"It was a very good year..."

So, I decided that rather than spamming everyone's Facebook feed with recaps of my year, resolutions I won't stick to and the ever so frequently seen "I'm glad to see the back of 2013," type status, I should, instead, sum it all up in a blog so that people can happily ignore it if they feel so inclined.

Firstly, 2013 has had ups and downs, but I'm very happy to report that this year has had many, many more ups than downs. I'll go over the downs first so that I can lighten to mood with the ups afterwards!

THE DOWNS:

The start of this year was a tumultuous time that lacked any kind of direction whatsoever. I was scared and anxious about the future that I was struggling to create for M and I. I was lost. This time last year I received a text message from M's father, with whom I had been separated from for three months, asking me out on a date. I thought it over, and being scared and lonely I decided to say yes, and in truth, we had enjoyed Christmas in each other's company. We laughed a lot and were friends again after a rather unpleasant few months. I visited with Matilda and we had quite a nice weekend together. He secretly planned a trip to Paris for him and I, with the help of my parents, for Valentine's Day. The thought was there, but most of the trip was spent arguing and myself receiving a myriad of odd comments about my jacket, my ears, my face in general, the fact that I am "literally always fucking complaining." We had one more weekend "date" after that before I realised that our efforts were almost entirely pointless. Our friendship declined into nothing after that, and hasn't improved since. I try my best to laugh and joke with him to lighten the atmosphere when we have to see each other at a "handover," but he is unable to reciprocate. He has said himself that it will take him some time to act "normal" around me, but I don't think it will ever happen. The damage is done.

My anxiety has had some of its darker days this year and I was put onto anti depressants... twice, both of which made me infinitely worse.

Fin. Done and dusted. Onto the ups.

THE UPS:

In April of this year, I decided what I wanted to do with myself. I was going to apply to go back into education. Slowly gazing down the list of available courses at the city college, one stood out. A shining beacon in the dark. Hairdressing. I had spent the last 12 years of my life messing about with my own hair, my friends hair, my mothers hair... That was it. That was what I wanted to do. I applied. A few months later I was invited for an interview, and was told on the spot that I would be offered a place. I excitedly called my mother on the bus home and did some squealing and some tearing up. The course has been exactly what I had hoped it would be and more, and it's going incredibly well. I've finally found my calling.

In the Spring I decided to join a dating website. I know, I know... but let's face it, being a single mother with no hobbies that involve other people doesn't make for a particularly thrilling social life. I spoke to a few interesting people who were fun to chat to, but nobody stood out. There were also a couple of total mutters, one of which used "I like the skin on your face" as an opener. I can only assume that he had planned to peel it away from my skull and wear it like a mask to his next birthday party. He didn't get a response. Enter THE BOY. His opening message had nothing to do with my face skin, his desire to "do me up da bum," (no, I'm not joking, I got that one as well. Smooth, I know.) or that I was "smokin' hot lol." Being the first one to actually read my entire bio (and it was long,) he asked me questions, cracked some jokes and (as only the shallow side of me will admit) was very, very cute as a bonus. I read through his profile and realised that he was essentially a male version of myself. Had I not been relatively sound of mind, I would have assumed that I had invented him. I sent a message back as quickly as my fingers would go and spent the next few days checking my inbox every three seconds to see if he had replied. We exchanged numbers after a time and spent almost every night texting back and forth about anything and everything. We discussed meeting, but being that we were four hours apart, we decided not to. I was handed a golden ticket in the form of a toddler-free weekend and invited him to the city for a day out. A huge part of me was scared that we wouldn't live up to each other's expectations because we had managed to grow so close so quickly. The other part of me was worried that we would exceed them. The idea of falling for someone who lives down the road is far more appealing than somebody you would hardly ever get to see. The visit turned into two visits, one after the other. They were two of the most incredibly lovely days I've ever had. While we have managed to exceed said loveliness in days since, I won't ever forget them. We get to see each other fortnightly, and I can safely say that I have never, in my 26 years on this earth, been even half as happy as I am now.

Matilda has continued to surprise me with her awesomeness. She grows and develops every day, and I couldn't be more proud of the person she is becoming.

I am finally getting more of a hold on my anxiety. I won't go into detail as we'll be here all night, but it feels nice.

And now for 2014...

THE RESOLUTIONS:

This year I will not be making 101 vague, sweeping gestures about TRYING to "get healthy" or "exercise" or "cut back on x, y and z." This year I want to make small changes with big impact.

I will smile more and frown less. Ignore more and worry less. Laugh more and shout less.

I will learn to pick my battles and respond to them wisely.

I will breathe more slowly and calmly and sleep more deeply because of it.

I will DRINK MORE WATER.

I will drink LESS things that rot my insides. I'm looking at you, Coca Cola.

I will eat smaller portions. Not for weight loss, but to feel better internally and to avoid hating myself after every meal.

I will go to bed at a reasonable time.

I will enjoy cuddles and playtime and worry less about things being tidy.

