HA de HA HA...( absurd title for a bit of a sad day's blog)

What a day today...I feel as though I have lived a week in just this day. I have loved today, I woke up feeling great and with the most glorious sun shining it was hard to be anything but cheerful.
Today there is a general election and H has been working 9 hours a day canvassing for the UKIP party..this is his baby and apart from having enjoyed his being busy and happy and revelling in the time I have had to do my thing and not worry about whether H is happy or bored or feeling stuck at home, I'm not going to talk about his election at all. What I will say is that today, probably for the first time, I enjoyed and appreciated being able to vote. Not in a banner and chained to the railings kind of way ( although I will admit to feeling gratitude that others have felt that strongly) but in a fluffy kind of "aren't I lucky to live in a country where we can choose and have a say" way.
On one of the boards I go to ( Ok live on, I am hopelessly drawn to it) there was a debate about religion yesterday. Usually I steer clear because I find I get horribly defensive and even angry at times and this of course this means I have fallen headlong into the very trap set for me....how much do the protesters love it when someone who proclaims to love Christ show that they are in fact human and let rip? Stubborn me, I SO hate to let some people get what they want! However, yesterday, I couldn't stay out of this debate because all the things that have always been so dear to me were being ripped apart by someone who had extensive knowledge of the wrong facts....ugh...teeny truths that had been somehow twisted and made to sound so bizarre, so creepy and SO incorrect. I'm by no means going to go into details of who said what, who replied how -- the most startling thing to me was how strongly I still KNOW that the things I have been taught and studied, believed in and trusted in are still so important to me.
In defending the things that have always been dear to me, I remembered why they are dear to me, I felt the strength of my convictions creep back and I wasn't afraid.
Why would I be afraid? Who can tell for sure except that to know, is to do, isn't it? Faith without works is dead.
So where do I go from here? Hmmmm, might have to think harder on that but how marvellous that the person who was so desperate to show me and others who were defending the church the error of our ways actually achieved the exact opposite HA HA de HA HA!! I still have the issues with the churche's stance on gays and that will still take some serious searching to be anywhere close to feeling at peace with it, if I can, but I can't express just how peaceful it is to realise that because I have one problem doesn't mean that I have NOTHING left to believe in, progress indeed.

My Isaac......I had an appointemnt today with his speech therapist without him today. She wanted to get some more detailed history of our family. We started off with the normal kind of history, his birth details, general health etc and then we got down to the nitty gritty. Oh dear. How difficult it is to have to tell strangers things that have been so enormous, so life changing, heart shattering....to sit on an old school chair in a somewhat blank and heartless room with a woman who I know has my Isaac's very best interests at heart and tell her in robot fashion exactly what this glorious family has been through.
Do I sound blasphemous if I say " My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?" I don't mean to , I swear I don't. How absurd to be hit so hard by just the telling of my life but every time I have to tell another soul some of the details, every time I have to sit and reel off the catastrophies and tragedies as if I am telling the plot of a film, it is as if I am hearing it for the first time, as those words fall out of my mouth so effortlessly and I sound so calm and so sane, in my head and in my heart I am SCREAMING. In my head I tell you, all I can hear is this mad woman screeeching " DEAR GOD! Can you believe this? Can you imagine what that felt like? Ohhh that hurt so much when I went through that!" I want to lie on the floor and just weep and beg whoever I am telling to see that inside I am in such pain and feel so helpless and such guilt and to not only see, but to know what to do to stop it hurting so much.
But I don't, and they don't, and they tell me I am marvellous and some wonder aloud how I managed and I shrug my shoulders as if it has been no effort at all.

I'm not insane you know. How many of us can lay claim to knowing that we're truly and honestly sane? I can, I've been told. I have been to therapists and I have been to doctors and I have been assessed by mental health teams and I was diagnosed. Sane. Heaven help the mad ones then is all I can say......even I, in my miserable state, saw the humour ( albeit a tad twisted) when my mental health nurse who had spent hours listening to my woes turned to me and said.......
"Helen, you can imagine that it isn't often I get to tell people they aren't mad but you really aren't. Your life really IS crap! ( HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!!! she guffawed in an almost convincingly insane manner for someone so stable) what you are feeling is perfectly justifiable sadness for situations beyond your control that other people have caused, were you not to feel the way you do, you'd be mad!"
Right then, nowhere to go after that was there? I found somewhere very quickly however, it was a splendid bakery where I celebrated my sanity with a nice cake and pondered on what to do from there on in.
I wonder then, if I am not mad and there aren't any nice tablets that I can take to make all the nasty things go away, if I will ever move on? I suppose I would if it didn't feel as though every time I almost see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel some bugger doesn't come along and poke me in the eye.

I wonder how to go about getting this out of my head and into writing. Can you believe that even after the innumerable times I have told my tale to innumerable people I have never, ever written them down? I have a theory that in writing it, it will all become real.....absurd isn't it because it IS real but seeing it in black and white, as they say, will somehow make it permanant. It'll be out there to go back to and might fester like a rotting wound. If I say it, I can deny it. If I write it it's true. See?

