I don't know what it is about this time of year, but it's happening again.
I've spent the entire day crying on and off.
My stomach is upset from it all, and this evening I laid down on my bed at dinner time to just catch my breath for a minute.
The light was on, and I couldn't bare it...I felt like it was highlighting me, highlighting all the different issues swirling around in my head...I had to get up and switch it off.
I laid there in total darkness and I felt concealed from the world....and suddenly I felt a little better.
I had another cry and I drifted off to sleep.
It was only 6pm and I slept until 11.
When I woke up, I cried again.
Jon asked me what was wrong....I tried to tell him but it all came out in a mad rush of a million little niggling issues that have snowballed to completely knock me over. And I'm struggling to get back up.
What's funny about it all is that there are so many bigger issues going on at the moment...
We're in the middle of legal disputes with our former landlord over getting our deposit back which means constant meetings and letter writing and evidence gathering....
We're trying to sort out travel insurance claims from the holiday we had to cancel last year due to my hyperemesis...
I'm trying to get registered with a new Doctor and midwife and sort out getting my maternity notes together after losing them in the house move...
We're still trying to get everything unpacked and set up in the new house....everyday it seems something else has gone missing.
Money is so tight right now, and we're trying to budget as much as we can but counting every penny is exhausting me.
Work dried up completely over Christmas and is now starting to pick up again, which is great but I'm struggling to re-adjust to the change of pace.
I found out that I'm severely anemic and have been since my 12 week blood tests, but nobody told me so its been getting worse...I'm on medication now but its not kicking in very quickly, and I'm exhausted all the time.
My sickness seems to be coming back, and I don't seem to be able to keep an evening meal down.
Our new house is lovely and I feel much happier here, but we're being charged £10 per DAY for electricity which is absolutely killing us financially and I don't know how we can keep up with those kinds of charges.
For the past 4 or 5 days I have been in constant pain - period pains and back pain, and shooting pains down my legs - and there are vigorous extremely painful movements from the baby - all of which combined is making me panic about going in to early labor.
Those are the bigger problems.....there are plenty of them, as you can see....but they're not the things that are bringing me down.
Weird, right?!
But no...the things bringing me down and making me upset are so much more trivial.
I'm putting so much work and effort in to trying to improve my blog this year - I bought a new camera, I'm trying to learn to take better photos, I'm trying to focus more on my written content and write proper posts - I'm trying to circulate and promote my posts more - it might seem silly to some but I put in so much effort and so many hours every single day in to this blog, and it's so disheartening to find that my hits are going down instead of up, I'm getting fewer comments than ever before, and it seems my efforts are unnoticed or unremarkable.
I'm finding myself getting so upset about being turned down for opportunities in favour of other people, and I know that jealousy is a horrible thing and comparison is the thief of joy and all that...but it's hard, if not impossible, not to take it personally when you spend most of your day working on ideas to improve whether in reality or in your head. My blog is a labor of love, and it hurts me very much to feel that somebody thinks my best work isn't good enough.
I'm hearing that family members are upset and complaining that I haven't thanked them quickly enough for Christmas presents and that's making me feel really shitty. Anyone who actually knows me would know that I wouldn't intentionally disregard a gift - it's been on my mental checklist of things to do for the past 2 weeks since we received the gift, everyday I tell myself in the morning "I have to remember to send that message today!" but then the chaos starts and theres a toddler running wild, phonecalls to make, work deadlines to be met, and all of the above-listed "Bigger Problems" to be dealt with every single day and before I know it - it's already midnight and the day is gone again. But now its too late, I've already been labelled as ungrateful...as though I'm sitting around painting my nails all day deliberately not thanking somebody.
I have friends going through some major issues - one friend in particular with a very unwell newborn and I'm so very worried about her and what might be happening.
I want to be there for all of my friends, but each and every time I log on to Facebook there are numerous messages from people asking for my help with this or that, asking for my opinion or my advice - and I want to be there for all of them, but I feel completely out of my depth and overwhelmed all the time and the majority of the stress is related to problems that I can't even control because they belong to other people.