I will keep a journal (I'm already on my way with this one, thanks to my delicious new Christmas gadget.) full of the happier parts of my day.

I will finally get a tattoo. Don't worry dad, it will be tiny. Probably.

I will learn to care less about the opinions of people I'll a) never see again and b) don't care to see again.

I will tell Matilda firmly and more frequently that she is wonderful. That she is my best friend. That I love her.

I will learn to make the most of every minute that I get to spend with the boy. There aren't enough of them, just yet.

I will work above and beyond as far as my future career is concerned. THIS, I am going to do right.

I will pretend that the future doesn't exist; stop worrying about the what ifs and appreciate and handle the things that are happening TODAY.

I am going to stand my ground.

Above all, I am going to smile a lot more, because if 2014 is anything like 2013... I'll have many reasons to do so.

Happy New Year to you and your families. *clink*

"And I damn near sh*t myself."

2014 is going to be the year I finally become "zen," you guys. 

For realsies, this time. I hope.

In September I entered my fifth year of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which, for those of you "normal" folk out there, is a mental illness that affects the brains ability to distinguish imagined threat from real threat. For example, a normal person will watch an advert for Macmillan Cancer Research and think "Oh, isn't it sad that people go through that?" swiftly followed by "What time is Corrie on again?" I say normal. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't watch that steaming heap of dung if they were paid to do so... but I digress. An anxious person will watch the very same advert and think "OH LORD HELP ME, JESUS/BUDDHA/BATMAN, IT'S A SIGN FROM GOD THAT I'M DYING FROM THAT BACKACHE I HAVE EVEN THOUGH I LIFTED HEAVY BOXES YESTERDAY."

Another example is simply going for a walk of an evening. A normal person will see other people in the street and think nothing of it. An anxious person will mentally play out, in great detail, how that person will mug and/or murder them and that nobody will be around to help them and they will just lay there forever until they become a bloated corpse and vultures will travel from afar to peck their eyes out and nobody will turn up to their funeral because everyone secretly hates them.

It's after these thoughts that their brain decides to put their body into unnecessary fight or flight mode, leaving them feeling shaky, sick, dizzy, exhausted, short of breath and with a heart beat that feels like it's doing the dance moves from Whigfield's 'Saturday Night.' A normal person only goes into fight or flight mode when it's entirely necessary, e.g. when their car has a near miss with an 18-wheeler or when a lion has escaped from the zoo and broken into their house for a bite to eat. An anxious person feels like this 150% OF THE TIME. After a while the body starts to shut itself down and leaves us feeling like an empty, diseased husk, which only serves to make our fears worse, leaving us convinced that we're dying of a myriad of weird and wonderful illnesses, some of which haven't even been discovered yet.

I don't plan to finish my fifth year of this in the same state I'm in now. I have an attack plan of sorts that I'm hoping will kick GAD right in the gonads with impressive force.

Firstly, I will be having a man from the internet hypnotise me on a nightly basis. Now, when I say "hypnotise," I don't mean I'm going to sit up all night watching videos on YouTube of swirling vortexes or a man swinging a pocket watch back and forth. I have acquired an app by a guy named Max Kirsten (his last name is a girls name. I know. Grow up.) and plan on him being my new bed buddy. Basically I listen to him talk at me with whooshing background noises for 40 minutes a night in the hope that he'll rewire my scrambled egg of a brain box, and so far, I'm enjoying it. I wake up from my odd little trance feeling remarkably awesome, although last night he scared the ever loving life out of me. I relayed my experience to my dad this afternoon, and it went something like this:

"So I had a man from the internet hypnotise me last night."

"...I see!"

"Yeah basically I just listen to him talk for 40 minutes while I have a bit of a nap."

"And how was it?"

"Well, the best part about it was that part way through he started talking at me with two voices at once, and it came out of nowhere and I damn near shit myself, which made me jolt, cracked something in my lower back and now my leg doesn't hurt anymore... so that's something. Maybe I should write him a review saying 'I still feel anxious, but thanks for healing my sciatica."

Having only been listening to it for three days, I'm not overly concerned by the lack of progress, but that 40 minutes of peace where I don't consider all the things that could kill me is blissful.

The second part of my attack is to get my gutty works under control. I suffer with IBS which, while it's super fun (it isn't) it's also somewhat of a hindrance to pretty much every aspect of my life as it stands. Eating has become a chore, which I never thought I'd say, and a chore that makes me anxious no less. So, come January 1st I will be eliminating wheat, gluten and lactose. Shortly after this I'll probably kill myself due to abject misery from all of the bland, tasteless food I'll be eating. The only bright side to this is that all of the carrots I'll be ingesting will give me super awesome seeing-in-the-dark capabilities and I can start calling myself Nighteyes. I've already started designing my cape. Thankfully this plan is not a permanent thing. The point is to eliminate certain things for a while, and then reintroduce them one by one and see how quickly it takes for me to poop myself. So, that'll be fun.

The third and final part is to DRINK. WATER. I have a terrible habit of limiting my fluid intake to decaf tea and Coca Cola, and while that was fine at the spritely age of 15 and gave me no real problems, nowadays a morning without water leaves me feeling like the dried up, mummified uterus of a 600 year old nun. 

So that is my plan. I'm sure I'll write a blog in a few weeks about how it's going, by which point I'll be doing it posthumously because of the whole tasteless misery-suicide thing.

We'll see. 

Nighteyes, out.

"Can you see any more poop, or is that the last of it?"

Back at University, my housemates were my entire social world. Every single one of us was a totally different animal from the next.

I was a sort of odd, slightly (and increasingly) overweight hermit with an obsession for World of Warcraft, The Simpsons and drinking coffee out of pint mugs.

Then there was Gio, our "mexican." He was a mohawk-clad, Ecuadorian city hopper who would disappear for days on end and then return in some sort of daze with pupils the size of walnuts. When he came home and we asked him where he'd been, he'd say "...Oslo." He wasn't kidding. This happened often.

Abby was perpetually stoned and once cooked her own finger making potato smileys. She also had extensions "professionally fitted" that left her with a rather interesting bald strip on the back of her head. I cut her hair once and it never grew back. Whenever my hair decides to stop growing for a bit, it's "doing an Abby."

Lisa and I would fight about... everything... but mostly tidying. I was incredibly scruffy back then (not that you'd know it to see my room now - it's gloriously tidy 95% of the time.) and she hated me for it... and I hated her for hating me for it. We fought with vigour and vim and OFTEN. I think it's pretty safe to say that we actively hated each other at times.

She is now my daughter's Godmother and I love her with every fibre of my body.

One day I sought friends, dare I say it, OUTSIDE of my HOUSE. I had been chatting to a few people from the area on Twitter on and off and one day decided to ask one of them out for a drink. His name was Chris and he was skinny and ginger and made me laugh a LOT. We met up in town and after an awkward hug and the usual "Hey how are you? Yeah I'm great. Me too. Cool. Alcohol?" we went to a nearby pub. We sat and chatted about general nonsense, and I quickly realised that his face, like mine, was made of rubber. Not a minute passed without some sort of stupid, contorted expression travelling across one of our faces. It was glorious.

I was a smoker back then (ew, I know, right?) and so being as it was an open fronted pub, I stood outside while he sat inside with the clean people and we continued the nonsense talk. A few minutes in I felt something land on the top of my head. My first instinct was to look up. My second instinct was to, stupidly, touch the top of my head. When I brought my hand back down I noticed a sort of white and green smear that looked remarkably like half digested, stolen chips.

"I'VE BEEN SHIT ON, CHRIS."

"You've been what? OH MY GO-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"STOP LAUGHING AND PASS ME A TISSUE, YOU BASTARD."

He passed over a tissue and I wiped the bird... uh... "leavings" from my pristinely quaffed (it wasn't) hair, cringing beyond belief and deciding that I probably wouldn't ever call him again. Ever.

"There's still some th-no, the other si-no not there, it's right th-shall I just get it?"

We bonded over him wiping bird shit out of my hair that day, and he has been one of my favourite people in the world ever since.

"Can you see any more poop, or is that the last of it?"

"Well, it's sort of still there. You might want to wash it."

I don't get to speak to him nearly as much as I'd like to, but he is the male me and he does a wonderful Steve Bruce impression, so if you do ever get the chance to go for a beer with him... do.

Just remember to stay inside.

"Nah, I'm alright. I just don't feel very well."

Normally I share my posts via Facebook so that people can read them and hopefully have a chuckle at my bizarre life experiences. This will not be one of those times.

Sometimes I feel desperately sad. It isn't always the gut wrenching, drowning in your own tears type of sad. The vast majority of the time it's a sort of hollow, dragging feeling in my throat that makes me want to sleep for a week.

It happens in uncomfortable and mostly random waves, all triggered out of nowhere by reminders of things that caused the dragging to start in the first place. It appears, for the most part, without warning, and my eyes drift and my mouth pins itself closed and my lungs fill with sour air and my brain feels like it's floating in a pool of water inside my skull. My heart beats quickly and awkwardly in my chest as if it isn't mine, and I feel like my internal organs are missing at times... or as if someone is trying to pull them out of my mouth piece by piece with a long hook.

Trying to explain this to anyone is difficult, at best, and is almost never done for several reasons. One being that the vast majority of people will think I'm either a) exaggerating it, or b) f*cking nuts. The latter probably isn't too far off the mark.

I have had two therapists in my brief stint on this planet. One who, upon filling out a check-list of depression and anxiety inducing life experiences and only leaving 4 out of 15 unchecked, complimented me on my level of general sanity. The other was a calm and quietly spoken gentleman who tried to help me get over past events by making me relive every minor detail of them in his office. He was met, during most sessions, with a blubbering wreck of a person who couldn't form sentences after five minutes.

The very small handful of people who know me best know that these things are something that I relive frequently, and even some of those people don't know what all of those things are. I have to truly love a person to let them into that side of my life. Not to mention the fact that I have to be comfortable in the knowledge that they aren't going to assume that I'm either making it up, or that I'm telling them to evoke some sort of onslaught of sympathy or reassurance. There are certain parts of my past that my own family aren't aware of and that I probably wouldn't tell them about if you held a gun to my head. There is a certain amount of dignity, that a sprinkling of other people have stolen from me in a variety of sadistic ways, that I would at least like to pretend is still in tact to the people who raised me to be the strong, outspoken person whose mask I wear on a day to day basis.

In the company of others I am a ridiculous idiot. I put on silly accents and dance with the rhythm of a pigeon with a missing toe and contort my face into a wide spectrum of unappealing shapes. I think that, for the most part, my ridiculous, idiotic behaviour is an elaborate disguise that I wear to hide the fact that inside I feel a little like I'm rotting. It might also be because it's my way of trying to convince myself that everything is okay, that one day I'll be able to act like this *without* it being used as a coping mechanism.

On my own I am an entirely different animal. I sit in my room and I draw, cry, sew, crochet, sing, cry, write, cry, stare off into space... sleep. I do it all within the confines of my bedroom walls and I do it for no particular reason at all. Nothing vastly horrifying has happened to me for a good few years now, and yet I can't shake the feeling that I'm due a shitstorm of some description; that, just around the corner, is something watching and waiting for me to feel happy and comfortable in the arms of my daughter or my other half, before it strikes me down and I end up back in a pit of abject misery. I have felt this way since the first "incident" when I was 13. 13 is an unlucky number for most, due to the social universe telling them that it should be, but for me it packs a bit more of a punch. For the first 9 years of that period I was right. There was something else brewing and it seemed to be on an 18 month cycle. I'd move on and recover from something and then something else would kick me in the teeth. 2009 was when my brain decided it had had enough and I fell into what my second therapist described as a "textbook mental breakdown." The world and the more sadistic members of its population had chipped so many pieces of me away by that point that I didn't have the emotional capacity to deal with it anymore.

Doctors have given me pills and blank-faced therapists. The people who care about me have tried to understand and give me time, support and love.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I go and lay next to my daughter for a while. I stroke her face and whisper that I love her and she sleeps soundly in my arms... and for a moment, I remember why I'm still going. She is my most treasured gift and she will always be my reason for living. Always.

The best thing I can do for myself now is be happy, and feel safe in the knowledge that I am surrounded by people who want me to get better; and I will, in time. I have no doubt about that. Once I'm able to let go of the things that drag me down and can truly appreciate the things that lift me, I'll get better.

I'm hoping that the thing I can feel waiting for me around the corner is, this time, something good.

"You should probably hide in the footwell."

Growing up as a Middle Eastern "expat brat" makes the ability to do the following things impossible:

- Enjoy British KFC.

- Answer the question "Where are you from?"

- Go out without a coat on even in the middle of Summer.

- Put up with Anti-Islamic bigotry.

- See a white pick-up truck without assuming it's going to cut you off.

- Tell people about your past without it sounding like a pack of steaming lies.

The last point is particularly important in the context of the story I'm about to tell. 

On the 29th of May, 2004, seventeen members of a terrorist group calling themselves 'The Jerusalem Squadron' attacked two oil-industry buildings and a foreign workers' housing complex, The Oasis Compound in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. 

I was at school that day for the dress rehearsal of my GCSE leaving ceremony (OWN CLOTHES DAY, YEAH!) We were all lined up on the stage, our form class tutor directing us, when one of the other teachers hurried into the room looking concerned and whispered something into their ear. We were quickly hurried to what was then deemed to be "The Study Room," (which nobody ever used EVER) and waited. And waited. And then we did some more waiting. Several hours passed before we were informed of what was happening. The head of KS4 entered the room, solemn to the bone, and explained that Oasis compound had been attacked, with several people taken hostage, most of which were either severely injured or dead. 

Back then Oasis was considered a "posh" compound. It was expensive and shiny and the swimming pools were amazing and most importantly it was across the road from mine. I panicked. Knowing that my mama was at home and that my then 11 year old brother was at school within our compound, I felt my heart rise up into my mouth. "Has it spread outside of Oasis?" I asked, not particularly wanting to hear the answer. "We don't know. We know that there are a few members of the terrorist group roaming around  and a couple of oil company buildings have been attacked, but we honestly can't tell you anything else." Thankfully nobody in my tutor group were living on Oasis at the time, but the room went deathly quiet regardless. My father was and still is in the oil industry, and for years we had heard horror stories of Westerners getting blown up, pulled out of cars and shot, attacked in the street... My mind became flooded with unpleasant what-ifs, but all we could do was wait. Our school was on total lockdown, along with several others in the city, and we were expressly told that we weren't allowed to leave until further notice. Not quite understanding the severity of the situation, several other students spent the remainder of the afternoon moaning about how they were bored and mumbling "why can't they just let us leave for God's sake?" We were told that we could have our phones on us for keeping in contact with family and thankfully, a few hours in, mine rang. 

I had never been so happy to hear my dad's voice in my entire life. "Sweetheart, I'm coming to pick you up. Be ready." he said. 

As I walked across our vast and seemingly never-ending school carpark, I noticed that the walls surrounding our school had twice as many security gunmen as usual, and this time... there was a tank. In fact, there were two tanks. I saw my dad's car and ran as fast as I possibly could. His brow was furrowed and he gestured for me to get in. Quickly. My school was almost in the middle of nowhere, and as we were flying down the exit road he turned to me and said "You should probably hide in the footwell." I wasn't quite expecting to hear that, but I ducked down anyway. I watched him for the entirety of the journey home, his eyes flickering left and right as we drove through the deserted streets of our usually busy city. We were the only car on the road for a good 90% of the journey, and I felt like we were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. 

When we finally arrived at our compound, the security was 10 times what it usually was, and we were held at each checkpoint for 10 minutes while they ran mirrors under our car and checked our identification. After what felt like an eternity we were allowed inside. My mum was sat up in the bedroom watching the ticker updates on any and every news network that we had access to. Some of the hostages were British and as such, it was even on BBC News. And so we sat there, on my parents bed, watching the situation unfold in surround sound as military helicopters passed overhead.

We watched as an enormous helicopter spilled open, men tumbling out of it (and one falling over in quite a spectacular fashion) and I uttered "fucking hell" before realising that, even in situations like this, it probably wasn't cool for me to say the F-word in front of my parents. 

Whenever I have tried to explain that day to anybody, they either look at me like I'm speaking in tongues, or I can see the phrase "what a load of bullshit" forming in their mouths before they decide not to say it. My teenage years were somewhat... interesting, and while certain events were terrifying at the time, the stories make for great ice-breakers. Sort of. 

We still laugh about that guy falling out of the helicopter 9 years on, and I hope we never stop, because life is far too short to take seriously.

"Don't bite your nails - there could be poo particles under there. Gross."

Ladies and gentlemen, I have become a nail dork.

Up until a few months ago, I was a nail biter. It was my go to habit for the times when I was sad, angry, excited, bored, focused, anxious, watching a movie, tired, frustrated, breathing...

It was the physical manifestation of my inner "turmoil," as it were, and I hated it. I spent years of my life with my hands balled up inside my sleeves and, while I wasn't a particularly gross example of a nail biter (think short rather than barely there,) I still felt self conscious of anybody even glancing at my hands. This was only made worse when I was 10 and my uncle decided that it would be really funny to give me a wart. He is only a few years older than me, and so he was more like an annoying but loveable older brother to me. As such, our relationship revolved around him winding me up in one way or another as often as humanly possible. He had a wart on his finger that he used to waft in my direction saying "Look, Laura, you're going to get a wart!" and naturally I would recoil in horror. On one of these occasions he held me down and rubbed it on my hand, laughing himself into a dribbling stupor while I shouted "NO, GROSS, GET OFF YOU HORRIBLE GIT!" He casually stated (through his laughter) that I probably wouldn't get it and not to worry. A few months passed and I noticed a small raised bump forming around my middle finger nail. Putting it down to my skin nibbling habits I brushed it off as nothing and forgot about it. A month later and it was the size of a raisin. It was gross. Had I not been a nail biter, it probably wouldn't have caught and instead of doing the smart thing and showing my parents, which would have likely resulted in a trip to Boots, I hid it. I hid it until every single nail on BOTH hands was surrounded by these disgusting, cauliflower-esque skin demons and I was deserving of the name "Toad Fingers." Thankfully nobody at school picked up on that diamond nickname.

It took about 6 rounds of awful, bright white wart removal potions to kill them off, but by that point the damage was already done. I hated my fingers and continued to hide them inside my sleeves until I hit 16 and realised that Saudi Arabia was too damn HOT to be walking around in a hoodie with my sleeves balled up. 

I didn't like the nail biting habit, but then decided I didn't give a sh*t anymore and that it was my way of coping with my strange, warped little brain. As the years passed and I slipped into a deeper sense of doom and dread it became an hourly occurrence and through no want of trying, I simply couldn't grow them. The second any white tips started to show they were off. 

 My ex used to physically bat my hand out of my mouth every time I went to bite them, even though he was a nail biter himself, and I would glare at him and shout "YOU DAMN DIRTY HYPOCRITE," but it didn't diminish the fact that he found it "really gross." 

Earlier this year I realised what it takes to grow your nails. Contentment. Contentment and a cute boy who makes you laugh a LOT. I didn't need to try... I simply stopped biting them. The happier I became, the longer they got, and the longer they got, the more I liked them. I started frequenting nail art blogs and Instagram accounts and realised "I can do ART... on my NAILS." It was like some sort of divine epiphany... and then the obsession started. I couldn't walk past a Superdrug or a Pharmacy without skipping inside to oggle the pretty colours and make various fireworks display watching noises. "Ooooh... AHHHH... look at the COLOURS... oh, GLITTERY!" 

Collecting nail varnish has become my cheapest and most satisfying addiction to date, and I now have an impressive collection of over 60 different colours. Some glittery, some shimmery, some that look different from one angle to the next, some that crackle, some that look like crocodile skin... It's plain old delicious. My spirit animal, Cousin Simone, gave me a box full of nail polish, tiny jewels, brushes, etc, and once I had little nail art brushes in my possession I was trying a different design every single day. I've had Simpsons nails, Harry Potter nails, zombie nails, Pixar nails, Despicable Me minion nails and some with pretty little flowers on. 

It's my birthday a week Tuesday. Money for nail polish is all I plan to ask for. That and chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

"Yes, but how do you know if you don't SCAN ME?"

"Dear Dr. Google,

I hate you. You are a scaremongering bastard and a rubbish doctor and you should be stricken off and did I mention that I hate you?

Also, I hate you. You suck.

Shut up.

Love (hate,)

Lou"

I'd like to apologise in advance for this post, as it may come across that I am on some sort of an insanity bender. I'm not (very much). After relapsing into a fit of abject terror that I'm about to drop dead at any given minute, I figured that dumping (not like that, sicko) a bunch of text onto a pretend piece of paper floating around in the wisdom-fuelled cosmos that is "THE INTERNET" might be a good way for me to bleach my brain.

2009 was not, I repeat, NOT a good year for my family. My mama and I seemed to suffer the most because, as women, we're inherently mental anyway. Sorry, feminists, but it's true. My grandfather on my mum's side passed away in early 2009 and it hit the family like a tonne of bricks. 

To mama and I, he was our "man." He was her daddy, and he was my 'Grampyabadoo.' While I'm sure that many women think that the most treasured men in their lives are the best, we KNEW that he was. He was strong, hard-working, fiercely loving and could dazzle a lady 20 years his junior at 100 feet with a cheeky grin and flash of his teeth. He can't take much credit for the teeth, as they weren't actually his... in this he took great pleasure in proving to me on a regular basis. He would take them out and gurn just to get a laugh out of me. Sometimes the laugh would be tinged with "I'm not hungry anymore," but for the most part, it was just a hearty, unadulterated belly laugh. 

He spent his life in the fields, and as such, looked somewhat mixed race. His tan was incredible, and my lucky mama inherited the same genes. I inherited my father's tanning skills, and he and I spent many summers peeling our own skin off to find white, freckly skin underneath... all the while, Grampy and mama were outside worshipping the sun and turning a healthy shade of golden brown.

It was because he was so strong that his passing away winded us all to such a shocking degree. At his funeral I cried for the entirety of the service. From start to finish my then-boyfriend could do absolutely nothing to console me. I'm still inconsolable about it now. As the rest of the family sniffled and choked their way through Jerusalem, I stood with tears streaming down my face at a rate I've never known (and haven't known since,) and my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces. Last year, at a friends wedding, one of their chosen hymns was Jerusalem, and being totally caught off guard by it I burst into tears, mid-ceremony.

As the year went on, I found myself recovering, little by little, with the odd fit of insane bawling thrown in for good measure. My mama was the same. By September, I was in the throes of a legit mental breakdown. Everything I knew to be "me" was pissed into the wind and I ended up with a beautiful, emotional clinger-onner called "Generalised Anxiety Disorder." I spent every waking moment of my life feeling like my body was shutting down on me, and it felt terrible. I wrestled with my brain constantly, trying to understand why I felt so physically busted up, and then I opened Google... and for the first time, I Googled my symptoms.

According to Dr. Google, I was simultaneously dying of HIV, cancer of every organ, Multiple Sclerosis, heart failure, DVT and various types of aneurysms/embolisms in parts of my body I didn't even know existed.  As this went on, my body simply felt worse and worse. I'd wake up every morning with a racing, skipping, skedaddling, ski-dap-diddly-doo-wopping heart beat, and I'd feel dizzy and absolutely sick to my stomach. 

I dropped out of uni and then ended a three year relationship that, bizarrely, I was quite happy with at the time, but my fear of hurting him quickly transpired into... you guessed it... me actually hurting him by ending things. He and I lived together with my best friend at the time, and I ended up sleeping on a blow up bed under the dining room table for six months before moving out and finally starting to get myself back on track. My 'wife' and I fell out of contact, which broke my heart. I was sadly too proud to contact her, worrying that I'd ruined it for good... and yet, a matter of minutes into speaking to each other again the following year and we were closer than ever. I got a job working six days a week at the seafront aquarium and it helped, somewhat. I thought less about my broken body and more about how exhausted I was from such long hours. I was also quite focused on the murderer living next door. 

