Month: November 2015

So the second week of our holidays have been very different….. as close to happiness as this old family gets I’d say. There have been plenty of arguments, and plenty of nasty moments, but generally it’s been a relaxed, beautiful experience abroad…. Thank goodness. Life over here is very chilled out. The house we’re staying in is a beautiful double storey Texan home on around 90 acres. There is a two storey playhouse with a flying fox coming off it, a horse called Tony that just wanders freely around the yard including up to the wrap around verandah where you might be sitting and having a bevvie, and he doesn’t mind the kids just jumping on his back saddle free for a little walk around the yard.  It’s a good ten miles to a shop and closer to twenty minutes to the main town. It’s serenity at it’s best…… just what the Dr would prescribe I guess. Sometimes the pain that I see in the girls shows more when there is no reason at all for their cracks to be showing……  If there is no reason why they should be not coping, and we’re seemingly having the best time, then I can see clearer where it comes from. Last night Rubes and I ended up in an almighty blow out. The late nights have caught up with her and her snappiness and anxiety issues are harder and harder to hide. Being in a household with two other young girls’ means that there are usually two against two…. Her competitive nature comes screaming out, and it starts continuous wars. It’s frustrating and exhausting as hell being the parent of the kid that is constantly making issues where issues don’t need to be made. I don’t agree with her 90% of the time and she is fully aware of this….. This causes issues in itself. It makes me seem like I never take her side, and to a kid with one parent at home, that must be awful. But I can’t bullshit her either. How will she ever learn right from wrong, or what is socially acceptable and what is not? I know the Aspergers will sometimes make it impossible for her to see these things without being reminded…. but surely if she listened enough she might just remember what is okay and what is not?? The problem is that she doesn’t ever listen, because in her head she already knows the answers to life….. she knows what to say, what to not say, when to pipe up, when to not…. of course we all know that this is bullshit. She certainly doesn’t know when to stop….. she must have the last word. At any cost. So the last few days here have slowly become a little more uncomfortable and a little more uncomfortable between the kids… luckily my mate is a high school teacher. She has handled it very well. As have her gorgeous girls…… Today we head to the big smoke to buy the girls some cowboy boots, I am hoping that we can diffuse the situation…. We have had an incredible time, and we have well and truly fallen in love with Texas…. for me, it’s the second time. I’m just glad that with all these issues we have, it doesn’t stop us from travelling the world and sucking it dry for what it has to offer us….. We are all so grateful that we are still here to enjoy it.

