Mates……..

It’s been a little while between blogs…. okay, a long while. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say, it’s more like I’ve had “too much” to say and didn’t know where to start. It’s been an interesting start to the year in this household. And by interesting, I probably mean “challenging…” But I’m trying to be less negative! I’m back at Uni full time, and starting the final year of a degree that I’m still incredibly amazed that I’m enrolled in, let alone actually doing. Rubes has begun year 8 at her new amazing and unique “no rules” style school, and singing lessons (finally) as that kid has a voice most could only dream of. Pops has started Grade 4 and is doing really well, and finally started her dream activity – “Stage school”, where she will  learn all the skills of a Broadway star!(Singing, dancing and acting – a role her Dad would have adored had he been given the chance!) And after an horrendous few weeks that followed a “surprise” emergency appendectomy, Dale is back at work, minus a little bit of his internal organs.  What more could you want hey?! Our new and much bigger deck is half built (the old one was small and beautiful, but turns out barely attached to the house, and hilariously not properly stumped into the ground. (In fact the rotting stumps that held the original deck together were sitting in dirt, not concreted in like a deck or house should be!) So hey, we dodged a bullet there! Today we leave with five kids for a five hour drive and a caravan in tow to visit a 60,000 acre cattle station in NSW where Dale’s family have been visiting for well over ten years. It’s their “go to” place to have absolute peace and quiet, and I finally get to see what they have all been talking about for the last two years. I am looking forward to setting up camp, and doing as little as possible, with no technology and a good book while the kids “hopefully” enjoy nature, and ride motorbikes and poke ant holes. Well that’s what I am “hoping” they will be doing. In reality, Rubes’ anxiety and OCD has gotten so bad that we’re lucky if she’s been going to school the equivalent of three days a week, and when she has been, she barely makes it to class. We knew when she started that with the lack of forced structure it would create an interesting situation, but I don’t think it’s the school that has her anxiety at an all time high, it’s the nearly two hour commute each morning and night. She continuously runs into kids from her old schools that hate her, and threaten her, and it’s like a game of Russian roulette as to who and when she’ll run into them. She takes four modes of transport each way, and so the odds are definitely stacked against her. Her best mate that she’d had since Grade 4 moved to QLD permanently the day before school started back for the year, and really, her world fell apart after that day. It never ceases to amaze me how important our “mates’ are. Without them we are screwed. Nothing is as fun anymore, every event you attend, or milestone you enjoy, you don’t have that person to turn to or call and share in the moment anymore, and it’s affected her in all the most horrible ways. She has likened the experience to losing her Dad all over again, and she’s not wrong. I know that lost feeling when you go to turn to your favourite person that you’ve spent a big chunk of your life with, and they are no longer there to turn to. It’s not something I needed to see again, and she is struggling just to get through each day without the feeling of wanting to die. This is also not something I wanted to experience, because watching your beautiful daughter struggle with the simplest thing on Earth, which is just getting up each day, and functioning in society, yet is failing abysmally at it…. well it has taken it’s toll on myself and our family. New meds, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and now a team of Case Workers are on side to help us, but I am fretful that nothing so far is working, and she is falling behind in school and life at a rapid pace. I am helpless to help, even though my degree is based on all things “Community Services”, but as a mother, you are the last person they listen to, even if you’re the first person they text or call and exclaim their helplessness to every 30 minutes of each day. The desperate and “I’m not coping and my head is telling me to jump in front of the next passing train” style texts come so frequently now, that I’ve become numb to their meaning, and therefore am probably not responding with encouraging and helpful responses anymore….. It has taken my attention away from work, Uni and home….. and I have this constant feeling of dread for her, and a feeling of being  a totally crappy mum to Pops and partner to Dale, and it’s overwhelming me…. I am officially unable to help my own child.  I am now relying on my mates to pull me through, and the system to pull her through. Not something I am extraordinarily confident of…. but what can you do when it’s out of your hands? Sit by in earnest, and wait. So off we go…. lets cross everything for a a bit of Mothers Nature therapy…..

XOXO