Ugh, the whole point of this blog is for me to be real. No need to be "fine thankyou". I can be brutal and I can be angry. I can be funny ( and I can, actually, can't I? I laugh at myself a little too often- considering I am so sane)
I could be rude if I didn't worry that my mum might be shocked, although who is she to talk? I've heard her be a bit cheeky herself at times. I can darn well be who and what I like here ...damn well if I feel like it.
So why I am I having such a dreadful case of writers stutter? Habit I suppose....and what do they say about habits? Great things to be broken..so lets give it a go. I am all on my own until very late as H is counting votes and being political ( I have to say it..does anyone else find it even a tiny bit ironic that my glorious dark skinned, American / mexican husband is so passionate about a political party whose main agenda is to reduce immigration into England? ) Oh alright I know I'm procrastinating............
Maybe I shall start the way I have always done it, like a robot, I shall type as I have always spoken about this stuff and probably what will happen is, ( I hope) my heart will take over and it'll get itself out and written, maybe I will even work out what I feel as I go along.
My sadness is mainly about my children and my home.
I have 6 children, very nice ones, exceptionally beautiful ones actually....and so far, 5 of them have had exceptional obstacles...dear Elijah, it's all on you baby boy, you get to be my one and only 'OK' kid....not too much pressure on a little chap is it??
My son, my Daniel....he was 3 years and 10 months when his dad left. Sat on a couch and watched the daddy leave ...never said a word until the house was devoid of daddy stuff and then he said " Oh...that's sad, I'll look after you now mummy"
Jordan, his daddy's boy. Loved his dad from the moment he clapped his blurry new born eyes on him, a divine baby and so placid ... he came alive when his daddy walked in the room, he was 22 months old when his beloved walked out.
Sophie, chubbly, smiley, baby girl with white blond hair and blue eyes....daddy leapt and cheered on march the 11th 1989 when 'his' girl was born, she was 10 weeks old when he said that perhaps he wasn't ready to be a dad and he had to think of himself now and he left.
Sad time, but looking back, I see now this was the very greatest thing he could have done for this family, as I see what he has done with his life I am relieved that I am no longer a part of it, there isn't so much as a twinge of sadness in me that he is gone.
We lived in a beautiful house ( belonging to the army) in a gentle country town, remote location and a nice place to live....I know nice is a bland word but it is a perfect word to describe where we were, nice.
Surrounded by fields and country lanes, the military built a fabulous park right outside our door, right outside, I could lift the boys over the fence and they were in the park. I did that most days, put them in the park and they played while I sat with my tiny girl and watched, or stood at the kitchen window and watched......did I ever NOT watch them? Did I take my eyes off them? Did I forget they were there and do important things like vacuum or iron clothes ....I can't remember, I feel so sure that I wouldn't, would I?
I had hospital appointments because I was so ill...I forgot to say that I had had a huge operation 2 weeks before the husband left, complications of course and I had a gaping wound across my stomach, 10 cms deep and who knows how wide that hole was ( here's an indictaion of how bad things will get soon if this kind of stuff is a detail I almost forget to mention!!) my baby had to go of course, because I wasn't to lift in case the hole split, so she was with my lovely mum and dad and I had my boys with me. So, wasn't I lucky that the husband would sit with the boys if I had a hospital appointment, I would go on a bus and have the wound re-opened or packed and he would watch the boys...or not....maybe put them out to play in the park and do what? I care not. Not now.
I remember one day that I went to my appointment and my friend came with me, then we went shopping and I remember that I had fun. I know I laughed...was it that day do you think? Was I laughing while my sons were being so hurt, so frightened? Oh I hope not.
I remember one day sitting in the sun while the boys played and they were playing behind a grassy mound....my friend and I were enjoying the peace ( oh I feel sick even saying that) I called my boys and they came, eventually. Daniel first.....where was Jordan? JORDAN!!!! Awww here he is, bless him. Howling, he did that a lot.....face like a frog with the biggest mouth and the loudest wail.....I would kiss that howling face because it was just so bloody cute! Jordan? where are your shoes my baby? Droopy shorts, just out of nappies, bare legs and no shoes...got to get a picture of this.....picture taken in heart and with camera, heart picture now somehow screwed up and I think, in the pit of my stomach now and camera picture burned because it may not have been sweet after all, I sent him back for his shoes and he went, he brought back his shoes and I took him in. Is that the day it happened? Did I, on that day, send my boy back to where he had been so abused and so damaged?
I can't remember stuff that matters, when did Jordan start screaming at night, every night? When did those terrors start when he screamed in his sleep for daddy to get him? I can't remember when they started , if I could remember, I would know what day it had happened.

I know when I found out it had happened. It was in august 1999. I can even remember the smell in the air at 5 in the evening when I began to find out.

At great risk of a cliff hanger type emotion should anyone read this today I am going to stop for now because my big kids have come home and if I continue, now, I will have to put the shutter up, be the robot and that defeats the purpose of the blog ( for me) . If I can't wail when I write about what makes me so pitifully sad, then where is the release?
So, tomorrow, perhaps.....I will do it, tell it and exorcise it.