This Christmas I’m celebrating friendship, old and new. But especially dear old friends. I hope I have the courage to face up to the year ahead and all it brings. I feel it will be eventful, but ultimately rewarding…
Here’s to a peaceful, beautiful and love-filled festive season. Mwah!
I just discovered this song, it’s beautiful. Mmmmm, snuggly winter music. Must try the rest of the album now…
Listen online here.
And I just wrote this. Poetry has been a long time coming, I’ve missed it.
Don’t knock me off my perch
I’m fragile up here
Confident and calm
The slightest word will send me flying
Back into the depths
This is an uneasy equilibrium
I’m not sure of myself
And this odd happiness I feel.
My son just laughed for the first time, and it’s like he’s cracked it, he understands. Cascades of wonderful giggles follow, and I want to boast, to show him to people and poke him and say ‘laugh, laugh’. It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.
I knew he’d have a great laugh.
I haven’t written here in a long time, but I find myself drawn back to post here every so often, like tonight when I feel sad and lost but don’t understand why.
Or, in some ways I do understand. The other night I was feeling tense but had no idea why, so I started mentally listing the things I was worried about, from the biggest most important ones (I’m worried I’ll fail my current OU course, I’m worried about my eye operation next month) to the pifflingly stupid (I’m worried because I’m not using my new desk enough, I don’t want to because the room is cold but I don’t want to heat it because the electric heater smells horribly of burning dust if you switch it on after not using it for ages. Blah blah. You get the picture. Some really stupid stuff…) Anyway, the list was HUGE. I had no idea there was that much crap in my head, niggling at me unseen.
Now I feel sad, but I can’t work out why. I woke up sad, I think maybe my dreams were heartbreaking but I just can’t remember them. Anyway, I turn to this place again.
You know, I still check my sitemeter sometimes, and it amuses and perplexes me in equal measure that there are still some devoted souls who visit this blog each day – even though I now go months between updating. There’s good old ISP demon.co.uk, who’s been a faithful visitor every weekday morning and some Saturdays for years now. My mind boggles at you, but I kind of love you. Unless you’re a robot. Then, I don’t think I could love a robot. And then there’s the ISP based somewhere in Arizona I think, and the person who is methodically reading the whole of my blog bit by bit – spreading the task out over time. I salute you. It’s mostly a load of melancholy waffle, buy hey – your time is your own, and I’m not going to criticize how you spend it. In some ways I wish I could still write here like I used to. Hell, I wish I could be as open and honest and daft as I used to. It seems that among the million and one things that I don’t have time for now that I’m a mum, is being myself. I can’t seem to find the energy to be myself anymore. Or maybe I would, if I just knew who I was.
This was taken today, and I’m now 30 weeks pregnant. 30 weeks was always the point at which I promised myself I’d start panicking, because, well – 10 weeks to go. That sounds crazy to me 
But actually I feel fairly calm, and not much like panicking. When I watched the bizarre NCT DVD “Happy Birth Day!” then I did feel stabs of mild terror, but that was some time ago, and I haven’t subjected myself to it since. Besides, the birth videos on You Tube are so much more fun.
I always want to laugh when I talk to women who have alreday had childen, about the topic of labour and childbirth. They all get a faintly cagey, pitying look, as though they know how terrible it is but don’t want to shatter my innocent illusions. Sometimes being aware of things is a real pain in the arse, and I often think it would be better to be ignorant. I felt the same growing up. I wanted to say, as an aside, ‘Hey, I KNOW that being a teenager sucks, and that it’s at times awkward, boring and confusing. I know all that. I just haven’t got beyond this stage yet, so I only know these things hypothetically’.
Now I want to say to the women who have been through childbirth, ‘It’s okay, don’t spare me the horrible bits – I know it’s going to be terrible, simply by the look in your eyes.’ they think I don’t understand that. And perhaps that’s not fair, childbirth is very exciting after all – it can just hurt a lot. Yeah yeah, I know… more than a lot.