I'm living in a new town where I know absolutely nobody - this became very apparent to me all of a sudden a few nights when I seriously thought I was going in to early labor at 3 am and I realised that there is nobody here - there's nobody who could come over at 3 am and watch Tyne while I go to the hospital. I would have had to wake him up and bring him with us - which would mean Jon wouldn't be able to come in with me if anything did start happening and I would be alone. Which is a pretty scary thought, particularly when you have anxieties and death phobias like mine.
Most of my friendships these days are via the internet - blog friends and bump group friends - and don't get me wrong, I've met many of these people and they are wonderful friends to have. But they're all inside the computer - and right now, the computer and social media is stressing me out too much.
Last night I read a post shared by another blogger which I found really interesting - mainly because of the conversational style it was written in, it gave me serious writer envy and I wished I'd come up with that way of getting a point across myself - I also liked that it made me think about my parenting style and made me consider some things from a childs perspective and how I might feel in Tyne's shoes.
So I shared it.
Of course with any parenting related topic there will be people who agree and people who disagree - I have no problem with that.
I see posts shared multiple times every single day that I don't personally agree with - I shrug my shoulders and think "Nope, I don't agree" and I move on with my day.
But when I shared this post, I slowly started to get messages, tags and so on from SO MANY people telling me the post had made them feel bad and that they didn't like it.
I didn't write the post and I didn't even take the same message from it that they did - it seemed to get a lot of peoples backs up about various cry-sleep training methods, when I personally didn't read that from it at all.
But by the end of today, after a WHOLE DAY of yet more messages back and forward about it with SO MANY people on my Facebook friends list - I just felt defeated.
I felt as though everyone else has every right to share articles they like and share opinions and tips on parenting methods that they support, but as soon as I do it I'm the worlds biggest villain - because my opinion is different? Because I liked the way a point was put across?
It made me feel "How dare I share something that I found moving and that made me think...."... and I don't like that feeling.
I might not personally opt for any CIO methods, but there were other things in that article that did make me stop and think.
For example, it discussed - from the perspective of a child - how they might feel when they're denied food until the next day if they refuse one meal for some reason.
We've always been lucky with Tyne - he eats anything - but typically today, he refused a perfectly nice lunch for the first time. Instead he asked for crackers, cheese and grapes.
My immediate gut reaction was to say "No, you eat your lunch or you have nothing else".
Jon said he'd just get him some crackers and I responded "No...he's not choosing what he eats"....and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, my mind took me straight back to that article....and I thought "Hang on a minute...why can't he choose what he wants for lunch? I choose what I want for lunch every day. He's not asking for crisps and chocolate. He fancies crackers, cheese and grapes instead of a hot chicken dinner...why can't he have that? How would I feel if I asked for something I fancied and was told I have to eat what I was given or have nothing?"
So I gave him the lunch he asked for and he ate it.
Of course I don't want to encourage that everyday but I appreciated that the article had managed to speak to me enough to make me stop and think and question my own gut response to a situation - and to me, that's the power of writing and what I love about it - that you can actually make someone reconsider and think from a different perspective than their own.
But feeling like I'm in the wrong for sharing something that spoke to me has really depressed me....from a writers point of view, it feels like censorship and the need to not offend prevails these days and that you must always tread so carefully incase you accidentally make someone feel bad for something they choose to do.
And so lately, for all of the reasons above.... instead of feeling like the internet is a space to come to for chat and support, I feel like its becoming this little box of darkness in the corner of the room where I can hear the constant "Binging" sound that Facebook makes when there's a new notification - and I log on with trepidation wondering what I've done now or who needs what from me now.
And so I need to step away from that for a while.
I need time to focus on just relaxing and getting well and having fun with my toddler in the last few months before the newborn mayhem starts.
I need an internet detox.
And so I'm stepping away for a while, in the hopes I can come back to it all with fresh eyes and a new perspective.
I'm logging out of Facebook for a week - I've turned off email notifications - I've deleted Facebook, Twitter & Instagram apps from my phone and my ipad.
I'm taking a huge step back from blogging for a while....scheduled posts will still go ahead but I'll be taking a week or so off writing anything new.
I need to take myself out of the online world and exist solely in the physical world....just for a week....just to see if it helps at all.
So let life in cyber space go on without me, and let's see where that leaves me...
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