(http://andotherupliftingtales.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/beagleman-stop-building-my-coffin-at.html)

The two years that followed have included moving five times, bringing a beautiful baby girl into the world, separating from her daddy and finally getting myself back into education so that I can build a happy life for us together. We are happy in Scotland. Life is good. I'm still suffering with this, but now surrounded by people I love and who love me in turn. My family, although they don't understand how I feel, or why I'm as neurotic as I am,  give me time and a willingness to try and understand that most people don't care to do. My wife is my rock. She tells me what's what and keeps me grounded, but also completely understands me in a way that very few people do. I'm also incredibly lucky in that I have found somebody to call my own, who seemingly has the patience of 10 men with regards to my neuroses. Not only is he patient, but he is one of the kindest and most thoughtful people I've ever had the pleasure to know. His healthy dose of geeky-weirdo (*his* words, not mine!) is also much loved and much appreciated. 

At the moment it's my leg. My leg and a suspicious node in my groin on that side. According to Dr. Google, I either have Lymphoma, or I should have dropped dead of a blood clot travelling up to my lungs months ago. While I cope better with the feeling of impending doom nowadays, my brain still doesn't work the same way that others do. Last night my right ("good") leg had an irritating cramp, and this morning it is no better. My brain has decided that I have Peripheral Artery Disease and that I'm not far off a stroke. For most people, this would be a "ow, my leg... what's for dinner?" moment. For me it's a game changer. It can ruin hours, days, weeks or even months of my life when something like this pops up. The fact that my leg has felt a little better the last few days is enough to tell me that I'm not dying, and I'm recovering slowly, little by little, with help from a few very important people. At the moment I try to keep myself grounded partly for my daughter, and partly because Grampyabadoo would be shouting at me from the heavens if he knew how badly losing him affected me. He would be throwing cheese sandwiches at me from the clouds and shouting and reminding me that you have to "eat a lot of dirt before you die." - that everyone has to go through a certain amount of hardship in their lives and that this is part of mine. I see him in my dreams at least once a month, even now. Whether he is just a part of the background, or teaching M her times-tables on a warm Summer Sunday as he did with me... he is always there, and he always will be.

As the years go by I have my moments where I wonder if I will ever feel normal, but for the most part, I am blessed. And Grampy, if you can read this, I still don't know off by heart what 12 x 12 is. Sorry.

"The only way out, is through." - Robert Frost.

"You made some sort of hilarious 'mong' noise."

It was a matter of days until my daughter's first birthday party. Plans were in full swing for me to bake and decorate her a ladybird cake, along with baking up a storms-worth of sausage rolls, mini quiches, cupcakes... the works. My brother and M's grampy on her dad's side had arrived a few days early to help out, and to celebrate his arrival, we decided to get Chinese food. Gramps and I took a wander down to order it while M was prepped for bed, and stopped in at our local for a drink while we waited to pick it up. 

Once we had gone back and smashed through the food like a quartet of Hungry, Hungry Hippos, I went out into the back garden for some air and to let my food go down. M's dad followed me out five or so minutes later and noted that I looked a little bit peaky. I felt dreadful, truth be told, but put it down to eating too quickly and attempted to wait for it to pass. 

It didn't. In fact it got significantly worse in the space of a few minutes and all of a sudden, my brain was trying to decide whether to make me keel over, crap my pants, or vomit all over my nice jumper. I felt the blood completely drain from my face and, without wanting to risk throwing up all over my then-other-half, I decided that I should probably go inside. Leading up to our flat from the garden was a fairly steep flight of iron-cast stairs that, looking back, I'm extremely glad I didn't start to climb before the next part happened.

On my way towards said terror-stairs, I felt like my brain had broken and ended up completely blacking out, face planting into the fence (I ended up with a rather attractive chin graze as a prize for that one,) and landing with all of my weight on my left shoulder. I came to after what I was told was about 10 seconds, missing a shoe with an enormous hole in my jeans and blood on my chin... not to mention the fact that it felt like my shoulder had exploded and I was squealing like a stuck pig. Ignoring that anybody else was around, I tried to get myself up, falling face first back onto the floor when I realised that my left arm was no longer in the land of the living. M's dad helped me up and my brother stood on the stairs of death looking like he was going to pass out himself. He sat me down on one of our garden chairs and was apparently trying to talk to me, but I had gone temporarily deaf but for a loud, shrill ringing that seemed to be rattling around in my skull. I also couldn't see properly out of my left eye. It wasn't my most attractive moment.

After a bit of a rest I slowly made my way upstairs. This was the moment that M's dad decided to point out that, as I was coming to and due to the intense pain I was in, I "made some sort of hilarious mong noise." He found it a lot funnier than I did. I had to hold my left arm in place because of the sheer agony of it, and cried for a good while before rinsing the floor grot off my face and knee and climbing into bed. I've never had such a poor nights sleep in my entire life. 

Looking back on it, I probably should have gone to the hospital as soon as it happened, but instead I waited until the next day. I went to the ER with my brother and sat around wincing at every little move I made, until I was called in for a check over and an X-Ray. 

