I walked through the shopping center and saw a familiar face sitting by the ice cream stand.
I kept walking.
Then something made me stop. And turn.
I went back, drawn to her.
“Everything is not OK.” she said.
She told me some sad news. I am still thinking about it hours later.
Dissecting the conversation.
Thinking thinking thinking on it.
She seemed so strange and sad to me.
The anxious look in her eyes. Unsteady pupils.
Fear and anger and sorrow. My poor poor friend.
Jaeyeol Han
Yesterday I made a pair of dungarees for Frankie. I had bought soft stripey fabric a few months ago with great plans to make him lots of things. It arrived in the post in a brown paper package and has sat under the bed since.
But last night, J came home early and put Frankie to bed. So I made up a quick pattern and sewed them up. I just need to hem them and put snaps on today and they will be finished.
Another project I have been tackling this week is painting and filling and installing shelves in an old doorway which we had built a stud partition behind.
I’ve nearly finished the painting and I’ve priced up shelf brackets and powder pink spray paint. Old floorboards are becoming shelves.
II have felt very out of control during pregnancy and after becoming a parent. The house renovations have been at a standstill since Frankie was born. My sewing has been in hibernation for years if I am honest.
With running, sewing, writing and now building (badly) I’m filling my time and doing things for myself. No one knows about the blog (not even J), or the shelves, or the dungarees or my running.
And it feels nice that I have this life now that I fill with what I want. I am so very lucky.
I do need to go back to work at some stage but for now I’m focusing on getting better. Getting better means I get to discover who I am and what I love again.
I had forgotten so much about myself.
Pablo Montealegre
I’ve been running. Its really helping to keep the anxiety at bay.
I go every second or third day. I run about 5k.
When I get back to the house and go in to have a shower I can taste the rush of endorphins. Its like I push a reboot button when I exercise.
I never exercised at all before I was 28. I wonder this was my body’s way of telling me to look after it, all of this anxiety and depression.
I get the feeling its not so simple unfortunately.
Fanny Nushka
I have fallen out with my sister. I don’t think she is a very nice person.
She is extremely negative. Always giving out about people. Especially people with children, especially people like me.
She makes lots of digs about my parenting.
Breastfeeding-pointless
Taking more than 6 months maternity leave- stupid and selfish and self indulgent
Being poor(ish)-I am not providing for my child.
Giving birth- a peace of piss, no one should give out about it
Anyways. We had a big argument and haven’t spoken in about two months or more.
I feel awful about it. Its really gnawing at me. I feel sick and really sad when I think about it.
Because I’m so angry about it. I want to scream at her that she is an asshole. That she is a fool.
I want her to be miserable. Unhappy.
I feel horrible for thinking these things.
I just want to speak to her but I don’t know where to start at all.
I feel like a child again.
Agata Wierzbicka
My dogs are rescue dogs. They are very nervous, they bark like crazy when a stranger calls. I have been working hard to calm them more. Bringing them on walks, keeping them inside when I leave the house, spending a lot of time petting them and sitting on the couch with them. They are improving slowly but surely.
I’ve had a few “episodes”. Very bad anxiety attacks. Whenever the dogs have been near me when this happens they go nuts at me.
Barking, high pitched. Even growling once. It can last for up to fifteen minutes.
Often when I have an anxiety attack I’m very silent. I might stand and shake. Sit and cry. Lie down in bed.
So I don’t think that I am startling them with noise or cries or screams.
It doesn’t seem to matter. They do it every time.
They no longer recognise me.
Dogs seem to be very sensitive animals. They must pick up on some frequency. They know something isn’t right.
Brian Kershisnik
It is magical. It is.
The streetlights were coming through in slivers of peachy light. Across his little lips.
He sighed and I felt his body go heavy and soft in my arms. A little pearl of milk on his cheek.
I miss him now listening to the echoing hum of the monitor and the lashing rain out there.
I love him.
Michael T. Liepke
Its raining and windy today, I’m stuck in the house.
Baby is asleep, dogs are asleep.
I am hoovering and writing and spraying anti-bacterial spray.
Will remain hopeful, will not get depressed, will be happy.
Charlize Black
So tired. No time to think. To write. To read.
Washing, more washing, cooking, more cooking.
I get told off by J and told to sit down. By sit down he means mind the baby. I have to make an excuse to have five minutes to myself.
I pretend I’m going to the toilet. But I just sit there with my pants down on my phone.
And I feel really bad about it for the whole time.
Ayumi Takashi
I wasn’t having a good day.
I pulled on some leggings, a dirty running bra, J’s t shirt and my muddy trainers and I ran. I ran my usual route but it felt easier. Like I got into my pace and my breathing was good pretty early on.
Now I feel better. Although the anxiety and depression is kind of at the corners of me if that makes sense.
Like its waiting for some chance to pop out and scare me.
I’m pretty over feeling like a victim.
Being on call for whatever thought enters my mind. Being willing and open and able and accepting of any old horror my mind concocts to haunt me with. Being ok with it, putting up with it. Tolerating it daily.
“Yeah, I mean this is fine! I deserve this!! I deserve to feel shitty!!”
Sometimes I think I actually love depression. That I’m so used to it I wouldn’t know how to behave without it. It gives me comfort. Meaning. Being in pain all the time, it gives my life feeling, emotion, rawness, edge. It keeps me on my toes.
Like a dirty and crusted comfort blanket, I drag it around and around, its always accumulating shit along the way.
But god I am over it.
I’m going to tell it to go fuck itself this week.
Ali Cavanaugh
Anxiety is tormenting me today.
Any quiet moment, any time when I am not physically doing something it creeps up behind me.
It keeps whispering.
“Remember that time she said she would never raise a child like you do?! Breastfeeding is for hippies and poor people.”
“You are a bad mother. A bad mother. A bad mother.”
“The house looks like shit, like a squat. The whole town is LAUGHING at you. You live like scum.”
“She hates you, she hasn’t spoken to you or responded to you in weeks. But on facebook she is doing loads of fun things, what have you done or said that made her mad at you?”
“Remember that time you joked about death and her brother had died? That was so embarrassing. You obviously don’t even care about her you twat.”
“Why haven’t you kept in touch? Its because you are selfish. Pick people up and drop them in a second.”
“You are a failure. You have failed. People feel sorry for you. That’s why no one asks what you work at anymore. Because no one cares. You are untalented and old and useless.”
“You should be ashamed, embarrassed and ashamed. You are alone. You are alone and no one wants to hear your stupid shit.”
“You are a joke.”
So today isn’t really great. I’ve been arguing all day with J. And myself.
I’m so bloody tired but the minute I sit down my mind starts attacking me again.
I’m such an idiot. I’m a bad person. I deserve to feel like this.
Nothing is stopping it today.
Nicola Samori
the mothering 