So really Life, it’s time you and I had a little talk. I’m not overly happy with you at the moment. In my last post I was telling you that it was time. Time to start a new, positive phase in our lives….. and that after two and a half years of mostly hell, we NEEDED some new, fun, happy times so that not all of our memories of this part of our lives would be miserable…. but for some reason when I try and get all positive about stuff, you go and shit in our faces with something that we really don’t need. The year started off fairly well considering the mix of severe anxiety, post traumatic stress and sleeplessness that the majority of the three of us all suffer from…… but it’s going downhill, and fast. After a few weeks of interrupted sleeps, nightmares from the girls, anxiety attacks from Rubes, temper tantrums and emotional breakdowns from Pops, and a serious “missing of Daddy” from both of the kids….. I’m bloody exhausted and can’t seem to catch up enough to regain a hold on it all. I finished my 28 day Tame your Temper” challenge amongst this all on the 28th of January which was a fantastic course…. but I have been tested within an inch of my life ever since. I was finding myself snapping at the kids over absolutely nothing from my exhaustion. The tiniest things were setting me off, and my temper was revolting. I felt so good after finishing it, as it proved to me that although we can’t always control our children’s behaviour, we can change the way we look at it, tackle it and over all, “accept it.” Yesterday I started a full time, two year, on campus degree. It’s been my dream to do a course in Community Services or Community Development since I should have finished high school in 1995. Back then it was called Welfare Studies, and I got in as a mature age student at the grand old age of 24. Wow….. I thought I was going to be over the hill then. In the years after high school leading up to this time I travelled extensively around Australia, then America, Asia and Europe…. and continued until I got my two year working visa for the UK, which was my ultimate dream. I had my passport stamped and ready to go, and was tossing up between this and my degree when I found out I was pregnant with Rubes. These are the pivotal moments in our life where we often look back and wonder “what if………?” I don’t regret having had my daughter, but I certainly really had no idea what I was in for did I? I still remember Mum saying to me when I was a late teenager (probably in fear of me having a baby at a young age) that it’s hard enough having a healthy baby with support or a loving partner, but to have a baby with health issues with or without support brings a whole new realm of issues. God, she had no idea how right she was. I made it to 25 before I had my first child (still WAY too young for me in my eyes….) but if I look at the life she’s lived in her nearly 13 years on Earth, well it’s been like that of a 35 year old really. She has seen more psychologists, more psychiatrists, tried more therapies, had more tests done and taken more medication than most adults I know…. and throw in the desertion from her biological father at two followed eight years later by the death of her beloved Dad, well is it really that surprising she is struggling with life so much? She has (to my surprise) loved starting high school this year, and I’ve been loving hearing her stories of independance about catching the bus to and from school with no adults, watching her create wonderful new friendships with brand new kids and even starting a relationship with a boy. But amongst all of these wonderful new experiences, she has gone to school every day on bugger all sleep, and the worst anxiety she’s experienced in her life. She ended up in sick bay on orientation day (the very first day of school) with pains in her head that she thought were clots in her brain, then she came home early on day two of the first week nearly vomiting from it, and then she didn’t make it day five at all, and came home early on days seven and nine doubled over from the pains in her stomach. Today she had a full blown anxiety meltdown as she was about to leave, and her eyes were pleading with me not to send her back….. I ended up calling her psychiatrist and demanding he see us today. So that’s five out of her ten days of high school that she has not been there all day. And ten out of her ten days at school where she has felt unbearably sick. I can’t imagine how she gets up and goes every morning….. I may find it tough having a daughter with severe anxiety disorder, but I can only imagine what it’s like for her to leave the house every day suffering from it. To make it all just that little harder to bare, Poppy has been going through an exceptionally emotional time, missing Trenton like nothing else, panicking as she is starting to forget his voice, coming in multiple times in the night unable to sleep and scared out of her wits, and having emotional meltdowns whenever I need her to do anything like get ready for bed or brush her teeth. And she is still struggling with the idea that I am seeing a man other than Daddy, as she is fiercely loyal to him. The sad thing (or should I say “lucky thing”) is that she adores my partner. Like, she really adores him. She would like his three sons to move in, and possibly even into her actual bedroom I think…… I can’t imagine how it would be for her if she didn’t love them. So we’re “so” close to having our hands on this happiness thing again Life, so bloody close. All the planets are aligned as they say, so why can’t you let me just grab it?? Please. It is time, and I am ready now. Enough devastation for this little family. Enough is enough.