I thought for the next few blogs, I would share some memoirs of our lockdown years. I cannot quite believe it has been four years since the craziest period in our lifetime. I will write about my SEN Assesment journey for the kids another time, but I needed a break from the heaviness of my healing journey specifically. What follows, are some words I wrote over the lockdown period. In a sense, it was a welcome interval between the fight for initial support, my breakdown, and the years that followed lockdown, which were the SEN Assesment years, but naturally, lockdown had its own huge challenges that I had to grow and later heal from, one of those being that all the support I had fought so hard to secure for us, had to stop so I was completely on my own again, not even allowed to have my parents and partner around for support.

What a ride life can be!

Lockdown Memoirs - Part One:

Locked Down

Reflection is hard with clutter all around, with chaos in the air, and chaos in your mind. We are only a week into lockdown, but nearly 2 weeks in since the schools closed their doors, because of the Covid-19 Virus that is going around; it feels surreal to say the least. I have all three children at home needing my attention, and I cannot get to sleep at night before 2am, let alone get up in the mornings to get any form of routines in place.

My head is overwhelmed, my heart is overwhelmed, my kids are overwhelmed, the world is overwhelmed. In the space of three short months, people’s lives around the world have completely changed from familiar to something out of WW1 or WW2. Hearing of blackouts threatened, Internet interruptions, food shortages, people fighting over toilet paper…the world has gone mad! On the flip side, communities are coming back together, helping those most vulnerable people in the community cope with these unprecedented times. I had to switch off the news because I am so sensitive, the doom gloom was consuming me. Other people’s anxieties absolutely reflecting my own, understanding what crisis the whole entire world is in.

Reports of domestic abuse rising during lockdown, thinking, oh my god, I wonder if that would have been me had things not changed the way they did so drastically 2 years ago. I myself prior to lockdown, have been experiencing judgement, harassment from certain people at the peak of my anxiety during the start of the huge changes. I have been accused of child neglect, inability to cope - the same old record repeating, repeating, repeating - the voice that my monkey mind comes from but actually from the horse's mouth. The voice making me feel stuck in the same record groove, not allowing me to move forwards on top of everything else I am trying to process and heal from.

In the news; ‘You are at risk.’ ‘Stay at home.’ ‘You could be a secret killer if you are a carrier.‘ Stay away from your loved ones.’ ‘Stay away from your partner if they don’t live with you.’

Scare story after scare story after scare story…’This many thousand people die,’ daily updates of death tolls around the world…it feels like some kind of apocalypse, some kind of insane sci-fi Hollywood movie. So much fear…consuming me in every aspect, preventing me from being present with my children, living in the now with what is simply right in front of me. All this stop kicked me into action and I had to yell at myself...RIGHT ANNA, TAKE A STEP BACK…SWITCH OFF!

This has been the situation for so many people in my life, unable to cope with these unprecedented times, feeding each other’s fear and anxieties constantly. Friendships strained, marriages strained, fear everywhere…myself included. Leading me to feel that I don’t know what is real and what is just His-story anymore. Confusion and chaos everywhere, misunderstandings, crying for myself, my kids, my friends, family, the world.

Need…To…FOCUS!

Exhausted

Here I am, at home, in the midst of lockdown, with three confused, already troubled children in my care, completely and utterly by myself. The support I fought for two years to get has all stopped, my mum has been poorly for a few weeks, as have I and I have realised just how much she does for us. My house has descended into a bombsite with clothes exploded everywhere. Clean washing washed twice already, still not hung out because my brain is so overwhelmed. I hear my 10yr old super-chef son cooking something downstairs, I am dreading my timer going off and going downstairs because his creativity breeds more mess and more for me to clean up but he is trying so hard to help bless him because he sees how much I am struggling.

I dream of harmony and balance in my home, in fact I have set that intention for this moon cycle and I am praying and praying it comes into fruition at the full moon in a week’s time once the shock has subsided. I need to lead from the front, but when incapacitated with worry, depression and stress, it’s much easier said than done. My partner has been my rock, but even he struggles with my anxiety because nobody can help that, aside from myself. I sit, I think, I stress and cannot move into action because the exhaustion is so intense. I am trying to be forgiving of myself understanding what effect shock has on mental illness which I have battled with for over a decade. The black dog is here, and I cannot shake it off. I want to see light again…I’d found light, but darkness has descended again and I am fed up.

I know what I need to do; I need to get outside, reconnect, switch off from the outside world and reconnect with my here and now, but I am stuck fast, mostly confined to my bed with my poor children left to unlimited screens sitting in squalor and rotting away. The guilt is intense but I know I need to stop worrying about it because although I’m losing this time right now, I know I will come back into the light again. I am feeding them, I am checking on them, but I feel I should be doing more, but I can’t, not right now and I need to forgive myself for that.

