Is it just the beginning?

A few days later and now that the dust has settled following the events of last Thursday, things are no clearer. Fortunately my mind has calmed down somewhat, letting my anger dissipate and my emotions sort themselves out.

A massively positive step in all this mess is that daughter has had the first session with her counsellor - a lady I've seen myself for support in the past - and seemed to get on quite well, so much so she's really looking forward to her next appointment. I've decided to send her weekly if possible - it's expensive but if it's working towards making daughter mentally stronger, more confident and able to deal with and express her feelings it's worth every single penny.

I'd felt a big urge to talk to someone myself recently. I've felt really mentally overloaded but I'm starting to feel like I'm coming out the other side. It's been the first time since I finished my counselling where I've noticed old habits and reactions rearing their heads, such as comfort eating, underlying moods of anger or feeling very low, regular sighing and a buzzing head. I'm not sure what's changed over the past day or so - maybe my attitude a little, maybe some acceptance and a target of Saturday to hang out with my best friend and spill my brains - figuratively speaking, what with it being Halloween. Writing the blog also helps massively, so I'm here today to work out my thoughts on what action to take next.

It's absolutely clear to me from the past couple of year's evidence that daughter's mother is unstable. She can't hold down a job, her relationships usually end with her partner being torn apart, her kids don't trust her and can't depend on her words or actions, she's apparently claiming huge tax credits illegally and supposedly still has an addiction to codiene tablets.

With all that said, what's stopping me from taking firm action to keep our daughter in my care? Assuming her mum's been smart enough to hide away some of her ill-gotten gains to get her own house, there's a danger she'll make a play to take daughter back full-time. So what's stopping me?

Firstly, daughter's choice would probably be to live with her mum and although that may have changed somewhat due to recent events, but it's probably still the case. While this has been really difficult to deal with in the past, now it'd be even harder given my complete confidence that her mum would fuck it all up again and daughter's life would fall apart, AGAIN.

In recent times, I've given daughter's wishes and requirements number one priority because she's old enough and mature enough to make major decisions which effect her life. I've not wanted to take those decisions out of her hands and make them myself for fear of having her resent me for it, or having a massive backlash from her mother.

This is another thing stopping me from taking action. Her mother is notoriously catty, aggressive and will stop at nothing to get her own way. She's already told daughter that there's no way she'd let me have full custody of her - what the fuck is up with telling her that? Jesus, the woman baffles me sometimes. However, with the involvement of social services, solicitors and the legal system, I can't see they'd do anything other than give me full custody based on her mum's actions over the past few years. I've made every effort to keep my life as stable as possible for the past two years - not that it was particularly unstable before but mentally I wasn't healthy before my counselling.

The last thing holding me back is concerns about gaining financial aid for legal costs. My income is small so I'd qualify for legal aid, but my financial past is murky and my tax returns aren't up to date. I've been debt-free for some time now, which I'm proud of, but I'm not looking forward to any financial scrutiny I'll have to go through to get legal aid. I definitely couldn't afford to do it off my own back.

Writing these little hurdles out has shown me they are just that - little hurdles. They're not insurmountable. The whole thing is incredibly daunting and dependent on many external factors. I haven't even decided it's the path I want to take yet. But I'm starting to feel like I'm strong enough to start the journey should it come to it.

Is it over?

I'm a whirling mass of emotions today. I've heard from daughter's mum's boyfriend that it all kicked off at their house last night and it's completely over between them. The police were involved in trying to eject her mum from the house, mobile phones were broken and it sounds like a real shit-storm.

Thankfully, daughter has been with me this week and didn't have to be involved in the drama. So is this the start of better, more stable things for us both?

What I can be sure of is that daughter is going to be hurt pretty badly. She already seems quite mentally strained and stressed - she's having problems in her social group at school which are obviously being compounded by the stress she feels with the general situation, so I've made her an appointment with a counsellor who specialises in children which should help her gain some perspective and hopefully some confidence, as well as clarify how she's feeling about this whole saga with her mother.

I'm trying very hard not to get my hopes up, which I think is one of the reasons my emotions are so mixed. My fear is, should I dare to dream that things will settle down and we'll have the opportunity to set up a new life for ourselves on the basis that her mother can't or won't provide a stable home for daughter, something will pop up and bite me on the arse and dash my dreams.

That said, I won't keep it in for long. This weekend is an opportunity to spend some time with daughter and have a chat about what she wants to do. I'm seeing my parents for a walk on Sunday which is another opportunity to clear my head, and I'll talk to Sophie's other grandma over the weekend to get her take on what we should do to move forward.

I don't mind admitting that I'm scared. I'm scared that this whole experience might be too much for daughter to handle and she might follow the path her mother took at a similar age in similar, tumultuous circumstances. If that were to happen and she were to start going off the rails, I honestly don't know how I'd cope.

I'm scared that I'll start the whole process of taking daughter on full-time in an official capacity, give up my bachelor's residence in favour of more suitable accomodation for the pair of us, go through the form-filling and interviews involved in benefit and Housing Association applications, only to have the whole process derailed by... Well, by her mother, to be honest. That's the main spanner I can foresee dropping into these works and messing things up.

One would hope that, at the point of having lost yet another relationship, having totally given up on two kids and rapidly alienating the third, any normal person would fight to the death to claw it all back and provide a stable basis for her family. But this is no normal person we're talking about, and I'm concerned she'll just do a bunk and disappear, which would leave daughter with a mum-shaped hole in her heart. Unfortunately, I've felt it before and I'm feeling it now - I really do hope she just disappears. It'll be easier on daughter in the long run, because I honestly don't believe she'll ever sort her life and her head out sufficiently to give our daughter the mother she so obviously wants.

Rollercoaster Part 2

When I thought about discussing this possibly being the start of the changes she'd indicated she wanted, the phrase 'That's not exactly what I meant' popped into my head and I suggested we talk about what her intentions were so we were both clear.

It was at this point that my mood shifted considerably from up high to down low. Daughter said that her advocate had misunderstood what she'd meant. The whole deal was to be prefixed with 'If it turns out I can't live with mum...' meaning she wanted to carry on as it is at the moment with a view to moving back with her mum full time once her and her boyfriend had sorted their lives out. She hadn't wanted to tell me I'd got the wrong end of the stick because she didn't want to upset me.

It took a while for the whole thing to sink in but I felt my mood crash straight away. Bless my daughter, she asked if I was ok and it must have been obvious from my face that I wasn't. I was incredibly disappointed, having gone from sure things were sorted to things being up in the air and uncertain all over again in a very short time. After all these months of being strong for her and trying not to show when I'm upset or angry or feeling low, I couldn't keep it in any more. I had to stop myself from crying and hide my disappointment - daughter got upset because she thought it was her fault, when really it was just my reaction to a string of misunderstandings.

Daughter told advocate something which was misunderstood, passed on to me, then to grandma, who also passed it on to me. What a pain in the arse.

I'd like to think it's noone's fault, but I can't help feeling daughter made a couple of bad decisions which if made differently would have stopped me from getting hurt. If she'd have been more vocal and assertive in her intentions at the start then the misunderstandings wouldn't have compounded and I wouldn't have had a chance to get my hopes up.

Of course, the fact that she didn't assert her opinion at the start is a factor of everything that's happened to her over the past few months, so I don't blame her. Her confidence is shot and that's one of the reasons I'd like to get her some counselling - so she can gain the tools she needs to deal with the life she's got.

I've subsequently gone through many emotions, but chiefly anger. Since I've managed to unleash that side of my personality, anger seems to bubble up quite often when I should probably be feeling other emotions. It's constant, bubbling, ambient frustration and tension and it's really difficult to put up with. I've had it for a couple of days now and it doesn't feel like it's shifting. It's one of the reasons I'm writing this - to try and clear up my head a little bit.

The thought occurs that it's another attitude 'thing'. Ugh, what a horrible way of putting it.
Maybe it's the way I'm looking at it. Nothing's fundamentally changed since five days ago; all that's happened is mood swings for me. Yes, I've been to the top and back down to the bottom, but isn't it time to get back to the middle and pick up where we left off?

Probably, but I can't shake the feeling I've been hurt. Maybe a combination of sleep, exercise and attitude readjustment is needed to get me back on track.

Rollercoaster Part 1

During this past week or two, I've been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Having spent most of the past year on level ground mentally, I'm finding my mind's currently a bit overloaded.

To start with, I'm really bloody tired. It's a well known feature of my brain that it doesn't work properly and struggles to maintain balance and motivation when I'm tired, so I must make an effort to catch up.

Next, I haven't walked at all in exactly two weeks. I'm really missing it, but I've not been able to muster the motivation to get out there and put a few miles in. I think the fact that my feet have ached quite heavily after my last two or three walks isn't helping but I'll just put that down to having to get used to my new sturdy boots for the time being. I do need to get out there though, as the exercise and mental freedom gained are both massive helping hands when I feel mentally strained.

Also, I'm starting to feel the strain of sharing my small living space with my daughter, which has been bearable until recently, when an unfortunate series of events took me to the top and crashed me down within 36 hours.

It all began last Friday. I'd taken a day off sick - unpaid - and had spent much of the day relaxing and catching up on some sleep. Daughter had a meeting with her advocate from recent social services meetings to discuss progress and performance. The advocate is a lady we both trust, who's great with kids and seems to get on with Sophie. I was expecting the advocate to ask Sophie whether she felt like she needed to see a counsellor - something her mum's mum and I had agreed would be of benefit to her and we'd asked the advocate to bring it up as an independent source.

When daughter was dropped off, the advocate said she had something to pass on from daughter. She said she's come to the conclusion that she can't live at her mum's and that with help from the government and social services to get us established in more suitable accommodation and help out with benefits, that she'd like to come and live with me full-time. There was something of a minor protest from daughter part-way through this announcement that it wasn't exactly what she'd said, but that almost got lost in the wonder that I was feeling.

