Do we have an accord?

I haven't posted in a while. Up until now I've had too much going on to focus on writing.

January was first and foremost a month of dealing. Dealing with family; finance; work; kids; children's services; school; the ex.

I shall address each of these in a characteristically erratic, random, and chaotic manner.

As well as cohabiting and all the stresses that come with it, my three boys all had Covid. They were mostly asymptomatic. Good for them, bad for me.

They didn't get sick, but parents don't like to admit the guilty pleasure of having a sick, and very quiet, child at home. No school, no noise, no fuss, and (if you have a child under 10) all cuddles!

Neither will they admit the horror of having fully healthy children stuck indoors running around with nothing to do!

At the same time, I returned to work part time, dealt with the closure of our family intervention assesment, the closure of our early help support, and the school issues that come with no longer having professional support to back my son up.

And to top it all off? Doggo can still get past the stair gate even though I lowered it to stop her lifting it up with her big head!

To help with the stress, I did two small, but selfish things. I used to count things like these as my Christmas and birthday presents to alleviate my conscience.

Nowadays I have realised that you have to allow yourself some self-indulgence in order to properly be there for others. You have to be happy, or work towards being happy at least, in mind, body, and soul so you can be fully present.

So I went to the barber instead of using the clippers I bought to save money.

And I went to the tattoo parlour for a memento. A visible reminder that I am still alive and kicking. I survived all 80 days of January 2022!

(Design by Jared Gaines Art Tattoo by Manik23)

Some may call it perverse, but I find it soothing, peaceful even, to sit in a chair and chew the fat for a few hours while someone stabs me with a needle thousands of times.

I've moaned about stressors, so now I will brag about progress!

The first notable progress I made was finally getting a grip on my finances. I'm happy to say I'm a few weeks away from being stable. Skint, but stable. Things will improve considerably half way through next year. For now, I have a budget that will just about work.

Of course I couldn't have got to this point without the help of my family.

Second? A peace treaty. How we would survive the next few months without declaring a major incident. It wasn't easy to agree terms.

We started by addressing our own anxieties.

For me this meant doubling my dosage and adding sedatives to the mix to get me back to a decent sleeping pattern. The Venlaflaxine is working, the sedatives not so much. They leave a horrible taste in my mouth and, though I get to sleep faster, I still don't sleep much.

Still, I am happy to report we seem to have a stable, if some what fractious, agreement. We have a plan to deal with the housing situation and a plan to work on our friendship. We can now move to DEFCON 3.

Then came work. I couldn't face going back to work full time yet. It was too much to concentrate on with so much going on. So, we agreed a phased return over three weeks. The first week didn't work very well, the second went okay. I'm confident that after the third week I will be back to full time and full strength.

The final breakthrough was school arrangements for my son with mental health issues.

He has made the decision that he wants a fresh start in a new school. Not on a whim either. For the first time ever he came to me with a list of reasons why he wanted to move school. Surprisingly, they all made sense perfect sense.

My boy had asked to move school before but kept changing his mind so I took the initial requests with a pinch of salt. Now he has also started to try and purposefully get himself excluded from his current setting to force the issue.

So we have made a deal. If he works hard not to get into trouble at his current school for the two lessons a day he attends (serious trouble like truanting or being rude to teachers, not minor things like throwing paper aeroplanes because he is unable to concentrate) then we will work hard to change schools.

It isn't an easy task mid-year, but I think we will just about be able to pull it off. We are all hoping it will give him the fresh start he needs. A chance to find his feet, to figure out who he is, and a chance to find a new friendship group.

Now, this isn't the kind of progress I set out to make at the start of the year. This is not what I had planned. Then, as the saying goes, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. I am happy with the progress though.

The dust is settling. The clouds are departing. The words are starting to flow onto the page again. I'm feeling like I will be able to ease myself forward once more.

February will be a month of dealing with myself. My exercise; diet; resolutions; mental health; relationships.

There is one word that will sum up my second month of progress in 2022.

Excelsior!

Until next time True Believers...