Maybe it was years of conditioning – get shit done while my babies are napping. Maybe it’s just how my brain works. I just remember that I didn’t knock it, and I knew how my process worked, with the jiggle juggle of very small children and a need to write dripping off my fingers.

So why now do I feel terribly unaccomplished if I haven’t managed to do anything productive before 11am? And sure, I’ve usually gotten my children off to school, and replied to work emails, and fed all of my animals, and put washing on, and made breakfast…

But somehow none of that feels productive. Just exhausting.

I didn’t get out to the studio today until 11am, and sure, I am also a little bit sick, but I still felt awful as I sat on the couch with a cup of tea, and read a book, and replied to work messages, and planned. Why does planning feel so unproductive? Why does resting feel like slacking? Why is my brain trying to sabotage my efforts to not actually fall apart?

Because no matter how well I medicate myself, my joints are still falling apart, ligaments like warm bubblegum, no snap back in sight. I dislocate my shoulder taking off a shirt if I’m not careful, and my wrists go pop pop pop when I move my hands, in out in, out in out, and it’s all paaaaiin, no matter what.

Blech. This is not meant to be the blog for this, but it’s quiet over here now, silent and a bit forgotten, so maybe I’m entitled to a little bit of a whinge about sabotaging brains and a headache I can’t seem to shake.

(It’s 3pm now, and I have been a little bit more productive. Sure, the kitchen bench is untidy and that always makes my brain a bit spinny, but lye is mixed and cooling, my recipes for tomorrow are organised neatly, I posted a letter, I’ve fed all of my birds, eggs are stamped for sale, and I’m prepared for my shop to be open tomorrow, and the planned customers to come and see me…)

Writing is like a muscle and I haven’t been flexing mine very often. Sure, updates on facebook about frivolous things, but I miss this.

So. Here we are. Practising again.

There are excuses (there are always excuses). My hands hurt, the computer is hard work, my children won’t stop talking at me and needing engagement – particularly when I’m sitting at the computer. You think things will get easier as they get older, but instead the challenges just change, because Sarah kissed Jessica’s boyfriend and Annalise got suspended from school for swearing at a teacher and Alice is lying to her mother about smoking cigarettes and Emily has anxiety so crippling I’m not sure what to do to help….

I am not qualified for teenagers, but here we are. My eldest turned thirteen and my house is now full of a steady stream of teenage children, whom I actually like. Baby teenagers are kind of amazing.

And my littlest is seven, which feels very small, but is actually all kinds of sass and grown up, and don’t you even KNOW what I’m TALKING ABOUT? No I do not, because I’m not following the latest story line of her favourite Youtube soap opera, OMG MUM.

There is the love affair and subsequent break up with Fortnite and online gaming with friends, of anger and shouting and reminders than Online Is Still Real and You Cannot Speak To People Like That and Would You Like Me To Ring Your Mother?

Life, man. Kids. Time moves on and I’m just here, swimming, not drowning – not quite, but almost. Almost drowning often enough that toddlers seem such a very long time ago. And I do not miss it (I DO NOT) but christ, it’s so much easier to be worrying about whether you’re going to accidentally cut their sandwich into the wrong shape rather than worrying about whether Susie is being pressured into sex with her boyfriend.

And if you think thirteen, fourteen, fifteen is too young for all of these problems, then I applaud you, laud you, good luck to you.

But. It’s good. They’re good. Even if they did just get home from school and all three are having various forms of meltdown with the transition to home. Poor kids, transitions suck.

(There’s a lot of fighting right now. A giant red stuffed bird is the Most Sought After Object EVER.)

Yeah, that’s it. Kids are home. Brain is dead. Sorry, I was going somewhere with this, but I’ve lost it. Time is fluid, it keeps vanishing. I need to write, before I do something stupid like sign up for NaNoWriMo in my busiest month of the year.

Help.

Stop.

I don’t know if it’s my mental health playing up, or my physical health, but I am discombomulated. Stretched too thin and feeling all of this energy leaking out out out and nothing coming in to recharge me. I am stressed and tired, and my bones slide around under my skin, refusing to stay in place. My eyes prickle with tears and exhaustion and probably hormones, but there are so many feeeeelings and who cares why they’re happening, I just wish they’d stop escaping from my eyes.

My children are back at school and remarkably, this increases my work load because now there’s no excuse to stop and sit. To watch a movie with them, popcorn and two hours with my brain turned off.

I never would have believed it, five years ago, mother to very small people, school makes more work, not less. You’d think children out of the house for eight hours a day would be peaceful, but there’s no peace. Just a spin spin spin in circles, when your body can’t keep up with the to-do list and you feel the weight of waiting for them pressing down on you.

I need to bake, because the cake squares in the freezer are running low, and we’ve no sweet biscuits left, and I put my foot down. No more muesli bars to languish in a lunchbox with one bite removed. No more bought treats. I am done with the waste and the whining and you can make your own bloody lunchboxes from now on (except you, yes I know you’re too little and no, I will still make your sandwiches ever day even when you don’t eat them oh my god) .

BREATHE. And bake.

I worked on Sunday, at a private event. Stand there, smile, make people feel good. I enjoy it, I do, but it’s so much work. There’s no time for breathing, in between hurried bites of sandwich and making sure you’re looking socially acceptable and pleasant for every customer ever. They just appear in front of you, and my mouth is full of sandwich crusts and coughing and drink and breeeeathe.

“Hi, how are you today? Good! Are you having a good day? Enjoying Tasmania? Is this your first time here?”

I love this, trust me, I really do. Being the point of contact, smiling, engaging with people. I like people. They’re interesting, and I like talking to them.

But two days later I’m still playing recovery. There’s nothing of me left. Spread too thin and washed too well. The car is still full of market boxes needing unpacking and the job is beyond me. I need a shower, and I’m waiting on the builder, and we need to fill out Official Forms and submit them back to the surveyor, start dates, end dates, builder numbers, do we need to apply to be owner builders, or is our favourite local contractor registered for us? No one knows until I can ask him.  Building makes me feel stupid, like I’m three steps behind everyone, and they’re all speaking a language I don’t understand, my breasts getting in the way of my brain. Apparently.

I am counting down the hours. If I start baking now, I have four hours until my children are home, getting off the bus in a swirl of complaints and discussions, X said Y and Z needs X and K wants Z and oh my god, child, breathe. With me now, breathe. Unpack lunchboxes, dirty clothes in to be washed, clean clothes ready for doing all of this over again tomorrow. Have a snack, not too much, I’m cooking dinner, seriously, stop eating marshmallows, god, what is for dinner even.

Spin.

Spin.

Spin.

It will be okay. I will recover, and smile, and ask people if this is their first time in Tasmania. I will liase with customers, and make beautiful pretty things, and I will breathe breathe breath again.

But right now, I am tired. Bone tired. Emotional tired.

Too much of everyone else and not enough of me. I need things to just be easy for a time.

Yesterday was the 15th, the most depressing day of the year for my northest northern friends, and yet, there I was, with a garden and a book, and summer sunshine. My children are old enough to walk to the creek alone, and explore. They found wild-gone cherry plum trees dripping with fruit and picked buckets full. Apple trees fruiting in readiness for Autumn, and a space where platypus play.

My tomatoes are green, but changing, my weather is Tasmanian-confused, but the days are warm. Mostly.

I love this time of year, where even if my heart is heavy, then I know it’s a chemical reaction of exhaustion and school holidays grinding me down to bone and dust and dirt. When I just need five godforsaken minutes of silence and stop talking at me please.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done summer depression and boy it is the worst, but it isn’t a day or a date, it’s oxygen refusing to fill your lungs and a desire for everything to just stop and let you off this stupid rollercoaster ride of broken brains and broken hearts. Amongst other things.

And I will never forget how terrible awful it was, to be stricken with PND and be unable to even appreciate the smallest things, like how my baby probably wasn’t dying, how the summer paddocks smell at dawn, how the light paints the hills in shades of purple and blue when the sun goes down.

(Spoiler: My baby wasn’t dying, which was good.)

I don’t know. It just seems so dismissive to mark a single day of the calendar as the most depressing day of the year and call it good, call it even, call it done, like that’s it, you can’t feel any worse than you do on the 15th of January, off you go, bootstraps pulled up. Suck it up sweetheart, it’s the 16th now, you’re all good, move on.

Maybe I’m overthinking this.

Ask me again how I feel on the 15th of July. Maybe I’ll have changed my tune.

I read through my archives (briefly) and I’ve been singing this same song for three years now. Exhaustion, kids, business, soap, work. Mental health (up and down) physical health (down and up). Round and round we go, with the chorus playing the same melody over and over.

We’ve got foster kittens, and kittens of our own. My work room and desk are full of broken soap display ladders. There is music playing to drown out the sound of school holidays, which sounds remarkably like TV and whining. One child is sick in bed, and when I tried to read a book earlier the dog vomited everywhere, which is pretty much how my days go now.

Who has time to be introspective and bleed bleed bleed all over the screen.

But oh my soul hurts. I’m like an old ballerina, sadly telling everyone she used to be beautiful, used to be amazing.

I used to be amazing.

I used to write and drip emotion and now I’m hiding in the cracks as all around me the chaos reigns and I try to remember how to pick this back up again.

We went away for a big market in St Helens, and it was amazing and exhausting and brilliant and it nearly killed me, but I’m still going to do it again next year, because fuck it. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, right? Or maybe it makes me bendier, but hey, who’s counting that part anyway. We chatted to customers, both returning and new. I got to rave about my products, because I honestly love what I do, even when the cold is in my bones and I am hurting, I love how my soap smells, and how the hand cream feels, and how I feel when I share that with people. I love brightening people’s days, knowing that something I made with my two hands can make them happy, even if it’s only a little bit of happiness. It all counts, adds up, means something. To me at least.

Winter is in my bones, and it’s June again, which is always a month of remembering, of hospital rooms and death and funerals. Nine years on, you’d think it would be better, but it’s only different. Some things stay with you, like the trauma passed down through our DNA, making its mark on us all years later. Muddy boots on white carpet, you can clean it up, but you’ll never erase the memory of what happened. Nothing is ever gone, which is both blessing and curse really, love and loss, light and frost, the strength you get from putting one foot in front of the other.

My children are sick, and so there’s the incessant whining of “Muuuuum! I’m huuuuungry!” from the smallest one, and it’s inside my head. I hear it when I’m sleeping and it makes my shoulders bunch, because you. just. ate. five. fucking. minutes. ago. and if you’re hungry, maybe eat your damn crusts, and have a glass of water, and you can get your own yogurt out of the fridge, there is a whole fruit bowl available, why can’t you make your own sandwiches yet?

Then I feel ungrateful, because I am so lucky to have these small fragile creatures relying on me, but five minutes without needing me and get your own spoon, is it too much to ask? Really? I am not your slave, pick up your own toys, come and get your sandwich I am not a waitress and fortheloveofgodstopfuckingwhining.

Four is an interesting age, and it’s not my favourite, but it’s not my favourite in a slightly better way than 18 months old was not my favourite. Maybe. I’m not certain. So much of babyhood is foggy and lost now.

I am tired. Worn down and worn out.

[“Mum, I need a drink.”

“You can reach the tap, go and do it yourself!”

Heavy sigh. Huff. Stomp.]

And I remember this feeling from last year, but each year is a little worse, as I get a little older, as my collagen fails a little bit more, and I hold out hope for a short winter and the return of warm sunlight. The solstice is a week away and I am pining for the sun, for the light, for the warm.

I have filled my house with seedlings, in hope and new beginnings, in the germs of new life. I am hoping it helps to watch peas twine towards my roof and parsley grow wild on my kitchen bench.

We’re so close to the solstice tipping point I can taste it, as we slide down into the darkest bit of winter, the coldest bit, the hardest bit. August drags, but not in the same way June does.