When the advocate left, daughter and I tried to have a chat about what'd been said and clear everything up but daughter was having a hard time clarifying what she wanted, so I suggested she call her grandma to discuss everything and get it clear in her mind before we talked about it. I gave her my phone and she went to make the call. After a couple of minutes she came back - grandma would call back because her other phone was ringing. After a few minutes the phone rang again and daughter spent quarter of an hour talking things through with her grandmother. At the end of her conversation, daughter passed the phone to me and her grandma went through what'd been said between the advocate and Sophie and her and me.

Wow, this is confusing and I'm not committing it to bytes very clearly, but I'll keep trying.

Grandma confirmed everything the advocate had said - that Sophie had decided to come to me full-time.

As you might imagine, this news sent me to the top of the world. After six months of serious uncertainty, my mind switched to a reasonable amount of satisfaction, elation and positivity about the future. This was the start of big things: getting a new job, help finding and paying for somewhere to live from social services and the government and benefits if required. I've resisted getting benefits until now because I want to stand on my own two feet without claiming benefits if at all possible, but the offer of help from social services to get us established seemed to be an opportunity not to be missed.

It'd be a fresh start for us. An opportunity to start again and make a new life for both me and my daughter. The chance to offer her the stability she's needed for the past few years. The promise of having my daughter around to look after and share life with for the next few years.

That evening, her mother cancelled meeting up with her at the fair for an hour - the second year in a row this has happened. Daughter was gutted but by no means surprised. Then, while daughter was out at the fair with her friends, her mum texted me saying she thought it'd be better if daughter stayed with me this week instead of staying with her as planned, as things weren't going well between her and her boyfriend.

While I respect her 'honesty' in telling me this, I'm really unsure of her motives. Why is she doing this? It really looks like she's trying to push her daughter away like she's done with her other two kids. Either that or she's oblivious to the fact that her eldest is incredibly disappointed every time she cancels something or changes arrangements that are in place to give our daughter stability.

Anyway, I decided not to mention this to daughter that evening because I didn't want to spoil her night out, so I brought it up the next morning. I showed her the text message I'd recieved and she was obviously disappointed but, again, not surprised. Since we've been trying to put these arrangements in place so everyone know's what they're doing and daughter has stability, she's often said 'But what if she cancels?'

It was at this point a niggle came up in my mind.

To be continued...

The nights are drawing in

and I find myself increasingly concerned that I might slip back into depression now autumn is firmly established and Greenwich Mean Time awaits.

The shorter days affect me in strange ways. I've always seen the short evenings of winter as a bad thing. I crave daylight and sunlight, and during the cooler seasons we're lucky if we see eight hours of good light. With the inclusion of generally grey skies, I find myself battling with depressive symptoms.

Before I considered myself 'normal again' early this year, I've often noticed how the symptoms of my depression would intensify during the winter months. As soon as summer drifted into autumn and the weather turned, I'd start to feel lethargic and demotivated, low and withdrawn. Then, as soon as the first snowdrops flowered and heralded the beginning of spring, my mood would lift immeasurably and I'd become a different person.

The sudden nature of this transformation has always been apparent. It's like something clicks in my brain and I tell myself 'Spring is coming! Summer is coming!' and my mood changes for the better.

An opposite brain-click happened last week when I noticed it was dark at 7pm, dark when I got up at 6am and I looked-up the date for the clocks going back, which was three weeks away. These actions conspired to draw me into a funk and dwell on the short days to come.

It occurs to me that this is purely an attitude change which I should be able to manipulate. A book I read recently suggested that our reaction to events can be influenced by subtle changes in the way we think about these potentially life-changing events. It said to think about how often our mood is changed, for better or worse, by good news or bad. Good news brings a smile and elation, bad news brings sadness and depression. These changes are instant and tangible, and can be altered by how we perceive the event.

What I'd like to do is keep the elation that comes at the break of spring but discard the morose outlook that comes when the nights start getting longer. The realisation that my attitude has much to do with how I feel about the latter is really helpful. For example, while writing the above two paragraphs, it's dawned on me that there's much I love about autumn and winter - I often quote the transitional periods of spring and autumn to be my favourite times of year, and winter brings much of its own charm and enjoyment - not least my birthday which looms just eight weeks away. The bright sunlight of early February is only four months away, and there's plenty of nature to enjoy out walking during those months. I've been walking since spring this year and it'd be nice to get a good twelve-month experience of the cycle of nature by keeping up the walking. This also helps my mood, not only with exercise but with exposure to sunlight and a sense of pride and achievement every mile I add to my tally.

This is good motivation to keep up with my walking too, on which I've been pretty slack for the past couple of months. There's a few reasons for that which I won't go into now, but it's definitely impacted on my general wellbeing, my diet and alcohol intake. It's an odd circle which can be broken simply with a little effort and a good chunk of walking every week.

So, there. In the space of half an hour bashing this post out on my phone, I seem to have changed my attitude to the dark mornings and evenings. Result! Now, if I can just re-adjust my attitude to fatty foods and cider...