Weekly photo challenge: Close

Good grief! I can’t believe (yet again) that it’s been a week since I last posted anything on my blog.

Life is still a mixture of chaos and uphill climb at the moment … but that is little excuse for my complete absence.

Having said that, this week’s challenge gives me an opportunity to post my favourite picture that I have ever taken. Forget apertures and focal lengths and focusing and composition and perfection. This is a picture of my little boy when he was about two years old. He had a elephant called “Nelly,” a Ty stuffed animal given to him by his nursery worker for his first Christmas (3 months old) when we lived in the States. Since that time, Nelly was never out of his reach. Nelly came everywhere with us, only ever losing his grip when my son fell asleep, and I occasionally managed to put Nelly in the washing machine.

Sadly, we lost Nelly somewhere after a trip to a playground after moving to England. It seems they don’t sell the same Ty elephant here in England, and the loss was a source of anguish for many months afterwards. Even now, as an eleven-year old, my son looked at this picture, and, just for a second, that muted look of separation registered on his face.

© Alice through the Macro Lens [2012]

Weekly photo challenge: Hands

I didn’t really think of anything that was fitting for this week’s challenge about hands.

I went scouring my photo albums for pictures taking during one of my previous “lives,” when I used to film professional American football. I have loads of pictures of athletic, muscular men leaping for the ball with outstretched hands – but, lately, looking back on things from my past have reduced me to tears …. and this was no exception. So I couldn’t use them!

As for taking a picture of my own hands, well – suffice it to say I don’t have the most pleasant looking digits, and I chew my nails, so that’s off the menu.

I was at a loss … but then I saw MindMindful’s contribution, and as soon as she said “solarizing effect” it reminded me of an arty little creation I made at a Christingle service here in our village. I don’t know if other countries have Christingle, but here it’s a children’s service that’s performed early in December in Churches of England.

The Christingle itself is comprised of an orange (representing the World), circled with a red ribbon (Christ’s blood), with sweets and dried fruits (fruits of the earth) skewered into the orange in four places (four seasons). A candle is in the top and is lit by another person’s candle, sometimes to the tune of “This little light of mine” to symbolise Jesus as the Light of the World.

© Alice through the Macro Lens [2012]

Hanging in there …

I will apologise in advance for the tone of this post (if I post it …) but I need to write this stuff down. When I first began this blog, it was intended to act as a form of writing therapy. Even though it has developed into something a little more arty, I still need it to be helpful to me in times of difficulty, and today is one of those times.

Today has been a very dark day for me, and probably the first time I’ve considered “turning off the lights” since early February, when I last begged the earth to just swallow me up.

I haven’t been on any medication at all for a month now. I weaned myself off a high dosage of anti-depressants in anticipation of finally being prescribed something that would address what appears to be a more accurate diagnosis. But the “experts” have decided that I should be completely medicine-free for the next three months in order to accurately record my daily mood activity.

Well, for the record, the mood has been swinging more than Michael Buble, and I am getting dizzy.  I felt quite down for a while last week, but not terribly morose. The daily walks in the woods and the photography were helpful to keep my mind in a reasonably peaceful mode. Then, the upswing began earlier this week. Unfortunately, so did the flu. I’ve never encountered that situation before – one in which my brain is buzzing in overdrive, my mind is racing, my thoughts are fleeting, but my body is so full of cold, I can’t physically respond. Horrible, surreal situation … my physical, flu-ridden self needed rest, but my hypomaniacal mind wouldn’t allow it. Both aspects of me fighting each other tooth and nail, and, in the middle of it all I still had to function adequately enough to get my son off to school and do all the other maternal duties after he returned home.

And if that wasn’t crazy enough, my mood has now swung completely the other way. Not only am I full of germs, chest on fire, with a painful cough reminiscent of a 50-fag-a-day smoker – but I am really down. I cry a lot, I want to sleep a lot, and I want to crawl into a space and hide. Many people talk about how the flu “wipes them out” and they have to stay in bed all day and rest. Others talk about how Depression “wipes them out” and they have to stay in bed all day and block out the world.