One week left.

There’s no quiet inside my head any more. No space, no peace.

My youngest baby started school /where does the time go/ and here we sit, with a pile of school clothes to wash, and market boxes to pack neverending. Soap piles up everywhere, along with paperwork, and wholesale clients, and joy and I love it. I love bringing something tangible to people’s lives, something real, with the power to make them smile.

But.

I miss writing.

(So do it more, you idiot, just start again)

My children grew up. The mummyblogging died in a haze of advertorials and sponsored trips. I was tired, so so tired. Tired of justifying myself, of the side-eyed-glances at the school gates, of talking about my feelings. I just wanted to write without having to mention it ever again. Cone of silence. I don’t want to talk about my latest blog post, jesus christ, I wrote it, you read it, isn’t that enough?

But no, it was never enough. Everyone wants more. People want to know why you don’t mention anxiety/dislocating joints/pain in public, and it’s like, I have to live this. I don’t want to rehash it over and over. I just want to send things out into the ether and have them disappear. A weight off my shoulders. Gone.

“I didn’t know you felt like that.”

I didn’t know I felt like that until I typed it out and there it was.

This then, is the damage done when you write under your own name. When there’s nowhere to hide. When you just stop instead of finding a new tribe. The RSS feeds die and no one knows you exist anymore. When there’s too much criticism and not enough acceptance. When your children grow up and can’t be fodder for the stories anymore.

This is what happens.

The odd dichotomy of wanting to be listened to, and wanting to fade away into silence under the weight of everything I can’t talk about any more. Stories which aren’t mine. Stories which are.

I used to be funny and poignant and sad. Now I’m just tired and anxious, buried under a stack of paperwork and a need to make something real.

Who am I? What do I even want.

God. So self indulgent. Yet here I am still.

Is there anyone out there anymore?

“You will make it for me Mummy? You will make it?”

She waves the box around in front of my face, as I attempt to run stocktake on essential oils.

“I can’t make it right now Eve. And anyway, even if I make it now, it will still have to go into the fridge to get cold.”

“Does the jelly needa get cold Mummy?”

I nod, distracted.

“Yes, sweetheart. I mix it with water, and then it goes away to get cold and set.”

She looks at me, smiles, and walks away. I hear the fridge open and shut, as I run my eyes over my remaining stock lists.

Five minutes later, Eve stands in front of me again, brandishing her box of jelly.

“Mummy! The jelly is cold now! Can I eat it please?”

—

Three year olds are chaos walking. Everything happens at high speed, high intensity. They feel things so deeply that it can be heartbreaking to watch them bounce around their day, like the silver balls inside a pinball table.

They’re the happiest they’ve ever been, right up until their heart breaks and everything is ruined forever. A broken banana is the end of the world. A stolen sock; a tragedy.

Three year olds are also hilarious. It’s why we don’t eat them.

—

“But MUMMY, the jelly is cold! You said we could eat it when it got cold!”

I dragged myself out of bed, double checked my market boxes, forced myself to eat toast. Tired children sat around the fireplace while I got ready to leave.

If I hadn’t had a market, I might have spent the day curled up in pajamas, with netflix and pikelets and hot chocolates. But there it is. I have responsibilities, and so I left my family at home while I headed out to work.

I have markets most weekends now, and when I’m not at a market, I’m frantically trying to keep up with demand. More soaps, more orders. I’m not complaining – success was the whole point of this venture, but sometimes I miss lazy weekends, and whole days spent in a patch of warmth with a good book.

My youngest child is three now, tall and gangly, running around like a maniac, demanding things. I have this idea in my head: if I can just hold on until she’s in school, maybe there will be time to do everything I want to do. Soap, writing, reading. Maybe.

I’m lying to myself, I know this. Things don’t get easier as your children get older. The questions just get more complicated and involved. “Mum, why do people have sex? Can dogs feel sad? Why do you look so tired?” At the very least, the three year old is a simple child. She wants milk and cuddles and cartoons. Hot cheese sandwiches and peanut butter on apples. She wants to know why she can’t draw on the walls in sharpie, and where her purple baby is, and can she share her breakfast with the dog. Simple. Intense, but simple.

