As side effects go.

So, two days into the medicine taking route, I feel as though I am doing something. I tell myself that it is too soon to feel better, that the medicine can't work that quickly, funny how the side effects can kick in that quickly though isn't it? Yesterday, I woke up at 8am went back to bed at 9am, woke up at 11 am, went back to bed at 3pm, woke up at 5.30 pm, went back to bed at 11pm and woke up this morning at hmmm, was it 8am or 9am? 9 I think. I did wake up at 4am, hung out some laundry on the line, stepped on a slug in my bare feet, washed my foot ( just the one) and went back to bed again.
That's some drowsiness right there, yes, we ticked THAT box.
This morning, at 9.30am as I was ironing, about 15 minutes in I froze as I felt that oh so familiar and miserable, miserable feeling, that prick pricking of sweat on my scalp, the creeping hot clinging feeling of heat over my scalp.
Yes, sweating, my one true hate, we can check that box.
Eating....well, so far that seems great because all day, all the long day I have a low grade nausea, not enough to make me miserable but just enough to stop me wanting to eat. YEEHAW!!
Nausea, tick that box too but I don't dislike this one. Actually, today I began to feel as though I shall soon be able to think about food again, proper food, good food, food that takes thinking and planning about, food that makes me feel better. I had lost that way back, right when this stint of black holeyness began.
I realised last night when this began in earnest. It was when I was told that I had to have yet another tribunal. As soon as I got that letter my mind began to delve into the whys and wherefores of being so sad, of feeling so hopeless, it's always so sneaky, so sly, so all encompassing without you being aware that this is happening.
On the way to the tribunal when my mum came with me, she asked a question, One I can't even remember, I can though, remember the answer.
I told her that my very soul feels like a failure. That I look at my big children and feel as though I failed them so horribly that I let them down so badly I will never be able to make it up to them. I felt so badly about it that now I feel unable to do anything important with my little children, that I leave the teaching to H because I was so useless.
Telling her that surprised me because I hadn't consciously realised it until the words fell out of my mouth, that meant that I was able to change that and allow myself to be more involved in the real lives of the boys, rather than the behind the scenes, cleaning, feeding, watching from afar role I had placed myself in.
The difference in the boys, in how I feel about them and how they behave has been incredible, they are divine, I enjoy them more and more every day.
More often they say things like " Oh I love you mummy, you are the best mummy in the world" and I believe them. This morning Isaac said " I love you, I never ever want you to die." Me either.
I had somehow told myself that what I had done to my big kids was done, I had to try not to keep thinking about it and try not to do it again with the little ones.
Yesterday, quite out of the blue, I thought of something. I thought about these big children of mine and oh my goodness if they aren't all completely splendid. I understood this, my children have been though terrible things. I didn't do those things to them. I wasn't able to stop those things happening and the truth is, if things were to happen all over again, the chances are I would do everything exactly the same way because I did everything the way I thought was right.
Despite them having experienced those awful things, somehow they are remarkable people. Not just OK, not pretty nice, they are absolutely and completely gloriously great.
I DID do that.
I don't take full credit because I am 100% sure that when it mattered, the angels picked me up, put me where I needed to be, told me what to say and what to do and I did it.
On my own.
When I look back to those times, when the boys were little and so damaged, when Sophie was on the road to hell, I simply cannot imagine how I did what I did. I don't know how I lived through it all, how I said and did what I did. Except I wasn't alone, not really. Not at all.
I think, at last, I have managed to let go of all that guilt. The guilt that everyone has always told me was not mine to hold onto.
Yesterday I answered a post on a debate board, a post that made me feel so passionately about something that I typed what I felt and was done.
Slowly, something began to happen and it has made the most enormous difference to how I feel about myself.
I started getting emails, messages, replies, more emails and calls from people, I don't think any of them knew that they weren't the only one to write to me, every one was so personal, so sincere, so totally from the heart and every single one.....every one told me what a great mother I am.
My whole day was filled with people saying the same thing, from my 5 year old boy who sat next to me as we drove to the grocery store together, telling me he is so happy he came to our family and how I am the best mummy in the whole world, to people who have met me, who know my children , to people who have never met me, never met my children...each one saying the same thing and not one of those messages was a trite 'this is what she wants to hear' one.
Everyone of those emails, each message, each phone call and heartfelt note is printed in my heart and each one chiseled away a little bit more of that hideous self doubt and belief that somehow I screwed up.
I only have to look at these children of mine to see that I must have done something so right, so better than OK to have these people before me, so hard working, so kind and generous, so funny and friendly, so loving and upstanding..that didn't happen by accident.
Go me.
I don't remember reading on the medication pamphlet a side effect of seeing things clearly for the first time in 20 years....but I am so glad that I seem to have that one, that even after 2 days I see it and believe it.
Thank God for that and whatever comes next ( only please can we skip the sweating? Please, that'd be great. Thank you.)