I came across a wonderful blog, written by a woman who also happens to live in Australia. Who also happens to have a young son and who also happens to live with depression.

I was incredibly impressed with her writings. Not because she’s out of this world good. But because she tells the truth.

There’s this saying I’m sure you’re well familiar with.

Laugh and the world Laughs with you.

Cry, and you cry alone.

I’ve always hated that saying. But the sad thing is…it’s true.

I can’t help but go back to a time when my life was so bad that I no longer wanted to live it. A time when I was cutting my own flesh because the pain of a physical wound was far easier to deal with than the shit that was going through my head. I remember that I lost a lot of friends during that time. And I also remember, that after my second attempt at suicide, those same friends would say to me “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The truth?

I had been telling them.

And they didn’t want to hear it.

Because I wasn’t laughing.

Well recently, I’ve felt the need to only put the good stuff up here. Because I don’t want to bring people down. And the truth is, not everything about our lives right now is good.

We HAVE suffered a huge blow. We went from moving closer to family and getting a better paid job…to a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis and loss of said job. We’ve gone from having a few very good friends, to having barely anyone to talk to. We’ve gone from floating just enough to be able to do things with a little spare money, to having no money at all.

And it has been HARD.

I’m a highly emotional and passionate person. And that passion and emotion very often comes out in my writing. Writing it down stops me from wandering down a path of self destruction and hurting the people in my life that I love and that love me.

So from now on I just have to write it as it is. I’m not saying that we’re looking down the barrel of a doom and gloom blog from now on. But at times, I need to write to get it out. And the place that I choose to put it is here.

This blog is and always has been about our lives through my eyes. Good or bad. Not putting it all here is cheating myself. Only putting up happy snaps because I have nothing good to report, is a big lie.

About four months ago, something happened in this house hold that has never happened before.

I turned in to a mega bitch.

It was truly awful.

Tim and I have been together coming on seven years now and we’ve had two fights. And I kid you not, Tim was asleep for one of them. I can tell that story another time if you like but for now I’d like to talk about me. And Tim.

The problem was my contraceptive pill. It was messing with my hormones and I was PMS’ing off my head for months. It didn’t take much for me to turn and snap. And I’ll be honest, I don’t normally snap.

One day, after months of Tim ducking, dropping his eyes and slowly backing out of the room before I killed him (for no real reason might I add) we figured out that it was probably the pill.

On the 25th of November, the same day Jaxon had his MRI, Tim came home, retrieved my packet of pill’s and burnt them.

So it happened. That was the day that we decided that we would just throw caution to the wind and start trying for another baby.

I say caution to the wind because let’s face it, my pregnancy with Jaxon was not easy. Nor was his birth and his first 18 months of life were hell for me. Jaxon, if you ever read this, I love you. But it was hard. And one day you will understand.

It was hard for us to decide that we were going to take that chance again.

This is my third cycle. And my third negative result.

That’s no big deal. Three cycle’s is below average for the time it takes a “normal” couple to conceive. In fact, did you know that until you’ve been trying for more than a year doctors wont even consider any infertility options for you?

But we’re not normal. Any of our family and friends will attest to that fact.

I am trying very hard to stay level headed about this and for the most part I am doing a really good job. But it’s really hard for me. Because it took three years to get pregnant with Jaxon.

For three years I got negative results. For three years I feared I would never have children.

For three years we had to answer that question from every person we knew…are you pregnant yet?

For three years, we had to answer it the same way.

No. We are not. I am not pregnant.

Each and every day we would get reminded that despite our doing everything by the book (but mostly not by the book, wink wink) we weren’t getting the results that people all around us were getting without even trying.

After two years, each negative pregnancy test brought tears. It hurts. Because you know in your heart that you need something in your life and it’s one of the hardest things to get when you have fertility problems like me.

So even though this is a new trying to conceive journey, all of those negative tests and feelings and fears are still very fresh in my mind. It’s almost as if I have just picked up from where we left off back in 2006 just before we did get pregnant.

Which makes it even harder to stay level headed. But I am trying. And we will try once again next month. And I know in my heart, that one day it will all just fall in to place like everything else in my life has managed to do. Even though it’s still scary.

I wasn’t going to blog this experience. And I don’t know how much I will have to say about it anyway. But leaving it off here and out of these pages feels wrong to me because I do this blog not just for me, and not just for my reader’s (all three of them) and not just for family. I do this for my children. So they can one day read it and learn about life through my eyes.

I remember a very specific time in my life when  I would go and visit Mum at work after school. I was probably about ten years old. She worked in a child care center, which meant that more often than not, she worked with girls fresh out of school.

There was this one girl there named Michelle and I thought she was the bee’s knee’s. She was pretty and smart and skinny and I admired her so much. I wanted to be just like her.

I remember at that age I just couldn’t wait to grow up. I couldn’t wait to be like Michelle, who at the time was probably in her early twenties.

But everyone would tell me that I should savour this time in my life. That I shouldn’t rush to grow up and it wasn’t as much fun as it looked. They all told me about the time in their life when they wished that they were grown up and how much they wish they were my age again.

When I was about 18 I also had the same feeling’s about my brother’s girlfriend Maree. I wanted to be just like her. She was professional and smart and witty. She was lot’s of fun to be around and I just wanted to grow up so bad so that I could be as cool as her.

And here I am, either ten or twenty years on from that, still wondering what it’s going to be like when I grow up.

I’ve graduated from school, I’ve completed a few college diploma’s. I drive a car! I’ve had sex, done drugs and been on all night drinking binges more times than I can count. I don’t have a curfew. I’ve been married now coming on six years and I have a two year old son. We live out of home, we pay our own bill’s and we make all of our own choices.

Shouldn’t I feel grown up by now? I’ve been out of home for ten years now. Shouldn’t I feel different? Shouldn’t the world look better somehow?? When does one go from being whatever it is they are to being grown up??

So I’ve nearly been a blogger now for a full year. When I first started I was blogging about Jaxon’s first birthday cake and the trouble it caused me. Now, not too long from now, I’ll be talking about his second birthday…and where I’ll buy his birthday cake from.

While some years in my life have flown by and I sit and wonder where the time went, this year has been different. This year has taken so long to get through. But now that it’s over, we look forward to next year. Which I am sure will fly by now that we have that enormous weight of not knowing what was going to happen in terms of Jaxon’s neck and arm off our shoulder’s.

This time next year Jaxon will be talking more. I can’t even imagine what that will be like. Just the other day he and I were driving in the car and all he said was “uuuum” and I looked back because he sounded like a competely different child. He sounded all grown up. Next year, it will all have happened for him. Not only will he sound grown up, but he’ll be grown up. I’m not even sure that I am ready for that to happen yet.

Tonight Tim, Jaxon and I are going to see the New Years Eve fire works down by the river. We’re not sure Jaxon is ready but we’ll try. The last time Tim and I went we were just 24 days away from having Jaxon. As we sat there alone watching the display, just Tim and I, I cried. I cried because I was scared. I cried because I knew that this was it. Two thousand and Six would be the last year that Tim and I would be just that. Tim and I. I couldn’t imagine what life was going to be as a “Tim, Jaxon and I” and it scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know if I was ready to be a mother and it was too late. I couldn’t change it.

I wont lie. Being a mother has been hard. I know that some woman adjust to being a mother in the first few weeks of their child’s life but things weren’t like that for a long time with me. I feel guilty about it, but I didn’t love Jaxon for a very long time. I would have done anything to protect him and keep him safe and provide for him, and he still made me smile. But those things do not equal love.

So I am proud to say that the year of 2008 has brought something very special to my life. I finally, and without a single doubt in my mind, love my son. With all of my heart. Not only would I do anything to keep him safe from harm and not only do I want to provide for him the best life possible, but I love him. So much that it hurts to think about him not being around. And I wouldn’t change the “Tim, Jaxon and I” bit for the world.

Perhaps this next year, 2009, will be the year that Tim and I begin to think about adding another Jaxon like creature to our family. Perhaps.

So from my family to yours, I wish you all the best for the year 2009.

I’m a strong believer in the everything happens for a reason theory. I think everyone who knows me knows that.

In the last few months I think I’ve lost myself. I don’t know who I am. I know I am Jaxon’s mother, Tim’s wife, Mum and Dad’s daughter. Terry’s sister. But I don’t know what I want from my life any more. I don’t have direction.

I feel like I am just plodding along. I get up each day, do what I have to do before I get to go to sleep again. When I was in high school, I got up each morning KNOWING that I wanted to do well in school because I wanted to work with animals. I knew I wanted to one day get married and have a happy and well connected family.

Now I get up and I am married and I do have a family, but I don’t know what I want to do when this part of my life moves on, or Jaxon goes to school. I can’t stand in front of the mirror and say “this is who I am” because I don’t know who I am any more. I feel like I’ve lost who I am in the mother/housewife role. I feel like those two things are all that makes me ME. Like outside of those two things, I feel like I have nothing to bring to the table.

I’ve been up and down and moody for weeks now, trying to change certain things that I thought might be the issue. But now I know that the issue was less to do with the house I live in and the relationships I have with my family, and more to do with how I am feeling about myself on the inside.

I think I need help to find what it is I am looking for. Maybe a life coach.

Don’t laugh.

Step one for me has been stepping up and saying that I am depressed about something. Eight years ago I would have let it get to a point where I was ready to kill myself (in a literal kind of way) before admitting that I was not in control and needed help and direction. Thats what landed me in hospital last year, pretending that I was ok.

Step two will be finding exactly what it is that I need to get me on my way. Normally, when we put Jaxon down for a nap, we go for a nap too. Tim asked me half an hour ago if I would be joining him. I said “I want to grab something to eat first”

It’s that that happened for a reason. Stupid as it may sound.

If I had just said yes, and gone and laid down then I wouldn’t have turned on the TV while I had my lunch. I wouldn’t have sat down at the very start of a show called “You can Change Your Life”

See. Just the title, for the frame of mind that I am in right now, is perfect.

The first thing it said was that people get stuck in the “I can’t” frame of mind. And how true is that for me? How I think I know what I want to do with my career but keep telling myself I can’t instead of I can. How I keep saying it’s too hard to get there because right now we can’t afford it. How I never try because I might fail. Maybe it’s not going to be that hard if I’d just suck up my courage and take that first step.

Maybe I am in my own way. Maybe I am stopping myself from taking that first step in to the unknown. And if I hadn’t stopped to have lunch and broken the routine, I might have been waking up tomorrow still wondering what exactly is going on in my life that makes me feel so lost and worthless.

Since finding the internet I’ve always felt that the world, despite it’s size, is becoming smaller and smaller every day. With the invention of the telephone and internet, I get to meet people that I otherwise would never get to meet. I get to learn about cultures that I otherwise wouldn’t get to experience in person. I’ve always felt that this is a good thing, until now.

A week or two ago I wrote a post about my internet love affair with hundred’s of woman from all over the world. It’s a relationship that you just can’t understand if you’ve not experienced it yourself. You just can’t know how personal life becomes when people can literally get in to your head. And you can’t know how good it feel’s to never feel alone.

A smaller group of girl’s and I have been in constant contact for more than two years now. It started off as one or two email’s a day and quickly exploded to two, sometimes three hundred email’s A DAY. I know them inside and out, and they know the in’s and out’s of every aspect of my life. We send parcel’s for birthday’s, we send text’s, we share photo’s that no one would ever really want to see. We call and we love each other as if we have known each other all of our lives.

It is this particular relationship that has just become incredibly hard to bare. My dear friend Jeannette’s mother just died and I can’t do anything to help her. While I marveled at being able to contact her via email every single day, and text her on day’s she was away, I now sit and cry because I can’t hold her hand. While it was easy enough to share a blow by blow textual account of Jaxon’s birth and first few days of life via mobile phone’s it’s a completely different story when it come’s to death.

I feel helpless. All I want to do is be there for her. All I want to do is hug her and tell her I am there. Sending flower’s just isn’t enough, I need to be with her and comfort her like normal friends would do in the same situation. But I can’t, and it’s breaking my heart to know that while I sit here at my computer crying for her, Jeannette is in pain.

For the first time in a long time, I can see that the world really isn’t that small. Ocean’s separate me from doing what I want so desperately to do. She might as well live on Mars for the amount of good I can do her from here.

It just sucks.

The world is too big.

Jeannette,
with Samantha (niece on left) her son James and Jenna (niece on right)

Jaxon has a babysitter right now so I’m going to take this opportunity to get a little deep and meaningful here.

Ten years ago a cousin of mine met and fell in love with someone on the Internet. She’d never met him, since he lived in Texas. When I found out about the relationship, she had already been to America to meet him and brought him back to live with her and get married. They’ve been together ever since and have four very beautiful children.

At the time I had very little knowledge of the Internet. I thought it was CRAZY. To fall in love with someone you’d never met. To fall in love with and trust someone and not really know that what they said they were, was actually the truth.

I’ve had some time to think about it. Now that I am thoroughly in to this Internet thing, I totally get it. I could easily fall in love with someone over the Internet. This is not to say that I am looking and lurking through dating websites…going behind Tim’s back looking for love. That is not what I am talking about. I am simply saying that I can see now how it could happen, and I understand.

I know this now because the majority of my best friends are Internet friends. When Jaxon was four months old and started crying for no known reason I felt very alone. While at mother’s group the other girls seemed to be getting along OK, complaining about the occasional cry, I was drowning. I was constantly searching their faces for a speck of truth that they were drowning right along with me. But I never found it. And because they all looked to be getting along just fine with this baby thing, I didn’t have the ball’s to stand up, put my hand in the air and say “I’m a new mother, and I need help”

Here in Internet land was a completely different story. Not because the mother’s with new born babies Jaxon’s age were going through exactly what I was going through, because they weren’t. But because here in Internet land it’s very easy to open up and be honest. If I needed to cry I did it, right here in the safety of my own home.

“My girls” as I affectionately call them, listened to me and heard me cry. They opened up and shared as much of their experience as they could to try and help me through.

I couldn’t find the words I needed to say face to face to the friends visiting. I didn’t want to cry and break down and seem weak in front of them either. I suffered in silence. They knew what was going on, because when they came Jaxon was crying. While they visited Jaxon was crying, and when they left, Jaxon was still crying.

Three weeks later Jaxon and I ended up in hospital. While my Internet friends were not so surprised to hear it happened, my close friends didn’t see it coming. Because I just didn’t want to admit to them that something was wrong. Most of them knew the crying was going on, but didn’t understand that it was all day and all night with barely any breaks in between.

One day in hospital Tim came to me with a package, which he called “Boo’s Fan Mail” It was letters and cards from all over the world. My girls were reaching out to me when I didn’t even have the Internet. While I didn’t get a single call from friends of mine, I received calls from South Africa and America, from my girls, offering support.

We share everything. The things we have opened up about are unbelievable. From the color and consistency of poo that comes out of our babies bum’s, to the best sexual position you’ve ever tried and your favorite family recipes. Right down to the way we all wipe our asses. I scrunch in public and fold at home, since I hear you all begging to know!

It’s all out there. It’s all honest and it’s all read and heard without judgment or scorn, mostly. We’ve been through thick and thin together. Through the ups and downs of pregnancy, the up
s and downs of birth and the new born months. We’ve shared marriages and divorces, school graduations and birthdays. Sadly, we’ve lived together through the deaths of two of our babies, and most recently two family deaths.

I love my girls just as much as the people I see here in my home town. I trust them as much as I trust the people I know here in my home town. I couldn’t live without them and they are as “real” to me as the people that I have over for dinner and meet with down the street.

It is these girls, sharing their lives with me, that make me understand how people can fall in love with people they have never met. Through the good and the bad they have held my hand and given me a shoulder to cry on. One day I hope we meet over coffee.

So I guess you could say that I am in love. With 100 or so woman from all over the world. I TOTALLY get it.