Melancholy Monday

Monday...
Grey day. Seems like nothing is going right day.



I'm hurting...



But... crying helps.
A bit.

Sometimes... I just need to allow myself to feel pain, anger, bitterness, regret, remorse and know that the Sun will still be shining tomorrow, even if it is behind the clouds. I'm still this side of the flowerbed. Life is bleak but it's better than the alternative. Clichés all of them, but they work.

Depression, this overwhelming sucking blackness that wants to consume me, is something that just wicks every bit of joy and hope from me. But I refuse to succumb to the awful drugs from before, the drugs that wrapped me in cotton wool and prevented me from feeling. From living. From being in the moment. From truly interacting with reality and life.

Answers never will be found in a bottle, regardless of the substance the bottle contains. Answers can only be found inside yourself. You simply have to look. Then look some more.

It took me many long difficult months to wean myself from the antidepressant drugs and their lulling effects, months spent feeling these painful 'electrical zaps' in my head, dizziness, vertigo and an altered sense of reality as the Doctor-prescribed addiction was wrenched from my body, my mind. From my brain.

(And those long months are enough for their own special Blog post.)

It's just... drugs are such an easy option, you see? Do I really want to feel this pain in my life? This gnawing ache and agony that appears whenever I still my mind to sleep? It's unbearable at times.

But I need to function at full capacity. I have my children, they need their Mummy to be here for them. Because the 'sperm donor' that was their father so obviously is not. That's their term for him, not mine, by the way. Tragic and rather sad, maybe, but he will never again be 'Daddy' to them. Even when he forces them to call him that on his infrequent, irregular and unplanned visits. They mock him when they are safely home and away from 'him'. That's the basis of my daughters' bitterness: his lies, his broken promises, the fact he won't help them. The damage caused has all been from his own hand.

I have another Court date in March to face him for Child Support, a legal and moral obligation which he has always refused. This is not my doing, but the French Goverment, absent parents are obliged to pay 'Pension Alimentaire' it's the law of the land. As my lawyer has stated, it's being sent to Saint Brieuc, to the Tribunal de Grand Instance, the main high courts for our département. He won't get away with feigning he doesn't speak French this time, or has no fixed abode, or claiming he hasn't a job - the French view 'travaille noir' as work. With the new legislation between EU countries, the French can now hunt him down in the UK. And they will, they take a very dim view of parents who financially abandon their children. Plus, it's so stupid, if he'd just go down to Social Security and fill out paperwork, the UK would pay FOR him. But, that's too much effort.

Yeah... a lot of anger there. However it was my choice to take my daughters away from a dysfunctional family and bring them to a place where they are happy, they feel safe and they thrive. My children are my focus and always will be. They HAVE to be.

So I listen to Snow Patrol and Kate Nash and The Beatles and I cry until there is nothing left but numbness and emptiness. And I remember that even if this is where I am now, I still have choices. I still have a future, uncertain as it may be. I still have my children and my skills. I still have my smile, my Choctaw cheekbones, my artistic flair and my enviable je ne sais quoi. As long as I have those things and pair them with my sense of humour and ability to laugh at myself and all my silly foibles, life isn't so bad after all. And after musing on this and writing about it, I begin to feel better...

A bit.