The bit I don’t understand, and that makes me blush with my own inexperience and impatience, is when they tell you that having children will change your life. But they don’t tell you HOW it will change your life, just that it will. They say it ruefully, with a shake of the head and a twinkle in the the eye that is both sad and rejoicing. I don’t understand this, and I’d like to admit this fact to them also, but I don’t expect they care. All I know is, having a baby is the biggest thing I’ve ever attempted, and I don’t think I’ll ever do anything as important in the rest of my life. I’m not so much anxious to get it right, as impressed and quiet at the weight of this incredible task on my shoulders. I know preparing for that – for how it feels to be a parent, a mother – is futile, and so I just wait, as the days smooth seamlessly into weeks and the weeks count down to the day when I will understand.
Lately I feel that I miss the girl I used to be, now that I know for sure that I’ll never go back to being her again. I don’t even necessarily want to be her, just sometimes feel a little wistfulness for myself a year or so ago. I remember being into kitsch stuff and before leaving London acting generally irresponsibly in a harmless way. I’d be moved – deeply – by music and photography and film, and would basically do whatever I wanted. If I felt like going to see a film I would, so long as I could afford it. And I used to just walk, around central London at dusk or by day, getting almost but not quite lost and being okay with it. I felt like a stupid silly butterfly struggling out of its damp bed, and being okay with its tentative incompleteness. It was alright, this discovery. I ate expensive American candy, and nobody sent it to me with love because I just bought it myself at CyberCandy, experimenting with different things that I had no idea whether I’d like. And I wrote in my moleskine and was basically selfish, but in a spectacularly inoffensive way. At least, from what I can tell, looking back I don’t think I hurt anyone, but probably didn’t touch anyone either. Somehow, that was okay; I was busy getting to know myself.
Now I’m aware that I can never be that selfish again. I’m going to have a child, and already this little person is depending on me for all its shelter and food and protection, as it nestles inside me. I was thinking today how strange our relationship is at the moment. I mean, we’re about as intimate as two people can physically be, and yet we don’t know each other. We’ve never met. There’s an awkwardness, a kind of unknown quantity that makes things interesting but also strange. I feel him move and I think “Who are you? What do you look like?” and I can’t wait to meet him, I really can’t. But I wonder if he will love me as I feel I’ll love him when I see him. Babies don’t really love their mothers it seems, not at first. They’re just little bundles of delicate need. I already feel this tremendous tenderness and desire to protect him, but I wonder if he knows anything or feels anything yet. Or is he just silent in mouth and in mind, floating on his warm safe sea that is also my warm safe sea, because it’s within me. I wonder how he’ll feel about being created, and hope that he won’t mind. That he’ll see it as a good thing, as both of his parents do. I hope so.
So. The time has come to take a little break from this blog. The renewal of my hosting prompted me to think about why I still have this, and if I want to continue it. After much thought, I decided to swap hosts (thanks webbez) and keep this blog online, but take some time away from it.
My mind is a whirlwind of confused thoughts at the moment, and they are scattered like seeds in so many fields. I need some time, to get calm, to reflect, to think about the future and how I’d like it to be. I need an outlet, a place to spill my most private thoughts and fears, but that place isn’t here. Most probably it will be my trusty moleskine notebook, discarded so often but always eventually welcomed back into the fold, and confided in again. Because if I don’t write out some of my squillions of thoughts somewhere, the level will grow higher and higher, until my brain short-circuits under the pressure of them all.
And, it’s complicated, but for so many reasons, I just can’t write here. My thoughts aren’t bad, they’re just mine, and they need to remain private.
See you when I see you. And have a happy Christmas and a groovy new year!
Just changing hosts before I go on hiatus. Longer explanation to follow soon!
Vicky
x
The stars are bright tonight
And I am walking nowhere
Guess I will be alright
Desire gets you nowhere
And you are always right
I thought you were so perfect
Take you as you were
Have you as you were
Take you as you were
I love you just the way you are
I love you just the way you are
I´ll take you just the way you are
Does anybody love the way you are?
Aaa aaa aaa
The stars are bright tonight
A distance is between us
And I will be okay
The worst I´ve ever seen us
And still I have my weaknesses
And still I have my strength
And still I have my ugliness
Stars – The Cranberries
Postsecret is good this week. I thought you all should know. And here’s one that could have been made by me, although it wasn’t:
