Dear Alex, Readdressing The Balance.

Lola and her Daddy x

4th December 2012

Dear Alex,

Fourteen months today. Drawing a bath, plop in bath bomb, given to me by a friend with instructions to ‘chill out for a few minutes!’. I follow orders. I stop. I’m not good at baths. Yes, I wash (!), but a bath, well, you have to sit still, worse, lie still, and I don’t really do sitting, or ‘still’…so I change my own record, I stop, lie and soak in the bath bomb bath. I manage twenty minutes (a record I think!). a personal best!

Mini starts from the bomb cling to wet skin, float carelessly in water deep and warm. A million thoughts cross my mind. I let them wash over me, and decide on one that enters it, ‘readdress’.

I’ve been slipping, been dragging boulders of expectation that a system will work, of desperation watching you regress, of a boy who’s lost the dad that he knew and is angry and who cries in his sleep and sobs helplessly at times ‘but not over dad, mum’ in the day. Boulders too large, a body too tired to carry them. And I realise, I need to let go of them. I need to move forward. I’m dredging through mud and churning up more mud. I need to readdress the balance.

I am the first one to say that if you can not change other people, or if you cannot change a situation, you need to find what you CAN do, and that is always, that you have the power to change how you deal with it. So do I heed my own advice? Well, I have to!

I can’t change the system, the fact that it is like this for me, means it’s the same, maybe even worse for others. There’s no way I am unique in this. I need to change how I deal with it. So will expect it, expect it to be a nightmare, that things will not easily get done, that I will be forced to speak to 18 different people or organisations before I even start on the right track! If I expect the worst-I can only be pleasantly surprised, well probably drop dead on the spot actually, if something goes right…

Is this pessimistic?? I don’t actually think so, I’m changing my expectations, expecting nothing, so anything more is a bonus! It’s realistic. It’s helping me not to have a nervous breakdown!

Lets face it we are all busy, we all have things that do not work out. And I bet you anything when you ask a friend/colleague tomorrow how they’re doing, the response will be ‘oh, you know, busy!’. Why do we all have this need to prove how busy we are? I’d love to hear someone say, ‘busy, but do you know what, how amazing it is that I have arms to do what I have to do, that I can speak coherently to you now, enough that you understand me, that I am going to go home to a home, a bed, warmth and food tonight..’ tell you what, I’d drop dead on the spot again!

So that’s me, Alex, readdressing, stopping the whinge, ploughing on, battling red tape and systems and holding on to the fact that you are still here and thank goodness I get to fight this for you!!

Readdressing, my word for the week!

I love you Alex Wood, I am such a lucky girl and I am back, boulder free and readdressed!

Me xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx