delving

There are plenty of reasons for me not to write; I have a two-year-old and a three-year-old... okay, if that alone doesn't make you gasp you are not paying attention: I deliberately had my children close together so that for half the year I could get awed sympathy at my ridiculously difficult situation.  I also work part-time, am lazy, unfit and a problem drinker.

But more often than not the real problem is not that I don't have time to write, or even that I am lacking the energy to write, and certainly not that I don't have anything to write... it is that... I am NOT FUCKING WRITING THAT.

A few years ago I declared that I wanted no further therapy, no more tinkering-with-my-psyche; my neuroses were nicely balanced and they could stay as they were.  Since then I have had children, and they have of course played havoc with that precarious balance.  Second child, had soon-after-first,
 - with all the subsequent hormonal upset and bodily trauma, plus first-child's jealousy and an ill-timed rash of other bad-luck - brought with her dear self a not-dear bout of Post Natal Depression.  So that's all been hard work, to say the least.

But what I am occasionally aware of, quite unbidden, is the knowledge that there is more.  That there lurk within me older, darker hurts.  Being aware of my luck, my privilege in life - not only as a middle-class white person, but specifically as someone who did not suffer childhood abuse (knowing too many people who did) - I don't like to count myself as someone who has suffered trauma.  But quite frankly, dear reader, I have.

Sometimes I think we all have.  Sometimes I think it is the fate of womankind.  And oftentimes I believe that I am just over-thinking things and feeling sorry for myself, like the rest of my self-obsessed generation.  But my reality is there are things done to me, against me, that have scarred me... and I just don't want to go there.  It's not only that I don't want to share these hurts publicly, it's that I don't want to feel them.  I can't afford to: I am trying to enjoy, love, and be there for my children.

I know I can't love them 100% while these hurts are there, but I am also sure that I don't have time to deal with them now.  There is just too much.  I must bury them and be a half-way decent mother and enjoy their so precious, so fleeting, and so important early years while they briefly exist... and maybe fix these things later.  I did try to fix myself before I had children, I really did.  I just didn't know all these hurts were there.

For now I am attempting to perform a psychological triage: work out what I can fix now to be a better parent; what can wait; and what can be buried forever.  After-all, how far can a person really delve?  I could get so lost in the abyss that I could spend my life improving myself, and never really get the chance to live.