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...
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