Life, the Universe and the Melancholic

The father of my children moved out three weeks ago. We had effectively been together for 24 years. All those years and children together. We watched our children grow as we continued to grow up. Somewhere along the way I think we started to grow apart. I became a mother to many children and got lost in the whirlwind of all the things. I can't speak for him, but I suspect he also got lost in fatherhood, trying to provide for us. He has spent much of our years together with undiagnosed ADHD. Essentially, his entire life undiagnosed. In hindsight, its impact on our relationship was insidious. It became a running joke that he was my extra child. Eventually it wasn't funny anymore. For either of us. The more I tried to address issues and things that I felt we needed to work on, the more he would shut down. It felt like he slowly disappeared and trying to actively engage him with working on our relationship became pointless. I felt ignored, unseen, invisible for the most part. On th

My Mum died. Her last breath of life left her at 9.37pm, 8th September. I held her hand and kissed her forehead as she left. I had made a "Mum" playlist of all her favourite songs I could remember. She slipped away listening to the song Could I Have This Dance by Anne Murray. It was hers and Dad's song. The next song that played was Over The Rainbow by Judy Garland. She would sing this to us when we were babies. And then to the grandbabies. They say babies decide when it's time for them come, to be born. My beautiful mother picked her moment to die. She had impeccable timing. If she didn't. It was one hell of an extraordinary coincidence.  I am heartbroken.  Bereft.  Distraught.  Grief stricken. All the words and feelings and states of being that convey loss. Somehow it's still not enough. Two days leading up to Mum dying, I  would go outside in the evening and look at the sky. Silently praying for a miracle. Each night I seen shooting stars...falling stars. I

Life is a cause for disillusionment at the moment. I was going to write a post about all the disillusioned things when I realised I had a draft post waiting in the wings from a few weeks ago. So here it is... The weather has been dreary drizzle where I live. It's also the final stretch of school holidays, so I am a slightly bit battle fatigued from all the children being home. Yesterday I went for a walk in the rain to get milk. I needed the walk and milk was in short supply in the fridge. We run out of milk and bread at a rapid pace when everyone is home. Walking always gives me breathing and thinking space. It also gives me opportunities to take photos which I put on Instagram, my visual gratitude diary. Or "life isn't so bad if you can find beauty in mundane things" diary. While  walking in the drizzle, I was reminded of when I was a kid and use to stand outside the front of my childhood home when it was raining. Not pouring rain, but the dreary, cold drizzle. It w

It has been a couple of weeks since life dissolved into primordial goo. Kind of like the caterpillar in the chrysalis phase, about to become a butterfly. The butterfly stage of my life may as well be light years away. I feel like I will be stuck in the primordial goo forever. It's not clear what the future holds. For a very long time I have told myself that I wasn't scared of being alone. Doing life alone. Concentrating on my children. here I am on the precipice of such circumstances, and I'm terrified. Terrified of being alone. Yet I have the opportunity to not be alone. After causing each other considerable hurt and pain, working on our relationship is something that is on the cards for myself and my partner? Ex-partner? Inbetween partner? I don't even know what to call him anymore. Father to my children seems a bit odd. Person who I have spent 24 years of my life with and we have 6 children. He loves me with a big open heart and catches me when I fall. But much of th

The past month has been devastating. It is impossible for me to explain without adding further hurt and pain. Simply put, my relationship with my partner of 24 years has ended as we've known it. And it's unclear where life will go next. I'm grieving all the aspects of life that I had just 10 days ago. It will never be the same. I wake up every morning with that feeling in my tummy like I've lost something important and can't find it. I have lost something very important. Imagine your life like a deck of cards, a game of life...My cards of life have been thrown up in the air and who knows where they will fall. I'm in a heartbreaking suspended animation and feeling desperately alone. Yet I am still hopeful about the future. Even if it does feel like the Earth has fallen out from under me. And here I am drifting in a place where I am too much and never enough. One saving grace, is that my mental breakdown has equipped me with the tools to cope with the whirlwind of

I thought perhaps doing another introduction blog post. My name is Léyanie. I had a mental breakdown in 2019. April 8th 2019. Almost exactly 2 years ago. I have 6 children, all with additional needs. My partner and I have been together for 23 years. Our relationship has always had its challenges, and continues to do so. He has complex chronic medical conditions that have severely impacted his ability to function. I'm struggling to come to terms with becoming his carer and him dying at an early age. We are both 40. The prospect of becoming a single mother is daunting. With the added complexity of my mental Illness, the thought alone can trigger my anxiety and eventuate into a full blown panic attack.  I have my mental health self care tool box. Music, walks, podcasts, audiobooks, time with friends and family. I have a guilty obsession for astrology. I went to art school, but never graduated. I'm a terrible artist frankly. I'm even worse now,having had years of absolutely no

" Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate And though I oft have passed them by A day will come at last when I Shall take the hidden paths that run West of the Moon, East of the Sun." J.R.R. Tolkien I came across this quote by Tolkien when I was trying to think of a caption for this photo I took of a gate at my local park. I like taking photos. I have an Instagram account that is my creative outlet. Photos are quick and simple, which fits well into my not so simple life. I usually try to think up some whimsical nonsense to caption my photos, but this particular instance, I decided to search for a quote by someone else. And I came across Tolkien. Sometimes we stumble across things when we most need them. I do feel like a new road or gate is just around the corner, but perhaps unknowingly I'm wandering past such gates and roads everyday. Not realising that they may lead me to new adventures, maybe magic and just maybe finding some happiness and peac

I want to die. I feel alone. I'm exhausted. Disconnected. I found out this week that my sister has restricted me on Facebook. I think she did it quite awhile ago. It should not matter. Social media is bullshit. But it hurts. She saved me in 2019. When I was going to kill myself. When I wasn't in my right mind. I don't know what I did. Did I hurt her? Say something wrong? She's my only sister. I don't know who to call or what to do. I've been contemplating ways to kill myself for a few weeks. I just want to escape my life. It's relentless. A discussion with my partner turned into an argument. Things are unfair. He always says he will try harder to help and take some of the life load off me. It barely changes. He got angry at me for saying that. And he has gone to bed now. While I cry and wonder whether I should go for a walk or a drive and not come back. I need to talk and he shut down. My psychiatrist took me off a medication this week. She thinks it's w

I go to the beach a lot. Not to swim, though I do like swimming. I haven't been swimming in a very long time. But I just go to look at the ocean, smell the sea and sand, and try to catch my bearings on life. It's interesting to people watch while clearing my head. Young couples, old couples, maybe with dogs, maybe not. Families, toddlers, teenagers and all the evolution between. Time out amongst the vastness of nature makes me feel better. I have been thinking about that a lot lately, what makes me feel better. I am aware that my blog is a bit of a down and out wallow in despair and sad, self pity too. I try to make it a bit hopeful, but I can't avoid the situation of the current life circumstances I find myself in. Emotional bypassing isn't going to make me better. It will just prolong the inevitable nervous breakdown again. So, in light of doom and gloom, I have been reflecting on things that make me feel better, and also catching myself in moments where I notice I

This week started not so well. To be honest I haven't been feeling right for almost 2 weeks. But I think I've just been going through the motions, pretending I was okay. Distracting myself and trying to ignore my increasing anxiety. The feeling like I'm being split into two different dimensions. It's hard to explain. By Monday this week I crashed into an emotional, anxiety heap. Impending panic and doom, and feeling like my internal motor was idling too high and I couldn't calm down. Some of it I have put down to the weird inbetween time from Christmas to New Year and then to when school continues back. Also, my eating habits have been complete and utter rubbish, which is something I know I need to be mindful of. So crash, bang, boom. My partner wrapped me in a bed burrito and fed me valium. I felt a little okay Monday night, but still not like myself. Thankfully I had an appointment with my psychiatrist on Tuesday. I pushed myself to get in the car and drive to the

I started writing thoughts. To get them out of my head. I'm looking for reassurance and validation. Connection. But does anyone care to read my words and thoughts? I feel like I clutter up the space in the lives of my friends. Befriending another's existence. Finding value and worth in their intrinsic essence, in absence of things they do, but just how they be or are. How does one measure that? Is there a barometer? Is it just biochemistry? In my usual self enquiry mode. In making sense of the self, perhaps it will make sense of the world. I ask friends questions in order to get a sense of my own self, as I haven't particularly had a good grasp of that for a while. Perhaps their perception of my intrinsic essence will help construct a sense of self. I'm probably full of shit and patting me on the head and telling me "just because" will suffice. At the very least it's a familiar theme of my experience. I'm probably not making any sense. It's why I w