Someone asked me today if soapmaking is all I do. No, I write things too, I replied. And then realised, that’s almost a lie now. I haven’t written anything in too long, I’m all full to bursting with unspoken words. I miss it. Success is never to be complained about, and yet …

My brain is breaking again. I can feel it. I’m holding it at bay with vitamin D and music and hot chocolates drunk in an almost-spring garden. But there’s grief as I head into the spring – grief worse than last year, and the year before. Or maybe I was medicated last year, the year before. I can’t remember anymore.

It’s been six years since my grandmother died, and I miss her more as I head into spring this year. I miss the unconditional love – when so much of my extended family barely likes me with conditions attached, I miss her. I miss her delight in my children, and her love of spring, and the way she showed up whenever we needed her.

It’s a funny thing, grief. Less linear than you’d believe, but there you go. It’s nearly spring, I’m full to bursting with words and emotions, and my grief is harder to deal with.

Outside, the world is full of muddy puddles, wet chickens, and cold crisp air. The warmer weather will hit soon, leaving the plants pushing upwards as fast as they can. I plan to join them, standing in the sunshine, stretching as high as I can.

I have work to concentrate on. Soap to make, orders to fill.

And spring is coming, soon.

Now I’m a bottle with a cork it; a well fast running dry; a knotted ball of yarn. I know how this works but I’m angry and my fingertips have run dry. There’s no words as I navigate an almost three year old having a meltdown, a six year old with home reading and a desire to have me watch all the video games, an eight year old who needs to know the why of everything.

I am lost in a haze of no words, of chemistry, of fatty acid profiles and caustic experiments.

Who would have thought that making soap could run the word well empty so fast.

—

My three year old screams in the background, angry again.

The weather is ice and wind.

I can’t send them outside.

There is sharpie on the walls and someone has stolen all my notebooks and unpinned my scribbled notes from the cork board I use to organise my life. I frantically hunt for a pen while I take notes on the shaving soap cooking, but someone has stolen them, my pen cup removed from its home amongst the high shelves and left scattered on the floor.

Now there are two children screaming.

Please just shhhhhhhhh.

I can’t believe there are eight pairs of scissors in the house and I cannot find one of them.

—

Find a playlist. Turn the music up. The dog is chewing headbands again. Shaving soap cooks and I stir stir stir the caustic mix, waiting for it to come together, to trace, to be soap rather than a messy collection of liquids.

Business is good. I love what I do. But sometimes I feel like a shaken bottle of soda, ready to explode if the words don’t come out. I need to write. Making soap is my passion, but writing saves my sanity and god knows there’s little of it left.

—

School goes back tomorrow, and the almost three year old will spend the day asking when we can pick up her siblings and screaming because she doesn’t want them to come home and ruin her games anymore.

I can feel a splash of lye on my finger and I should go and wash it off, but the pain reminds me that I still exist in this tornado of business and screaming and need.

—

Everything is too bright, too dark, chaos whirlwind, around and around. My hands are soul slick again and I wash them off, down the drain with the bubbles, there go the words.

I used to write. Stories. Books.

I’m drowning in a desert of no words and I can’t find my way out.

The soap cooks in the slow cooker and I make notes, ready for markets next weekend. There are twenty weekends until Christmas and 16 markets if I get into everything I want, and don’t get sick, or have my body fall apart. I take vitamin D, magnesium, fish oil, slow release opiates. I sleep when I can, but sometimes find myself sitting wide awake at 3am, wondering what I’m doing.

—

MUM MUM MUMMY MUM MUMMY MUM MUMMY!

I am not hiding in the bathroom. No, I’m not. Go away. I need to pee. Just, I’m working.

You’re always working.

Yes. Because you need new clothes and our house needs a new bedroom and a dining room and money doesn’t just fall from the sky kid. As much as I would like it to.

—

The soap is almost cooked in the time it takes me to write this, broken and disjointed.