*blink*

Errr... Hi there...

It's been three months since I last wrote here and these three months have been one hell of a ride.

From the outside looking in, not a whole lot has changed. But from where I sit, trapped inside my body, staring out through the holes of my eyes, the world has pretty much turned upside down.

My head is broken and there doesn't seem to be anything that can fix it. The bad days are getting worse, the good days are really nothing more than just "slightly less bad" days.

The self-destructive behaviour is back, the long, lonely nights, the endless tears.

I have sought help, am getting help, but so far the help isn't even making a dent in fixing whatever is broken. And I am seriously starting to believe that there is no solution - or, rather, that there is only one solution, the final act I've been dancing around on and off my whole adult life.

That one, last, desperate act isn't really a solution in absolute terms, but it would put an end to all the pain inside my head, the pain in my thoughts, the nightmares.

I am, of course, too cowardly to make that final step, so I remain here, struggling through each day, wishing my life away.

And not writing here very often.

I will try and write more, but be prepared, there's no sunshine in me any more.

Level...errr....43?

Although technically (here in France at least) it now is not, today still feels like it's my birthday. 43. Heh.

I still find it pretty hard to believe that I'm actually that old. I mean, really? 43? That seems so impossibly grown-up, and I don't feel grown-up at all. I feel like I'm just pretending (badly) to be a grown-up...

Despite drinking too much of this delight last night:

and just 3 hours' sleep, I actually felt OK when I got up this morning. I received a book and a couple of DVDs from my dad, a CD of flamenco music from D and chocolates (provided by my dad) and this:

from the girls, which was perfect.

I received more wonderful birthday wishes through the post, via Twitter and via Facebook, all of which warmed my heart and made me feel loved.

The girls and I had roast chicken for lunch, followed by a tarte à la framboise topped with chantilly, with candles and the girls singing in French and English.

It was a fairly low-key birthday, but a surprisingly good day - particularly given how miserable and crap I've been feeling lately.

The melancholy is starting to return, of course, now that the "big day" is over, but I'm thankful for this day, even if we didn't do much, even if (to be totally peevish and ungrateful) I would have preferred a real cake to a raspberry tart (however nice it was), even if it would have been nice to go out and do something rather than spend the afternoon wading through a translation about Czech communism.

I'm grateful for all the birthday wishes I received - more than I ever have before, all so very much appreciated and savoured.

I'm 43. That's pretty much mid-40s, isn't it? Holy crap.

Every year, I seem to say that the previous year wasn't a good one but that I have hopes for the new one. Well, it would appear that Pat Monahan and the guys from Train have picked up on that - this song (though clearly about Pat Monahan's real life), or at least the chorus of it, could have been written for me!

Maybe, just maybe, this really WILL be my year...

Air

When you swirl down to the bottom of the pool, the bottom of the sea, you must try to find the light and head towards it. You need to come up for air, break out into the light.

Right now, as I feel the sand between my fingers and the seaweed entwined around my legs, I can only catch an occasional glimpse of the light.

I've been told that it's there, that it's the direction to take. But right now, that cold, damp, grainy sand sticking to my fingers, the leathery ribbon-like seaweed clinging to my skin, prevent me from breaking free of this watery cloak, prevent me from struggling back up to where there is light.

To where there is air to breathe.

A to Z Afterthoughts

As I get older (and boy, do I feel like I'm getting older...), the more I realise just how poor I am at self-discipline. Obviously, this makes my decision to be self-employed rather dubious, and most likely explains why my entire life is such a  monumental fuck-up.

I started this blog basically as a means for me to say what's in my heart, in my own language, in a way that suits me, in a place where I'm not judged. My aim has never been to become a star blogger (I don't want to be recognised, or published, or asked to speak at conferences, REALLY, I don't!) and I do nothing much of anything to boost my readership. That's not what this is about.

I'm a shy person, who finds it difficult to actually say things, out loud, to other people. I don't talk about my feelings easily. I don't show emotion easily (except when I do, and then it's generally humiliatingly flagrant). But I can WRITE about them. So that's what I do.

But, as I said, I lack self-discipline. So the blog languishes, at a paltry 3 or 4 posts a month, and even I'm not happy with that. Challenges such as the AtoZ Challenge are ideal for me - they force me to make the effort and actually write something every day, but not for an unrealistically long amount of time (because I'd never stick to it, of course).

I enjoyed the Challenge, and found a few blogs I've started following - Dave, Toddlerisms, Dawn, Liz and maybe one or two more. It's been great to make contact with some of these people, find things we have in common, new pathways for discussions. New horizons, so to speak.

If there's a new challenge at any point - later this year, or next year, or whenever - I'm pretty sure I'll sign up again. Till then, I'll make my usual promise to write here more often, even though we all know I won't be able to keep it.

But I will try to keep in touch with my new blog contacts.

Thank you, AtoZChallenge - you were fun!

Z is for...

Zut alors!

