journal - 18 may

i have given up trying to keep track of which day of the journal this is - i can't do the maths - so i will date them now. this is a new method of writing my journal. i've switched off the little google notifiers that tell you if you have new e-mails and i'm writing this in a note thingy that i can cut and paste from. so i should get less distracted. if i could write properly with a pen i would do that but i can hardly write at all these days - i never did like it much but as i have got out of practice it makes my hand hurt.

i am sitting here on the sofa with the whole family; my husband watching footie with the headphones on, my son watching without sound, the dogs snuggled up with us. there is something ancient and primeval about having a dog sleeping with his head on your lap. what with my dog's head and the laptop i am nice and warm.

i have a lot to think about after my session with my psychotherapist today. there is the whole thing of why i am so busy and buzzy all the time. i have been aware that it is to stop me thinking but i always looked at this in too simplistic a way. i thought it was about trying to stop my conscious mind dwelling on things that worried me, whether in today's world or from the past. but it is more complex. i was describing my head like a computer; the hard drive containing the memories and the ram being the thinking conscious bit. so i was thinking that if i were to stop 'doing' the memories would seep into the ram bit and be a bit disconcerting. but there is more to it than that.

when i am anxious for my son about things i think might hurt him, i am not able to be a proper adult in relating to him . there is still inside me the child who didn't have recognition for her own pain and fear. so my feelings about my son are all tied up with that. i can't separate how i felt from the way things are for him. today we talked about how important it is to look after the child inside; how unless i can find a way through the fear and anxiety of the past it will continue to influence the present. i need to re-examine the past from the point of view of an adult. i am going to do this a bit at a time. a lot of what i have written before will help me to make a start.

journal - day 12

a bit of a gap again in my journal. the days when i am working seem to be too full to think at all. today is my day off and i am planning a nice soak in the bath followed by a walk with the dogs.

since my last post i have been working on looking after myself. i have started yoga again to try and tackle the aches and pains that have been getting to me. i have booked a massage for 26 may. i cycled to work yesterday (a ten mile round trip). i'm trying to eat more healthily.

i'm also looking after myself in terms of thinking about things. i haven't managed to get much head space yet but i have been thinking when i can. a couple of things that would have got to me in the past were much less of an issue. for example, yesterday my boss was a little bit short with me and in the past i would have taken it very much to heart, but i realised that she was strung out by stuff going on and managed not to take it personally. sure enough a little while later she was fine so it wasn't me she was crotchety with.

and i have managed to refrain from telephoning one of my friends who is having troubles. early in the week i rang to check how she was and said if she needed anything at all she should call me. she hasn't and i am leaving it to her to contact me when she needs to, rather than constantly calling her.

another friend is worried about her son. i was able to talk to her in what i think was a helpful way (a lot of it relates to stuff we have been through) and to comfort her without feeling i had to take all of her stuff on. so things are moving around a bit in my head.

journal - day 7

the first thing to mention is that in spite of trying to keep a daily journal i have only managed to write a weekly one so far. for someone who only works 2 days a week, with various other stuff dotted around, it is amazing that i haven't managed to find time. it is not that i haven't had slots of time but that i need head space to write this sort of thing. one thing that my life seems completely devoid of is head space. because my son is at home all the time at the moment there is never a time when i am alone in the house. if he is not in the room i am in i can hear him - gunshots and police chases on the computer, bb gun in the hallway (we won't let him use it in the garden so i have made him a board to catch the ones that miss rather than the wall getting it), getting tools out to make things. this is the nature of someone with autism and adhd. i wouldn't change him but it can be very much in your face, and we have a very small house.

that in itself is not insurmountable. i could go to an internet cafe, or indeed take my laptop to the beach or somewhere. i think what the issue is that i need to learn to give myself permission to have some head space. when i don't have it i am aware that i get more buzzy and distracted. so lesson 1 is to timetable in an appointment for me to write this journal, and take photos and just be me.

this week has had more than its fair share of stress. i have been waiting for a job to be advertised at work. it is a job i can do, i would be good at and more importantly it has job security and a decent income. to start with it would be full time (which would mean even less me time) but after a period i would aim to go down to 4 days a week. last week i was off work with a dreadful throat infection. this week i came in on wednesday and found via a friendly colleague who knows i want this job that it had been advertised internally, only for a week, and that i had missed the closing date by one day. i would not have found out had my colleague not had dinner with someone who mentioned it. this week we were moving offices so i had no computer and could not have got onto the intranet.

when i found out about this i was speechless. then i was furious. in the past i would have cried about it but it is so vital that i get some sort of stable job that i just lost the plot. my colleague arranged an extension of time for me to get my application in and i wrote it overnight and got it in the next morning. my first thought was that it was a total stitch up and that someone had their eye on the job but my colleague says this is much more likely to be sheer bad luck. she worked in HR for years so i trust what she says, but the whole thing left me very shocked and shaken. thank heavens i am very good at putting job applications together. they have to give me an interview because i am disabled, and they know i am not someone who will roll over if they treat me unfairly so i hope i am back in with a chance. but this destabilised me quite a lot and left me very buzzy.

also there is the business of my son's education and trying to sort out a place that can bring out his many strengths. we have been to visit somewhere that is ideal and so now the battle for funding starts. i am quite good at battling but it is tiring. also we have had a big breakthrough in that we managed to get my son to come to an open day at a local agricultural college. he was very resistant and it was hard going but he stayed for quite a while in what cannot have been an easy environment for him and even said he liked some bits of it. on the way home we drove by the potential school so he had a visual idea of it. as i drove i was aware that i was rigid with stress. i ache from head to foot at the moment, and it may well be stress related.

as well as that, i have a couple of friends who are in a bit of a bad way. i am trying to learn the skill of supporting my friends but not wading in and rescuing them. i need to let people develop their own solutions to problems but to be there for them. i am a compulsive rescuer so this is a new skill to learn. i need to trust that people will ask for help if they need it, which a lot of people won't. i think i hate to see people's distress and not be able to help them. i suppose the distress bounces off my own memories of distress and current feelings of distress and kind of prods them.

what i need to learn is that people's feelings are related to who they are, not who i am. so if someone is feeling rejected, for example, they are feeling it within their own framework of beliefs and feelings. they are not necessarily feeling rejection overlaid with the long history of rejection that i have. so while my feelings when i am rejected nowadays might be somewhere like 13 on the richter scale, other people might be feeling it at say 5. i need to learn to avoid ascribing my feelings to others. i think there is a term for this but i have no idea what it is (note to self - look it up on google).

this thing was something i was very aware of when my son was younger. autistic kids have huge meltdowns when the world gets too loud for them (i use loud to mean all the senses, not just hearing). my son used to cry and scream and exhibit signs of devastating grief that i found completely overwhelming. my husband, who does not have the same baggage as me, used to deal with them so i could go out of earshot when it became too much. it was because i could not put myself in my son's shoes; could not see that his grief was not that of a child whose mother doesn't want them but was entirely different. it is ironic that one of the ways autism manifests itself is an inability to place oneself in someone else's shoes. while empathy is something i am good at in some, less pressured, circumstances, when i am stressed i tend to over-empathise. or more accurately to climb inside someone's pain. rather than holding their hand, i try and scoop out the pain and take it away.

from writing this i can see that there are two facets to this. one is that i can't separate my own history of pain from other peoples; the other is that i compulsively rescue people because of my history. it is not a great combination. if someone exhibits pain i feel compelled to help; yet i then buy into their pain way more than is helpful to either them or me.

i think how i will approach this is not to avoid people who are in pain. that would do me even more harm as i would feel i was rejecting them, which sets off yet more alarm bells in my mind. what i will do is to look at it using the same model we used when i worked in a community law centre. lawyers in private practice take people's problems and sort them out for them. the law centre aimed to empower people by helping them to sort out their problems and at the same time equip them better to deal with the next problem that comes along. so i think i will adopt that approach with people who are in distress. holding their hand and walking alongside them as they work out their own answers. and trying to keep in mind that they are not me, either now or when i was young.

in practical terms i think it helps me to support people online or by e-mail rather than on the phone. i am not great on the phone, due to my hearing and lack of focus, whereas e-mail allows me to read over what i have said and spot any signs that i am over-identifying with someone else's stuff.

so this week's goal, among quite a few others, is to stop and think about my emotional response to other people's pain, to use my skills to support them in their journey rather than picking them up and carrying them. and to book a massage...

journal - day 1

i am trying to deal with the fallout from the past. i have been trying on and off to do this for most of my adult life but there is a new incentive for me now. not only is the anxiety and self-doubt affecting my own functioning but it is spilling over and affecting my son. among the other things he has to negotiate, he has now developed generalised anxiety disorder. people have been saying to me for years that i am too protective of him, too afraid of things happening, and that i have to start letting him go out into the world. his autism has given me the ideal excuse for being over-protective; he took a long time to develop road sense, and where we used to live had dangerous roads.

lately, after a particularly stressful couple of years, my son's anxiety has moved into new realms and he has become anxious about more and more of life. added to this is a physiological problem which has yet to be stabilised, which causes motion sickness, making car travel really hard for him. so his world has shrunk. we have been trying to get some help with developing his independence skills for some time. my husband and i are not the best people to do this with him; me because of my anxiety, my husband because of his impatience. but so far it is down to us, so i need to work hard to put the anxiety back in its box, for my son's sake as well as my own.

part of this process is to record what makes me anxious, so i can face it. this in itself is quite a job. most things seem to make me anxious. because it is so all-pervading i am going to try and record what gets to me. in particular, i am going to try and take note of when i indulge in displacement behaviour.

for me, displacement behaviour seems to take two forms. the most obvious one is that whenever i am stressed i will start doing things, usually in an effort to bring order to my environment. but rather than the more usual tidying or cleaning, i will get out my toolbox and start fixing up shelves, putting things on walls, mending doors. very early in life i developed a sort of home-making tendency. i scrounged things from the neighbours in our flat to put in my bedroom, brought things in from the dustbin area to add to my collections, made dens in the shrubbery in the communal garden. i must have been the only 14 year old to buy a sofa.

(in fact the story of the sofa is quite a funny one, involving my friend and i pushing it up the road until the castors fell off, whereupon we sat on it in a layby trying to work out what to do. luckily a truck came by occupied by some men from the water board. they put the sofa in the back and transported us the 5 miles or so to my house. how we ever thought we could push a sofa 5 miles i have no idea but this episode gives some idea of the extent to which displacement behaviour can go.)

the other thing i do, if it is too late to start drilling holes in walls, is to open a bottle of wine and shut my anxiety up that way. of the two sorts of behaviour this one is probably the least healthy. it takes quite a bit of wine to squash down serious anxiety, which is not so good for the body, or indeed for the mind in the long run.

so the plan is that when i feel the need to indulge in either sort of behaviour, i will instead sit myself down and try and write about what thoughts and feelings i am trying to avoid. this doesn't mean that i will stop putting up shelves or drinking wine, but i will be aiming to do those things in a more healthy way, rather than a pathological sort of way.

so here goes...

re-defininition

when i started writing yesterday's post i had a different shape in mind for it. but as so often happens it had a life of its own and went its own way.

what i had wanted to say was that the friend who was living with terminal illness refuses to let it define her: she goes on courses to learn skills that she may not get the chance to practice, she brings people together who can enrich each others lives, she spreads positivity and energy in abundance. what i planned to say was that if someone facing such a challenge refuses to let something so huge define them, then i too can change how i define myself.

i wrote yesterday's post in my lunch hour at work. as i left work i received a text. it was from the woman i wrote about. she had been to her oncologist and been told that the tissue that had been thought to be lung cancer, therefore secondary tumours, hence the death sentence, was in fact much more likely to be scar tissue. this means that the cancer has not spread to her lungs. which in turn means she no longer has the figure in the hooded cloak in the corner every time she looks round.

my joy at this news was not just for her, and for her life, but for her little girls, who will no longer face growing up motherless. they will have a mum there when they start their periods, when they have their own babies, when they are hurt and when they are proud. they will have a mum to fight for them and cry for them and laugh with them. such a gift is beyond measure.

and she will redefine herself too. she may be able to slow down a little; take some pressure off herself. she has time now to do the things she wants to do. she is no longer defined by the prospect of an early death, but by having gone through that experience and come out of the other side, wiser and more alive than ever.

definition

something i read yesterday made me think about something i said recently.

i answered an ad from someone who needed volunteers to dig her garden. she has terminal cancer and young children. i thought the one thing i have a fair bit of these days is time, which she doesn't. it turned out she is connected to me via her daughter, although i didn't know it when i rang her.

we were sitting having coffee with some friends last week and the conversation turned to what makes us tick. i found myself saying, in a voice that sounded like someone had their hands round my throat (as i always sound when on this subject) that i had left my mum when i was 8 and that it had defined me and shaped everything i did to one degree or another. the minute i said it i thought how absurd it sounded; a woman of nearly 50 on the outside and only 8 years old on the inside.

another thing that came into the conversation that day, as we all had connections with autism, and also with twins, was that i said i thought my mum might have been autistic and that her identical twin probably was too.

i spend much of my life as an advocate for my son; telling the world how he sees and feels things (at least how i think he does), fighting for his rights, nurturing his talents and tending his hurts. i like to think i understand a fair bit about life on the autistic spectrum, both through my son and myself. yet in all this time i have never really given a thought to how the two things interacted in my mum's case.

her fear of germs, her obsessive compulsive tendencies, her social prickliness, her apparent lack of sense of humour, her chronic anxiety. how did these things fit with a series of violent partners, a wild, uncontrollable, hyperactive child, a world where women were supposed to toe the line and be submissive? how did she manage as a woman with intellectual interests, self-taught and proud, on a rough council estate? was she aware of the laughter at her flamboyant clothes, her wide-brimmed hat with a red rose, her lipstick, her vowels? did she feel alone; adrift?

i have in the past looked at her rejection of me as a function of her being a twin. that she had already known too much closeness. but maybe the explanation lies elsewhere. what if there had been more support and understanding? would she have felt she had to give me up then?

i will never know the answers to these questions. but i am coming round to the idea that i have to work towards re-defining myself. i have to take up the mantle of a fighter, a woman of integrity and strength, humour and kindness, and leave behind the 8 year old with an empty space inside. until i do that i have one hand tied behind my back.

blood

it seems my head needs tidying up. things that are happening now are pulling up memories that i haven't tidied away properly. a very wise person has explained to me how our minds sort out memories and why it is important that they are processed and put to bed. it seems that minds collect things into clusters. these clusters are not always totally logical. sometimes things get clustered with other things for no obvious reason. but there will be a reason, even if we can't see it. there will be a common thread. maybe a smell that was there when things happened. maybe the light was a particular way. i am going to try and sort out my memories, in the hope that they will haunt me less if they are tidy. my mind is very visual. my memories are like pictures. so this is going to be like putting them into albums instead of stuffed into a big shoebox.

the most powerful cluster that i am conscious of is blood. it is a theme that has been there at many times in my life when i have felt afraid.

i am 6. i find a piece of pretty blue glass in the ground in my friend's garden. their house is new and the garden is still being made. part of the glass has bubbles in it. i decide to snap the bubbly bit off so it will fit in my pocket. the glass bites into my finger, very deep, and blood pours out. i don't understand why. my friend's mum patches me up and i am sent home. it should have been stitched. there is still a scar and a piece of finger with no sensation, over 40 years later.

i am 7. i am playing in the garden of a house called glebe cottage. it is where maria and her daughters, mitt and teeny, live. maria is my dad's girlfriend. later she will become my stepmum. she is a doctor and glebe cottage belongs to the hospital where she works. mitt and teeny and i are in the hedge. it is huge and dark and dusty. i am wearing flip flops. i run along beside the fence. suddenly there is a sharp pain in my foot. i look down and i have trodden on a nail in a broken down bit of fence. i can see it sticking up in the skin on my instep, although it hasn't broken through, just stretched it up in a point. i scream and pull my foot away. we go inside and maria puts a plaster on it. a couple of days later i am at home with my mum. my foot aches and she takes me to the hospital. i am given a tetanus jab and my foot is cleaned up and bandaged with a huge white bandage. after the plaster this looks odd. at school everyone wants to be my friend because i have a bandage.

i am 7. i am staying the night with maria and the girls. my dad is at work. it is hot and humid. we go to bed. there is a lot of noise downstairs and maria comes up and tells us that dad has been in a car crash. he has gone to have his head stitched up. later we hear him come in. i sit up in bed as he pushes open the door. i scream. he has 2 black eyes and his head is swollen and square, with 13 stitches across the top that look like barbed wire. he is like frankenstein. he is soaked in blood from head to toe. it seems he has severed an artery in his head. he laughs and tells me the blood was squirting 6 feet in the air but that it is ok. i can't bear to hug him with the blood. it smells of rust.

i am 8. i have moved in with my dad and maria. i go on holiday in north wales with my mum. we stay at my gran's. my cousin kelvin is killed by a car. he was the same age as me but i didn't know him. all the adults are broken. they cry and stare into space.

i am 11. now i live with maria and my dad and mitt and teeny. we live in a tiny cottage called hillside which also belongs to the hospital. no-one is really interested in the garden apart from me. i have a patch where i plant things that i have bought with my pocket money. one day my dad has a cut arm and has to have it bandaged. maria tells us he cut himself with the sickle while he was trimming the hedge. but when the bandage comes off we see there is more than one cut. and no-one trims a hedge with a sickle.

i am 12. i find blood in my knickers. maria says i have become a woman. we have a special red meal to celebrate, steak and red wine and red cabbage. this celebration of my blood has a profound effect on me. i never feel my periods are a 'curse' as my mum called them. they are a special thing, a sign i am a woman.

i am 14. my mum has a new husband. they live in a flat at the top of a tall house in canynge square, in bristol. my aunt tells me that the new husband is dangerous. he has been in prison for 'bottling' his wife's lover. at first i think this means the same as bottling fruit but it turns out he cut his face with a broken bottle. i am afraid for my mum. when i ask her she tells me that he was in prison for blowing up water mains as part of the free wales army. neither of these quite rings true to me.

i am 15. i get home from school. my dad's mg is in the drive. no-one is in the house. on the mantlepiece is an envelope addressed to maria in my dad's square draughtsman's capitals. my stomach lurches. i know something is not right. i run upstairs and into my dad and maria's room. on the bedside table is my dad's watch and his loose change. the sheets are pulled back and there is blood. i run downstairs and ring maria at work. she says she will come home. it turns out my dad has taken an overdose of morphine sulphate that would have killed a horse and gone away to die. we find this out when a man rings. he had been walking his dog and found my dad under a bush. i go in the ambulance with him. my ears are ringing. when we go back to school maria tells them that my dad had pneumonia.

i am 17. i have a cz motorbike which is my pride and joy. one night i go out with my boyfriend tom on the back. we are following some friends to a country pub. they are in a car. suddenly the bike slews across the road. we have hit mud. there is a huge crash and i feel a sharp pain in my face. i sit up and put my hands to my face. they are covered in blood. i scream for tom but i can't see him. he comes out from behind the hedge. he is ok. my face is plastered in blood and i think only about my looks. our friends in the car come back for us. when we get to the pub my teeth are chattering. the only injury is a tiny cut on my upper lip. when i get home my dad shouts at me. maria says this is just because he is worried.

i am 18. i am living in a house with my dad. he has left maria and is now going out with linda, who later becomes his third wife. he is out. i go to bed and dream he has hung himself. later maria and her friend carol come to the door. it is 3am. they tell me that my dad has crashed his car and is in intensive care. as we drive back to portsmouth it becomes clear that he crashed his car on purpose. this is not one that can be explained as an accident. he drove his soft-top mg into a parked articulated lorry on the other side of the road at 80 mph. there are no skid marks. he severs an artery in his neck and his legs are crushed by the engine. he is in intensive care for a long time. i did not see any of this blood. i could not face seeing him so i sat outside while my boyfriend tom sat with him. in some ways imagining the blood is worse.

i am 19. i am at college in kingston, studying law. a girl in our year is in a car crash in her mini and dies. she is a friend but not a close friend. however i feel i have to do something. i organise for a tree to be planted and a plaque made to remember her. years later there is an article in the law society gazette about kingston, with a picture on the front page. the tree is in full bloom.

i am 21. i am at my dad and linda's flat in southampton. it looks out over a wood. there is a phone call. my cousin andrew has been run over by a car on his 21st birthday. he dies 2 days later. when we were kids we went on holiday together. he baked green cakes.

i am 22. tom and i live in a bedsit in a huge house. it is chaotic and dirty and one of the other tenants sets the house on fire 3 times in a short space of time. the police investigate and find who it is. in the tenant's room is a shoebox with a turd inside. the landlord tells him to leave. they are on the stairs. the tenant hits the landlord and the landlord pushes him away. he falls against the window which breaks. like everything else in the house, it doesn't get fixed. a few days later our cat cuts his front leg on the broken window. it is a real mess and needs to be stitched up. i make him a little denim trouser to stop him chewing the stitches.

i am 34. i am married to mike. we live in a little cottage on a main road. i discover i am pregnant. we are overjoyed. i take special care of myself, do everything i can to make my body a good place to grow the baby. 10 weeks into my pregnancy i start to bleed. the doctor sends me for a scan. the ultrasound lady is called mary. she is quietly spoken and gentle. she is silent for a long time as she moves the ultrasound thing over me. she looks up and tells us that there is no baby. i am puzzled. she says i have already started to miscarry and it has moved from view. it will come out over the next few days. we are numb with grief. i ring my friend tina, who has gypsy blood and knows things and has known me since we were 12. she says that i will think i am bleeding to death but that it is better to stay home sitting on a towel than go into hospital, unless i get really ill. her sister had a miscarriage so she knows. we try to get on with daily life. we go shopping to a large tescos with our neighbour. as we stand in the queue i feel cramps. we get home as fast as we can. mike lights a fire in the bedroom and i go to bed. i ring friends, trying to take my mind off what will happen. one friend says 'at least it shows you can conceive'. i know she is trying to be kind but it cuts me. our doctor comes to see me. he is irish and has a ginger beard. he does not seem to notice the threadbare carpet on the floor of our bedroom. he goes straight to the fire to warm his hands and says he had a fire just like it in dublin when he was a student. he is kind and human. i say that i can't understand why i am so upset as it is just a tiny thing we are losing. he says it is not a tiny thing, it is our hopes, our dreams, of our child. it is imagining our child growing up, playing on the beach, running, laughing. it is imagining our child as an adult, making a life. this strikes me as incredibly wise and helps enormously with the pain. later that night the little thing is gone. there was indeed a lot of blood but it felt right to sit in my own bed, in a room lit only by firelight, holding the hand of the man i love.

i am 35. i am pregnant again. i find out i am pregnant the week the other baby would have been born. i don't have the same optimism for this baby. i feel my body is unworthy and unsafe for a baby. i decide that taking care didn't work before so i am just going to carry on as normal and leave things to fate. luckily my body knows better and i go off wine and coffee and eggs and all sorts of things that might not be good for the baby. at about 10 weeks i start to bleed. i feel cold and numb. every time i go to the loo i look for signs. i am working as a lawyer, trying to keep it together. i park my car outside my friend's house every day. one morning i am bleeding and i go in and burst into tears. i am wearing a blue and white stripy dress. she hugs me. the bleeding stops, then starts, then stops. i cannot bear it. at about 18 weeks i am at work and i start to really bleed. bright red, pouring blood. i ring mike. he comes to get me and takes me home. (later one of the partners at work comments about me leaving suddenly and i tell him sarcastically that i didn't want to ruin the office chair). we have another scan. this time mary smiles. the baby's heart is still beating. we go home. the bleeding comes and goes. it is not what is known as spotting. it is more pouring. but this time the baby stays. at 7 months and a bit he decides he has had enough waiting. with quite a lot of drama and trauma and fear, my son is born. it takes me a very long time to get over all the fear and believe that he will live.

i am 39. we have an airedale terrier, the sort of dog you push around one wheels when you are small. she would more properly be called an airedale terror as she is wild. one day we get home and she has jumped up at the glass doors, going straight through the glass and cutting her front legs and shoulders to ribbons. i ring the vet. as the bleeding has slowed they say to bring her in in a couple of hours so they can stitch her up. i make her comfortable in the bedroom. the wounds are raw flesh. it seems wrong for her to be open to the air like this, but i know she is better waiting for the operating theatre at home rather than in an unfamiliar place. she needs 48 stitches in all.

i am 41. i am at work when i get a phone call. it is our neighbour the builder, who mike is doing casual work for. there has been an accident. mike is on the way to worthing hospital in an ambulance. i run out of the office, shouting to my colleagues. i jump into my car and bang the door so hard the handle comes off. i drive to the hospital very fast. i get there before the ambulance. this terrifies me. the only reason i can think of that i would have got there first is that he has died so they are no longer hurrying. the ambulance arrives and mike is carried in. his clothes are covered in blood and his arm is wrapped in a huge bloodstained pad. we are taken to a cubicle. t he doctor pulls the pad back to have a look. it is like meat and my legs buckle. i am far more shocked than mike is. he is making jokes. he is x-rayed as the cut may have gone through the bone. it turns out that he was pulling down the wall of a shower cubicle when it sheared along the join of the plasterboard and the edge of the broken tiles cut deep into mike's arm. carl, the neighbour, tells me the bathroom was like the shower scene from psycho. his tool box was full of blood. mike tells me that if he hadn't moved his head the tiles would have gone into his skull. i don't want to think about this. as mike's kidneys are not stable they cannot operate for 2 days. he has the arm bandaged up but i can't help thinking it is meat under there. we don't know if his arm will work again. it has cut right through the muscle and most of the nerves. i go to get our son from school and then a friend comes to sit with him so i can go back to the hospital. as i drive i think we will have to get an automatic car. that night and the next i don't bath, i sleep in my clothes with the dog on the bed. the house becomes a tip. we look like we have been burgled. my son and i eat rice and cheese, our comfort food. we go to see mike in hospital. the man in the next bed has a drain into a bag. our son watches the blood drip into the bag.

i am 42. i am up on the downs with our lurcher. he runs across a field and when he comes back i notice he has cut his foot and that it is dripping. i tie it up with a plastic bag and ring my husband to meet me at the car park with a first aid kit. we bandage up the dog and i take him to the vet. as it is sunday we have to ring the vet first. it turns out the dog has cut an artery in his leg. the vet stitches him up and gives him a blood transfusion from her own dog. i marvel at this. he is soon better.

i am 42. since my son was born i have bled more and more with each period. it is called flooding. it is likely that i will have to have a hysterectomy. one day my son and i go to a garden centre. i go to the loo and change my tampon and pads. we drive up the road and i feel the blood pouring onto the car seat. we pull over in a lay-by and i mop up as best as i can and put in another duvet-sized pad. my son watches in interest. i ponder on the effect that this will have on him - he will never be squeamish about periods around the women he knows. our wonderful gp ( a new one as we have moved) puts a tiny coil inside me a few days later and the whole thing stops. it is pure magic. i can keep my womb.

i am 43. my husband is out with our dogs. i have a soak in the bath. my son is playing on his computer. it is a lovely warm day. i wander round the house, feeling calm and good. the phone rings. it is someone i don't know. he says that he has found a dog with our phone number on it. it has been in an accident. i am confused and start to say that our dogs are with my husband but i realise something has happened. i find out where the man is and pull on some clothes. my son picks up the urgency and we run out to the car. it is my husbands car as he has mine. we screech off to the place where the man said the dog was. on the way i ring the vet and alert them so they can meet us at the surgery. as we get out of the car we see our beautiful lurcher lying panting in a huge pool of blood. it seems impossible that so much blood can fit into such a thin dog. there are other people there; an old man who was driving the car that hit the dog, and a couple with a bmw, as well as the man who phoned. i tell the couple that my son is autistic and ask them to watch him with the road. i tell my son to look at a particular tree and not to look away until i tell him. the man and i roll the dog onto a picnic rug and into the back seat of my husband's car. the man says i can keep it - he is part of a family with a local pet shop and they get them free from the manufacturers. i tell my son to get in the car and we race off to the vets. the vet is there and we carry the dog in. he is still bleeding but more slowly. i tell my son to look at a lab coat on the wall and not to look away. the vet tells me to press on the wound. she is working on the dog. when we have the bleeding under control she rings the other vet who comes in. they tell us to come back when they ring us. i am shaking like a leaf. i am so proud of my son. when we get home we cannot find my husband. his phone is at home. our neighbour goes out to look for him. eventually he comes home - he has been looking for the dog. it turns out the dog has chased a deer over a mile to where he was run over. when we bring him home he is very weak. it is touch and go for several days. i sleep on the floor with him the first night, holding his paw so he knows i am there.

i am 44. one day my sister is staying over and we all plan to go swimming. we take the dog in the car to give him a walk on the way. we all climb out of the car and let him off the lead in the woods. almost immediately my son falls over and cuts his hand. he is screaming with fear at the sight of his own blood. we try to calm him. just then a huge stag bolts past us and over into a ploughed field the other side of the road. it is followed by our dog at full speed. we watch in horror as our dog brings down the stag, tearing out its throat. it is in slow motion. the stag runs across the field, bleeding, the dog catches it again and brings it down. we can see it from a distance. my husband is trying to calm our son down - he is hysterical at the sight of his blood. my sister tells me to stay with my son and runs over the field to where the stag is now on the ground. we can see the dog going at it. my sister stops near the dog and the stag and throws up. she grabs the dog's collar and pulls him off. he keeps trying to get at the stag. my sister throws up again. she staggers back across the ploughed field with the blood-soaked dog. the stag drags itself into the woods. the dog has cut his front leg and is bleeding badly. my sister alternates between crying and shouting at the dog. we all get in the car. we drive round trying to find the stag. then we start on the way to the vets. i ring the rspca to see if they can come and put the stag down, and the vet to arrange for them to be there as it is a sunday. my son wails that he thought we were going swimming. as my sister and i wait in the vet's waiting room we see that the bone in the dog's leg is exposed. my sister rushes to be sick again.

i am 46. my work takes me into some grim places. they are the homes of people who have fallen to drugs. sometimes they are in prison, sometimes they have run away. sometime they have been moved to places of safety. sometimes they are dead. my camera is one of the tools of my trade. it records these places, to show to the judge. i hide behind it, seeing the world one step removed. somehow it makes these places more bearable. but when i get back to the office and look at the pictures on the screen, they are larger than life. images that sum up more than anything the depravity of people's lives. a blood-stained hammer, a bullwhip and a thong, all in a pool of blood which has dried to rust. a champagne bucket, full of sharp knives, soaking in water with congealed blood floating on it, in a kitchen where no-one has cooked anything except crack for a very long time. a barbie doll, face down on a blood-stained floor. blood-soaked pillows in a house where a 15 year old boy cut his own throat in despair. so much blood, leaking out, like tears.

i am 48. things have been tough. for some reason this seems like a good time to adopt another dog. i locate a female lurcher who needs a home and drive down to devon to fetch her. when our lurcher meets her he is aggressive. she is very smelly and it is probably this which causes it. on a walk a few days later he snaps at her and she snaps back. we do not notice at the time but she has broken the skin. by christmas he is very ill. we put him on anti-biotics and painkillers and he perks up a bit. after christmas he has to have an operation. he comes home in a blood-soaked t-shirt to catch the drips from the drain that is in the wound. i swap his fleecy blanket for a cheap duvet covered with a red sheet to hide the blood. the wound doesn't heal well and he has to have a second, more major operation. there is a bigger drain and a lot more blood. i ring my friend, a doctor, to see how much blood there should be. she says it doesn't sound like too much but that i should ring the vet if he seems weak or pale. days go by and the wound carries on leaking, but more slowly. it doesn't heal and the vet says he may have to go to a vetarinary hospital for plastic surgery. one afternoon the dog scratches his shoulder and opens up the wound again. it gapes but does not bleed much. the vet staples him up with metal staples. we are expecting the worst and begin to research places to stay in newmarket, where the vet hospital is. but a miracle happens and the wound heals. not totally, but enough to feel hopeful that it will all be ok. i put his fleecy blanket back on his bed and throw away the red sheet.

a long gap

i haven't written here for a while. life has been tough lately and i haven't had much energy for introspection. but today i was talking with someone about links between stuff now and stuff in the past and how they need to be examined before they can be put away in the right place in your head. and my head certainly needs a good tidy up.

so i'm going to try and write here again. but first i need a cup of tea...

dreams (2)

i am in the process of moving out of the family home. i am packing stuff up. it is taking ages. there is some problem with the flat i am moving into. i keep trying to get hold of the landlord to see when it is free. he is a friend of my stepmum's. the family home is messy and full of clutter. i still share a room with my sisters. i am getting all my stuff together but keep getting distracted by looking a things. i am putting certain things into a box file to take away with me. i am about to go away on a trip. it turns out later that i am going to russia for some sort of civic visit.

i find my winston churchill medal and put that in the box. i also find a badge that has a cut-out of the trans-siberian railway with a little map showing places like novosibursk, that i bought last time i was in russia. i put this in the box. it seems i am to meet some dignitaries and i want to wear these things on my coat. i find a large wadge of typed papers which is something i have written. it has editing notes all over it and needs sorting out. i try and take out what i need to take but then decide to sort it out later and put the whole lot in.

eventually i have cleared most of my bit of the room. i go into the living room/kitchen and make a phone call to the landlord. finally the flat is ready. i go back into the bedroom and pick up the last few things and move my bed so the others an re-arrange the room. i go down to a utility area which is below the kitchen and put a few things i am not taking there. my stepmum comes down and gives me a hug. she gives me something special to take (i forget this bit already but i think maybe a piece of jewellery or something - not a large item but a special one). i get my keys and say good bye to everyone.

i walk through the city towards the bus station. (i think there was a bit here about getting on a bus and then it being the wrong one but i have forgotten this bit) i start to join a queue for a taxi. there is a market going on and a food stall. it turns out the queue i am in is for the food stall and not the taxis. the people preparing the food are up higher than the customers, on a platform behind the counter. i ask the man who is selling the food where i can find a taxi and he points crossly to the row of taxis. they are black cabs. i go over but all the cab drivers are eating and are not for hire. one points to where the taxi rank is.

i go over there and as i reach it i see a long queue. i join the back feeling exhausted. eventually i get to the new flat. i go in through the basement entrance. my husband is there already and shows me in. the room is scruffy and basic but ok. mike is not going to be living here with me but has come for the night. i start to put my stuff down. he shows me the rest of the flat - through a hallway there is a large living room with french windows out onto a leafy garden, then a bedroom and a kitchen. it is all very scruffy but homely. mike goes out to get something from the shops and i wander around. the kitchen is painted in nice rich colours, the gloss is dark and the walls are bright. there is vinyl on the floor which has a lovely pattern on it but has big tears in it which would trip someone up. i decide when i get back from russia i will buy rugs to cover the tears.

just then i see a cat in the garden. it is a tabby cat. my dog (who has appeared but was not with me in the taxi) is looking fixedly out of the window.i know he will suddenly leap at the cat and may break the glass. i notice there is also a cat inside the room. its a ginger cat which is sitting calmly looking at my dog. he roars at the cat in the garden and bashes into the window. just then the ginger cat makes a huge leap and lands on my dog's back, digging its claws in hard. he squeals and runs around. i manage to get the cat off and bundle it out into the garden, holding my dog's collar to stop him going out. i shut the door. my dog has beads of blood coming through his coat. he is quite badly cut and i decide i need to get him to the vet for a jab and anti-biotics as cat scratches go mouldy easily.

then i am going to bed. at this point i am alone. the bedroom has two small zed beds made up in it. my box of things to take to russia is under mine. i want the window open but it is the ground floor and i am nervous. (usually i would not be because of my dog - i am not sure if he is still in the dream at this point or if i think because he is ill he won't protect me) i play around with the window. it is flimsy and has a sliding pane with some flimsy bolts. i secure it as best i can. i get into bed.

then my husband is in the other bed. we are both covered by pretty flimsy quilts. i say "its a good job i booked the flight for tomorrow and not today, i am shattered". we chat a bit then go to sleep.

dreams (1)

i am in a modern, fairly ugly, pretentious house. it is large, furnished in a cluttered but expensive way. it is dirty and dusty and cobwebby. the woman of the house has a son with special needs and two older children. there is also a grandmother who is there most of the time. she is kindly but scatty. the woman has employed me to clean for her. her last cleaner left. she has taken me on for 2 hours a week.

when i turn up for the first week it is immediately clear that 2 hours will not make a dent in the dust. more will be needed. the grandmother shows me to the main bedroom where i am going to start. the mother is at work and the younger child is at school. the older daughter is somewhere else in the house. the bedroom is a mess. the curtains are drawn and i open them. there is one large bed and one medium one. on top of the beds are new sheets ready for the beds to be made. i notice that, although the smaller of the beds is made up in the traditional way, the larger bed is made up as 2 horizontal single beds, with odd soft toys in one. the room is furnished like an hotel but with modern faded style. brown wall paper and dust everywhere.

i strip the beds and find that one of the mattress buttons has come off. they are made of fancy bone like duffle coat toggles. i go down to the kitchen and ask the grandmother for a needle and thread to sew it back on. i take back up some pledge and jif and cloths. i make a start on cleaning the room but it becomes clear it will take a long time. there is dust everywhere. i hear the mother coming home and go down. i say that it is clear that 2 hours a week is not enough time to make a dent in the dust. it needs a spring clean which will take a couple of days and then 4 hours a week to keep on top of it. she says the previous cleaner only came for 2 hours and i point out that the previous one left. i say we will give it a try and if it doesn't work out then i can always leave. i go back up to the bathroom and squirt jif on the bath. i scrub it around and then leave it to work. i go back to the bedroom. the daughter has re-made the beds using the old sheets, roughly. she is in the smaller of the beds. i say i was going to change the sheets and that the new sheets had been left out by her mother. at this point the mother comes in and bustles around the room, changing her clothes and going into the en suite shower room. she is rushing to get somewhere. i start dusting the top of a bureau. it has large ornaments, some african heads and big candles. behind everything is more dust.

when i go down to the kitchen again the grandmother has lined up a lot of large items of furniture - tables, desks, good quality oak stuff but huge. she says these are for me. i say i probably don't have room even though they are lovely but as i say this i am looking at one large table and thinking how lovely it is. then i remember that our table was made for us my my husbands brother for a wedding present and there is no way we can replace it with another one. i say i will find homes for the furniture. it is hard to get across the kitchen to the back door there is so much furniture. i get out into the fresh air with a feeling of relief.

the condom

i am standing in the doorway of the living-room. i am 14. it is dark outside; the room is lit by table lamps. my father is pointing towards the fireplace. it is a hideous fireplace; portland stone, built by the previous owner. it has a rough stone hearth on which, incongruously, is some bedlinen.

"what do you call that?" he shouts, bright red and shaking. he is pointing at the sheets.

"sheets?" i venture.

"don't you dare take the piss!" he shouts, louder. dealing with this sort of situation is delicate; too lippy and he will lay into me, not assertive enough and i will be considered guilty.

i take a step towards the sheets. then all becomes clear. among them is a condom. it appears to be used. i know it is not anything to do with me. whilst both my sister, who is a year younger than me, and i are both sexually active, i favour bareback riding. i do not indulge in any form of contraception until my 16th birthday, when my step-mum marches me along to the family planning clinic in my school uniform and demands that i am put on the pill. but this is yet to come. so i look at the condom, trying to think of something to say. i know it must be my sister's, or more accurately, her boyfriend's.

we are both going out with soldiers. mine is called alan and hers is called andy, a matching pair. my sister and i share a room and sleep in bunk beds. with the abandon of youth we think nothing of each bedding our respective soldier in our respective bunk. our parents do not know they are in the house. we sneak them in when they are watching telly, and they leave before the house is awake.

my father is still waiting. i realise that the condom must date from the previous weekend. i insist i know nothing about it. i refuse to grass up my sister. she is not subjected to the same inquisition. they assume she is too young to know about condoms. little do they know she is more sensible than me.