Got a bit of a cold, runny nose. I’ve been sneezing, a few weeks now. The boys have it too, we seem to wake up with it. Apparently, there is a hierarchy of viruses. If you catch covid it throws out the cold germs and you dry up. Funny I’ve never felt good about having a cold before. I’m sure I head the flu throws out the covid germs, but I could be confusing the sequencing. I love people, hanging out chatting, dancing laughing too loud. I hope covid does not destroy our relationships all together.

In lockdown I’ve been learning to accept alone. There’s been too many shake ups, too much stress and now too much time to write. You’re not interested, it’s too tedious, I have to be patient, my husband’s unwell. The boys can be kind and sympathetic. Sometimes they love to chat. I’ve settled at a distance from many friends, some are daily phone doses, but weekly is more comfortable. External contacts, work’s become endless zooms. It’s all surreal.

As night with perimenopausal hot sweats, memories come back, and I realise how much of myself I tried to shade. To tidy up. I’ve become reliant on these typed words.  I read that if a woman bleeds for forty years, she’d highly likely to live to over ninety. Oh dear, I’m heading that way, regurgitate, working things out, could I even heal.

I poke my thoughts and feelings into my computer each time memories hinge.  Arawa, the dyslexic child in me, has become my special space, my project, words flow into tears, “our weekly game.”  Not sure how I will dispose of this, can I post it, let it go. It’s easier now that I no longer share on my personal time line. I fear I’ll never quite understand why, but I don’t really want it read. Print is the final step and I want it tidied. It’s a pleasure, well a relief, to be creating and finally finishing.

If I think back, fear could have hit, when my oldest starting primary school, that reopened inadequacies.  I wanted to take him out of education, and with my husband we searched. We did. We went and lived in Kalimantan, Indonesia, my husband’s country. For a time I thought we’d found a utopia, we found a new style of place. It was remote, culturally different, but I soon felt discomfort in my white privilege. For me it had been an escape from the intuition of an English education, but my children would grow up demanding. I saw children who shouted, “I want a sandwich.” and a maid scuttled off. I’d been absorbed in loving and protecting my beautiful babies, but I did not want them to grow into this.

During those early years, I’d been guarded, possibly too careful with both my boys.  I read that parents who have been abused were more likely to expose their children to abuse or even abuse them themselves, but I’ve also read the opposite, they can become overprotective.  I went overboard, I think it was my animal instinct kicking in.

I always knew where my eldest was.  Him going to school and being so long out of my care made life challenging.  He was struggling to learn to read. This was my story. It had devastated me. I felt hurt and confused, I wanted to protect him from it. When he settled and became happy in school English.  I began typing.  My words mangled again and again.  Having to let go of this  small vulnerable person, I panicked at many minor events.  I’ve always tried to protect my boys from my routh and flaws, but I could not prevent dyslexia repeating itself. I fired out at the adults taking over him. Realising my eldest was not learning to read was why we went to Kalimantan. I wanted utopia, a new education away from the traditional structures and my fears, but within a year we returned to England.

My parenting journey actually began in spring 2003. It long predates my Kingston Onion. This slow unravelling of my trauma has actually been going on all my adult life and through my teens too. I struggled with motherhood, with disability. I got entangled in some, angry, hating and hurtful letter writing.

To counteract frustration, I write creatively, I write poetry. Aimed at youth, I love to see hope in young people. I wrote a story. It came quickly. It was an addiction. I became a novel. I turned my pent-up pain into a positive. I want to place something real of that girl in the world, give her a voice. Joyous and hopeful, a slightly magical fantasy, until my phobias oozed out, polluting the surface. It bogged down in my suggestive sexual, confused passions. The leaking of an over informed, scared young woman were everywhere. I stopped.