There's a classic image of the stereotypical Frenchman - stripey T-shirt, beret, bicycle, a baguette and some wine, maybe a Gauloise hanging out of his mouth - and the stereotypical Frenchwoman - outrageously chic, poodle on a lead, high heels clickety-clacking. And then there are those expressions we're always vaguely led to believe the French use but that we're all pretty sure they don't.

"Zut alors!" is one of those expressions, along with "Sacré bleu!" and "Comme çi, comme ça".

None of that's particularly interesting. But what I do find interesting is that, whilst I have never heard any French person ever say "Sacré bleu!", the other two are totally in use. The latter, "comme çi, comme ça", means "so-so" and is actually pretty standard.

The other, however, may seem utterly improbable but is in fact amazingly common. "Zut" is an interjection used by anyone wanting to make an interjection but without offending anyone (in the presence of small children, for example). I would never have imagined that people actually used it.

But they do.

So. This has been a pretty crappy day, in a pretty crappy week, in a pretty crappy month and in a pretty crappy year. The A to Z Challenge is now at an end (unless there are more letters in the alphabet that no one told me about), I'm really tired, my back aches from sleeping on the sofa while my dad's here, I'm hopelessly behind in my work and my financial situation - which everyone keeps promising me will improve - persists in absolutely not doing so.

All of which means there's really only one thing to say.

Zut, alors!

Y is for...

Yellow.

Contrary to what most of the entries on this blog might lead you to believe, my favourite colour is neither dark nor depressing. No, it's yellow. A bright, sunshiny yellow.

When I was a child, my mother had very set ideas as to what colours a redhead could and couldn't wear. In the former category, there was dark green, dark blue, brown, dark purple and grey. In the latter, all the others. Every photo of me from about the age of 4 up has me wearing one of those dull, drab colours. And I yearned for a yellow jumper. Or red. Or orange. Or anything not "dark".

Added to this was the fact that all British schools have uniforms, and they're frequently dull and drab too. In the many schools I attended, I had a navy blue uniform (white shirt, red tie), a hideous brown and yellow combo (yes, there was yellow, but the uniform was still predominantly brown), a dark green + kilt combo and, for my entire middle school period, a grey-green monstruosity (white-and-green striped shirt, beige jumper and socks, burgundy cape. Yes, a cape. An ankle-length cape).

As a teenager, my parents never gave me an allowance, so I still depended on my mother for the clothes I wore. She "let me choose", but I was never in any doubt as to what she thought suitable. I managed to get her to accept lilac and turquoise, but there was still a lot of dark - navy blue, dark purple, black. With my white, white skin I probably looked more like a corpse than anything.

It wasn't till I went away to university that I finally (eventually) plucked up the courage to wear clothes that friends told me suited me, but that I knew my mother would hate. Above-the-knee skirts, for example, and fitted clothes (my mother was obsessed with the fact that I was fat, even though I've never been fat in my life. Just fatter than her. But she weighed little more than 6 stone (around 90 pounds, maybe, or 40 kg) and was 4 inches shorter).

The day I travelled home for Christmas after my first term in St Andrews, I was wearing an emerald green shirt,  pale green mini-skirt and Doc Martens. My mother almost fainted.

It was liberating. After that "success", I went wild, wearing the wildest, brightest clothes on earth - I went to a formal dance pretty much dressed as a deck chair, with a red-yellow-white striped Lycra mini-dress, gold tights and red T-bar sandals with a vertiginous heel.

Now, I've calmed down a fair amount, but still don't buy into the French thing of wearing black all winter and navy, white and beige all summer. I do have black clothes, and some beige, a little white. No navy, though, and no dark green. Almost no brown, either.

I have yellow, though. I also have yellow kitchenware, yellow walls, yellow jewellry. It's a colour that brightens my mood (and heaven knows it's needed brightening of late), warms me up, makes me feel that there's something good in the world.

Yellow is a good colour.

X is for...

X

I'm not quite sure how "X" came to be an almost universal symbol for a kiss, but it has. When I was a child, I always signed letters and cards with a row of them, usually three. Back in the heady days when I had a proper family, I signed things from the 4 of us (me, the girls, my ex) with four of them and a hand-drawn pawprint from Tom. Now, I'm back to three (+ pawprint).

Today, however, I'm going to be writing an awful lot more. Today there will be an infinity of them, an infinity squared, even. Because today isn't just an ordinary Friday.

Today is the day my baby girl, my Looby-Lou, my little Lobster, turns 8.

She can be difficult. She hates sleeping, likes less and less food and eats little. She can't sit still for more than a nanosecond and she's big on sulking. She is hyper-sensitive to perceived injustice (in the form of things-her-big-sister-does-that-she-doesn't) and even more naturally untidy than I am.

But - she's also affectionate, bright as a button, fun-loving, giggly, mischievous, both girly and a tomboy, friendly, generous and downright adorable a lot of the time.

Happy 8th Birthday, my littlest hobo, I hope you have a wonderful day and a wonderful year being 8.

I love you more than anything.