See y’all soon. xxxx

When Trenton died all I could think was “How the hell are the girls going to survive this?” After a few months I thought the same of myself. Now two years and four months later I wonder how we will ever lead a normal, or even semi normal life again. Everything that was, is now not….. everything that was going to be, is now not going to be anymore. You would think that after being given the shittiest hand life could deal you, that you might be given a break in other aspects of your life…… well, I’m still waiting. And it’s not to say that wonderful things have not occurred in our lives since that devastating night, (they certainly have) it’s just that the things we keep hoping to fix, seem unfixable. I have tried so hard to soften the blow for those girls, and I think that for nearly two years while I held my shit together I did… but instead now, my own pain has ended up making their lives worse. This holiday has shown me, in all it’s rawness, just how fucked up we all are. I know it was not intended to, but throw us out of our comfort zone, onto the other side of the planet, and then put us on show from the crack of dawn until almost midnight every night trying to battle the queues and craziness of a bunch of theme parks, and you will see us fully crack open. It may ultimately be a good thing to see, but right now the tears are pouring down my face at the sheer desperation I feel at helping those girls. The topic has come up a lot…. being somewhere that Trenton would have adored to be is a constant reminder that he is not with us anymore. Poppy has been very angry during this trip, because she feels that all the help seems to come to me. Even though it’s in the way of friends and family trying to explain to her and Ruby that I need support to raise them…. and a break once a week by way of my Dad coming to stay….. What she see’s are people constantly telling her to let me go, to let me out…. and all she wants is for me to be there for her 100%. In her biggest time of need. Ruby has been anxiety ridden the entire time since we left Melbourne… (yes, she is also anxiety ridden when we are in Melbourne.) But this trip has amplified her fears ten fold, and she is a blithering mess. She (without meaning to) has consumed my every bit of energy from the beginning of the holiday until now with her anxiety ruling every single decision that she has had to make. Before every ride she questions if she will vomit, have a panic attack or have a heart attack and die. But she loves rides more than anything, and in her life pre Trenton’s death she would have questioned it, but then gotten on and sucked in every moment. Now she spends two thirds of her day panicking and dry retching over it. It’s the saddest thing to see. I have trained up the chaperone for this trip on how to answer her three thousand questions a day, just the right way so that we can share the load. Then last night she had a full blown anxiety attack in the queue for a ride at ten thirty pm thinking she was going to have a heart attack and die, and demanded that I drag her shaky, near on fainting body through the entire theme park to the entrance where the other million people were trying to get to as well…… only to fall into my arms outside the lockers crying like a baby asking me why Daddy had died, why I didn’t tell her he was going to die (I had re assured both girls that he’d be fine when I dropped them at their Nana’s at two am the night he’d passed away…) and how could I tell her that she wasn’t having a heart attack right at that very moment if I’d got it wrong with Dad? Fuck….. Like seriously….. Just fuck. How can people go through this crap forever?? I keep watching the same kinds of shit happen to my support group of Widow’s and Widower’s, and I wonder what the breaking point is? I think I’ve hit it twelve times already…… Sure, we can get a free trip to Disneyland…. I’ll take it, those kids deserve it! But it’s not long before our situation reminds us that although good things can happen to good people, our lives will never be the same again for us to enjoy it like normal people can. I can see now that we have progressed through time, but not life. Time is passing, we are still breathing, but more in a treading water kind of way… just to survive. I only wish that five years had passed already and that we might be coping a little better. I wish Ruby wasn’t about to graduate primary school without her adoring Dad watching on. I wish Poppy didn’t have to at the age of eight have to assume the role of an adult to comfort me when things are getting too much to bare….. and I wish the two of them only had the issue of choosing an outfit, picking a boy to like or deciding on which mate to visit on the weekend…… like normal kids do. It just isn’t the case I’m afraid…… Such is this bloody life. xxxx

So…… tomorrow we leave for our trip to the US. It’s been a full on crazy year and a half since my sister nominated us for an all expenses paid trip to Disneyland for a week through “Feel the Magic,” and a year since we were chosen….. It’s a little bit like a dream actually. I feel so lucky to have been chosen, as do the kids, but of course we know we were nominated in the first place because we lost something enormous. So it’s another wonderful scenario that is a little tainted by reality. None the less, we are packed, pumped and ready to go on too many rides, eat way too much crappy American food and have way too little sleep. Ahhhhh holidays! I am very excited to see the kids experience all of this. I was around seven when I went to America with my folks and I still remember what a wonderful pace it was to visit. We got a motorhome and drove around for a few weeks, and although the memories have faded a little with time, I still remember what a fabulous trip my sisters and I had. Trenton and I dreamed of taking the kids to Disneyland one day, he too went as a child and it was definitely on the bucket list. I guess I never foresaw us going in this way, but I am humbled yet again at the support and generosity our mates, and the family that helped us raise the funds for Feel the Magic, that in turn paid for us to go. 11 years ago I took Ruby to Texas as a nine month old baby to see a mate who I’d only just recently travelled around Oz with get hitched. It was the most awesome trip, particularly being able to experience and feel the real Texas. We stayed with her Aunt and Uncle,  a traditional Texan family on a ranch, complete with typical Texan hospitality….. and truth be told I didn’t want to come home!!! Once our trip to LA and our wonderful week in Disneyland is over, we are flying back to Texas to experience a real Texan Thanksgiving with my same beautiful mates again….. I am so excited by this opportunity. The way I’ve always tried to travel is to get off the beaten track so you get to see the place as the locals see it, and live, eat, shit and breathe like the locals do. So this will be an awesome experience for the kids too…… to see how people on the other side of the planet live. This is something that a book or the internet cannot show or teach you. And this is also why I love to travel so much….. it’s my favourite way of experiencing a different culture first hand. I am almost more excited to watch my girls interact with my friends two girls, and just look at the different ways that they do things…. It’s going to be an interesting trip! Anyway, I shall be uploading many piccy’s….. sorry in advance if (and when) I go overboard with that! But you know me…… that is what I do best….. See you when I’m looking at you peops. xxxxxx