My darling eldest son, the same one I came to blows with 2 days ago when he pushed me too far, brings me the food he has prepared from fresh. He cooked rice, made a veggie stir fry with maybe a little too much soy sauce, but I feel re-energised and taken care of. He’s 10, he shouldn’t have to look after me, but he does, very well and I would be lost without him. I still haven’t ventured downstairs but have set my timer for another 30mins in the hope I can do more focused writing without distraction to help my brain get clearer and function as it needs to function. By the time that 30mins is over, I should have managed 1hr total, including the inevitable interruptions from the kids.

When your children become your guiding light

My 10yr old son, comes in and flops on my bed and says ‘I’m so tired. I just cooked three different people their lunch not everyone wanted the actual thing I cooked.’  I look at him with sympathy and a big smile and something lights up my face as my eyes sparkle. He smiles at me and I give him a big cuddle and whisper ‘welcome to the grown up world darling. What would I do without you? Thank you baby boy. I am so lucky that I have a superstar son like you to help me through and I'm sorry I can't do more right now.’ 

I say jokingly to him he can be mummy for the day if he wants and do everything I should be doing, because I’m too worn out today as well.  He says ‘ok then, if it would help you out today when I know you’re really tired...’ We have a chat, and he asks ‘so what would you do next then?’  I have a think, and say, 'ok, are you sure you are ready to hear this…?' He smiles at me, looking so hopeful poor poppit when I'm about to crush his dreams. I reconsider whether to say what I'm going to say, but say it anyway because he is so expectant now!

‘First I’d make myself get out of bed (I am already dressed!), go downstairs to face the mess in the kitchen and the dining room. I’d empty the dishwasher, load it again, clear the dining room, sweep the floors and mop them as well, because there’s a sticky floor in front of the fridge where somebody spilled pineapple juice the day before yesterday and I haven’t managed to clean it up yet. Then, I would enforce your tween sister to go in the shower, because she is getting rather stinky and she will shout and scream at me until I force her upstairs. I’d then make my sons go outside while she is in the shower to get fresh air, and I would proceed to empty her room of all the clothes that I don’t know are clean or dirty, all the time dealing with tantrums meltdowns from the 6yr old son who hasn’t got a screen for entertainment anymore because he smashed it yesterday in a rage. I would have to go backwards and forwards to your sister in the bath to check she’s washing herself, whilst dragging the 6yr old back outside who’s been in and out ten times already complaining he’s bored. I might even have to lock the door and leave him you to ‘figure it out’ (my new favourite phrase!).  By then, I would have run up and downstairs twenty times sorting one thing or another out, oh and by now I have already begun prepping a roast dinner for everyone for this evening...

'...Big sister would finally come out of the bath, I would wash her hair over the bath, whilst hoping that my boys aren’t upsetting each other outside and wonder if I remembered to unlock the back door again, and switch the cooker off as well. By now, sister’s room would be clearer so she can actually find clothes to wear and be able to move in her tiny space. I would make her get dressed, need to spend an hour on her hair (afro curls) inbetween refereeing the two boys and maybe by then I have relented and allowed the TV to be put on again for peace! I would do hair in front of TV whilst also prepping roast dinner, and somehow manage to have tea ready for 6pm!!!’

Oh my, the life of a mummy, haha! I then proceeded to ask my beautiful boy;

'Do you still want to be mummy for the day son?!' To which, he rolled his eyes and said in no uncertain tone, NO 'THANK YOU VERY MUCH!'

Luckily he wasn't too heartbroken that he couldn't manage my load to help me out, but god I love that boy. He is such an awesome little chap!

Energy Returning

I have been making changes in my life. Moving things around in the living room, making it feel more family friendly. I have been taking small steps to try and help myself where I struggle most, getting up in the mornings. I have temporarily moved the kettle into my bedroom in order for it to be easy to make myself a drink in the mornings to wake me up earlier, working towards getting up earlier so I can supervise the children better.

The last two weeks, I have been in a state of shock, since the schools closed then lockdown happened. I have been made to realise how co-dependent I have become on people their ongoing help with day to day basics like cleaning, washing, cooking, childcare so much more. To suddenly be on my own with everything I have struggled with has been a horrendous adjustment. One so sudden and shocking that I didn’t know what to do with myself to the extent that for the first week, I was in a dark dark place again. A place I didn’t want to return to, but was taken to through no choice of my own. Thankfully, my partner came in to fully support me in that first week, when I couldn’t move out of my bed most days. He stayed with us for a few nights until I was feeling stronger again but then, we were told we weren’t able to be around each other if he wanted to see his two children the next week. He had already not seen them the week before. We were both heartbroken, but both our sets of kids need to come first no matter what, we just had to deal with it.

The joys of modern tech have saved us and we have all been able to keep in touch through zoom calls and WhatsApp Videoes although not the same, it has kept us going, all 7 of us, the 5 kids as well. More on this later, but for now, I spent the day gutting my daughter’s bedroom, moving furniture cleaning surfaces in there. It was one of those jobs that just kept getting put off, but today I achieved it. I am exhausted again, but proud I have been able to make a good start today and maybe that my energies are coming back slowly but surely.

Thank you for reading.

Much Love, Anna Chantal xx

Coming tomorrow...

Lockdown Memoirs: Part Two – Love Reflections and How I Manifested my Perfect Partner