Dear 2015

Dear 2015,

First of all I'd like to say fuck you and the horse you rode in on. This has been my hardest, most challenging most destructive year ever.

You have given my eldest son a new hell he has had to live through and a heavy burden to bear. You seemed to like to kick people who were already down in the dirt. Repeatedly.

You have created a divide in some relationships and built others. You have bought past ghosts into the present. I've had to both live new hells and revisit old hells that were buried deep inside me.

But I do have to give you one thing. You answered my biggest most possible prayer (not that I pray). Even though I thought in my mind this wish was never going to come true, it did, and it was everything I had hoped for and more. Though this wish has bought pain and sorrow, it has bought so much happiness and healing. Old wounds have left deep scars on my inner being but reopening them and talking them though has helped them heal in a more thorough way. December has proven that no matter how long you haven't seen someone special, deep connections never fade and can feel both new and old at the same time.

I recognise that 2016 is going to require a lot of work and negotiation to find a new normal that I hope all who I love very dearly can be happy with. Although I recognise I have had a lot of personal growth this year, more is on the way if I'm going to be able to move forward.

I welcome 2016 and it's challenges but I hope it will treat me gently.

Much love to those I hold very dearly.

Beck xxx

A simple question with a not so simple answer

"How are you?" it seems like a simple enough question, innocent and well-meaning enough. Is it a shop attendant? You fake smile and lie "fine thank you". You're there to buy a carton of milk, you're not actually talking to your psychologist who you're paying to have time to listen. But then a friend asks, are they a close friend and already has at least some idea of what's going on in your life right now? Even if they are, do you really want to be the "Debby Downer" bringing down the conversation describing your current struggles yet again like you did yesterday at the paediatrician? Sometimes I exhaust myself listing all our recent battles with our son. Surely it's exhausting to hear. Especially if it is someone you touch base with regularly, surely they're sick of hearing of ongoing struggles.

Even if you're feeling fine that day and not particularly worn down by recent events, the follow up question will kill it for sure. "How is X?" How am I supposed to answer how my chronically ill son is? "Oh much better" pppffftt right! We're lucky if he's well enough to attend a full week of school at the moment. Are you honestly prepared to hear that he's been so tired he could barely lift his head up long enough to eat his dinner or that he was so weak he couldn't climb up to his own bed for 3 nights and slept on a mattress on the floor? Or are you just trying to make normal, light-hearted conversation? There is nothing normal about my sons life, never has been and at the moment, nothing light-hearted either.

On the same hand I don't want you to not ask me about how he's going, to ignore him and what's going on there is ignoring a huge chunk of my life right now. It's not right to ignore our struggles just to make conversation easier.

You can't ask your friends with heathy children and normal lives to really actually 'get it'. You wouldn't wish this path on your worst enemy. You don't want to walk alone, yet you don't want to drag anyone else down with you, but there's very little choice, there's nothing joyful or uplifting about having a chronically ill child.