So on Monday I turned 38….. one year older than Trenton was when he died. He was always a year older than me….. and now he isn’t anymore. I didn’t quite know how I would feel this birthday… there have been a lot of changes since last year when I escaped Melbourne with the kids to spend it in far North QLD. Another year has passed. Another notch in the belt. I feel another 365 days further away from my husband…. and it’s a fucking tough gig. I often hear people whinging about their age, and now I find my fists clenched when I witness it. I was never one to “not” be proud of my age…. I actually never complained that I was getting older, because I liked getting older. In fact I didn’t like to be looked upon as being “young” as I saw this as being looked at as semi ignorant. But even I didn’t realise what a privilege it was to “get” older. How lucky we are to turn a new age each year, to share it with friends and family and reflect upon the year that was….. This year during my reflecting, I have found my flaming temper. I am pretty sure (and correct me if I’m wrong old friends….) but I think I have mostly had a decent old fuse in my life so far. I know I have been famous for calling it as I see it (which I agree isn’t always the right thing to do) but to the people that love me for who I am, it’s not been a major issue…. Possibly until now. This year after the two year anniversary of Trenton’s death, my fuse suddenly shortened. To almost nothing. And it took me a bit to realise it. Okay, so getting off a tablet that I’d been taking for seven years right at this particular point may have not been the wisest move, but I had a lot of reasons to try and live without them…… and I thought it worthy of a try. I still don’t regret that as I want to do it “al naturale…..” I hadn’t however taken into account that withdrawing from this tablet would turn me into a mega arsehole….. and that I’d end up even hating my own company after a bit. But once you are a few weeks in, there is no going back. So nearly eight weeks later I’m starting to regain the control I never really had to start with in my household. During that time however I did and said some unforgivable things….. hence the reason that I attached that quote above, and why it is so symbolic to me today. The words I used around the kids were by no means positive, the behaviour I presented them with was not positive, the response I was getting back to my not so cool words and behaviours was definitely not positive…… and the whole lot just almost became a dirty habit…… of which I will not allow it to become. It is easy to slip into shitty ways, but it takes a certain kind of strength to stop it from recurring. I am currently on the “change my crappy ways” bandwagon, and don’t plan to stop until I can breathe a sigh of relief. Monkey say, Monkey do. With my kids it’s almost instantaneous….. you show em’…..  they’ll mimic it. I also approached a few people that I love dearly this year, with some home truths….. that they probably didn’t need to hear. But they did hear them anyway….. “the wrath of Emma.” At the time, I swear it almost always seems like a well thought out plan. Nope. Not. Well. Thought. Out. I have also had a few home truths exposed to me by people I adore, and it hurts like hell to be told something you know is true, but that you don’t want to be told! Ouch……. But you know what? I can look back on that, and even if I didn’t react in exactly the right way in the beginning…. I can honestly say that being told that you’re not being awesome is a good thing in the long run. I don’t want to be seen that way…. I want to be liked, and loved. Especially by my kids. So I will take that feedback, and I will bloody work hard to change it. You can always be a better person if you ask me. Always. So its onwards and upwards from here. It has to be….. I can’t keep living in this stagnant hole. Life is for living, and dammit, I want to live. Bring on Disneyland, cause if you can’t be happy in the happiest place on Earth….. well quite frankly I think you’re fucked!