Today, I have both.

And I’m not allowed to rest, because I have a child, and single mothers don’t get to rest.

So, tonight, while my son sleeps, I write – because writing is supposed to be therapy. I don’t write this to request sympathy, nor to inflict my problems on anyone or ask for advice. I write because writing, for me, places distance between that which is in my head and what is in my heart. I can’t allow what is in my head at this moment to infiltrate my heart – because once it wins that battle, there will be nothing left.

Writing down the nonsense that fills my brain right now takes it out of my head, disperses it onto the page, and dissipates it away where it can’t hurt anyone anymore. There are only two ways I can think of right now to make the noise go away … and writing is one of them. The thing about this illness is that this feeling will not last long … and within a few days, I’ll probably be singing to the furniture again. So despite how paralysing the lows can be – and this one is pretty crippling – I must remember that this will pass, and peace will return again soon.

© Alice through the Macro Lens [2012]

52 Pick Up Photo Challenge – Taking care of Business

I probably thought a bit too hard about this challenge this week for Sherene’s blog Print-Sense Design and Photography. The topic is “Taking care of business,” and, as I am not at work at the moment and not doing anything remotely productive at home, I didn’t come up with much in the way of inspiration.  But of course, it’s all about thinking laterally – and this is my interpretation of the theme.

It must be a tough life being a child, when the only business you need to take care of is making sand angels on the beach …

© Alice through the Macro Lens [2012]

God bless the child

    

My little big boy went away for three whole days on a school trip last week, and, to misquote Burt Bacharach, “I just didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Because, for all the times I’ve sighed at the mess he leaves, and the noise he makes, and the eternal questions he asks. For all the endless debates we have to have about homework and putting his clothes away and brushing his teeth before bed. For all the frustrations I’ve felt when he leaves dirty socks between his sheets and empty crisp packets on the couch and half his dinner in the dog…….

I REALLY missed him.

Parenthood has to be one of the toughest jobs in the world. The frustrations and the yelling, the tantrums and the backchat, the growing pains and the lip that comes with trying to raise a way-too-smart-for-his-own-good child often leave me drained and begging for respite. And if you add bipolar disorder, social isolation, and a zero support network into the pot, then the responsibility of parenthood is rocketed into a whole new stratosphere of exhaustion.

So you’d have expected me to be singing from the rooftops at the prospect of three days of childless freedom …

But instead, I have to admit I felt quite lost.

It probably didn’t help that I was off work at the time as well, but, without the usual daily, chaotic “routines,” such as taking him to and collecting him from school, cooking the tea, helping with homework, picking up muddy shoes, and answering the door to his friends, I became a proper fish out of water.

I even missed the bedtime shenanigans – the nightly struggle over bath time, the perennial toothbrushing saga, the need to sweep the biscuit crumbs out of the bed, or the pleas for “just one more game” on the X-Box. For three whole days, I didn’t have to remember 22 different voices to bring the “BFG” to life during storytime or find the strength to shove the dog off his bed.

I felt very strange without him – almost redundant – and I craved the “structure” provided by parental chaos. My son and I have developed an almost symbiotic relationship: I nurture, protect and provide servitude for him …. and he gives me superhuman strength to defy this illness.

When I’m SuperMum, I can’t stay in bed all day, because I have get up and get him to school on time. I’m not allowed to quit my job, or to act in ways that would get me fired, because I have a mortgage to pay, and he needs a roof over his head and food in his stomach. I don’t have a right to walk in front of that bus, or run away to a hippie commune, or put my fist through that window, or sit in the middle of a busy pavement, or max out my credit cards, or dye my hair pink and dance on a park bench, even if my head is screaming at me to do so …. because that would emotionally affect him, and that would be selfish.

I’m not allowed to let my illness beat me, because I have a son, and as long as he is dependant on me, I have to keep fighting it.

And for that, I am eternally grateful.

© Alice through the Macro Lens [2012]