struggling.

Yours as ever,

The Broken Man.