Expecting them to tell me that I had sprained it or pulled something, I was shocked to hear that not only was it dislocated, but it was severely fractured, too. So fractured, in fact, that a huge chunk of bone was about 2mm away from coming off entirely. Excellent. This meant that they couldn't fix the break because of the dislocation, but because of the break, they couldn't relocate it in case it totally dislodged the enormous piece of bone that was clinging on for dear life. This was obviously music to my ears... not.

I was strapped up in an amazingly unattractive sling and sent on my way, asked to return in six weeks time.

M's party preparation was an all-round nightmare, but thankfully some awesome family members and friends of ours pulled through big time and brought the food that I was too crippled to make... one of which being an extremely talented chef who well and truly saved the day. 

Dosed up on pain killers and dressed like an elderly woman (since I was too broken to wear what I had planned to) I raised a glass to my daughter that day... with my right arm.

"Pete, get up, mate. We've got beakball practice in half an hour! ...Pete??"

Those of you who follow me on Facebook may have seen me tagged by close family and friends in photos and stories about dead birds and animals... the most recent being the "don't throw your gum on the floor or birds will eat it and die" campaign that circulated a few months back. 

Now, before you go thinking I'm some sort of Patrick Hockstetter wannabe, murdering animals and keeping them in a junkyard fridge, I figured I should probably explain why I'm tagged in these God-awful posts and why everybody seems to find it so hilarious... which it is, but wasn't at the time.

I worked very close to the local flower gardens in Dorset, and would occasionally head down there to eat my lunch, usually under a tree on a hidden ants nest because I'm lucky like that. One afternoon I decided to take my sausage and egg baguette down to said gardens and eat it there instead of on the beach, where I would undoubtedly get a mouthful of sand every three bites. Not long after I sat down, a group of three pigeons arrived. For the purposes of this tale we'll call them Dave, Rick and Pete. I ignored them for a while, and managed to polish off most of my baguette, before feeling guilty and deciding to share it with them out of the goodness of my own heart. 

I threw a chunk of my baguette to Dave, who sort of pecked bits off it and ate it in stages. The next to receive my bread bounty was Rick, a scrawny thing with a missing toe and what appeared to be pigeon Tourette's. He held the chunk of bread down with his foot and tore it into several pieces before eating each bit separately, with occasional breaks to twitch and stare menacingly at me. Talk about ungrateful.

Pete was stood gormlessly eyeballing me, waiting his turn. I threw him a piece of baguette exactly the same size as I had given to Dave and Rick, assuming that he was smart enough to follow their lead and peck the crap out of it. That wasn't what he did. Instead, he decided to try and swallow the entire chunk in ONE GO.

I freaked out a little as he struggled to breathe, flapping his wings like he was trying to take off. My brain repeated the phrase "please cough it up, please cough it up, please cough it up," as I watched him get weaker and weaker, wheezing like an elderly chain smoker. Finally, a minute or so later, there he was... dead as a dodo. 

I HAD KILLED A POOR DEFENCELESS ANIMAL. 

I WAS A BIRD MURDERER.

A BIRDERER.

I might add, I did not take this photograph. I'm not *that* sick.

I stayed for a few more minutes before heading back into work to spend the rest of the day riddled with overwhelming guilt and sadness. "Is this what Ted Bundy felt like whenever he killed somebody?? WHY WOULD HE EVER DO IT A SECOND TIME?! THIS IS AWFUL!!"

And so, poor old Pete the pigeon, through his own stupidity and my act of "kindness" was lost to the earth that day, and bound to forever haunt me via the taunts of my friends and family over Facebook. 

Rest in peace, Pete the pigeon.

"Beagleman, stop building my coffin at 3am, I'm trying to watch the Big Brother live feed."

And here we have a delightful tale about how I shouldn't be alive right now. 

I'd like to add at this point that certain details of this story, when I first relayed it to my mother a while back, were left out so as not to freak her out... I'll add those in this time. Sorry, mum.

Just over three years ago, I moved into a grotty little bedsit in Dorset. I loved my grotty little bedsit. It was everything a person could want in a grotty little bedsit and more. I had a chair, a four hundred year old television, a bay window (oooo-OOOH!) and MY OWN KITCHEN. Yes, you heard right. Not only that, but I had a bed that was mounted a grand six feet off the floor that required me to access it with a ladder. Somehow I never fell to my death barrel rolling in the middle of the night, and for that, I'm thankful.

The building itself was split over three floors, with roughly four flats per floor. Each floor had a shared toilet room, and a shared shower (I know.) On my floor lived a fairly young bricklayer type called Rob who had his daughter to stay every few weeks. She always looked like she wanted to cry when she stepped into our building as it had the faint odour of cat piss and whiskey. Next to him was Graham, a forty-something single guy who stank of weed and always "popped over" to ask if he could borrow my TV antenna. I always said no. 

I was lucky enough to be in the flat next to someone who I will from this moment on refer to as "Beagleman." 

The reason for this affectionate nickname is as follows... In the entire six months that I lived in that flat, I only saw him three times - usually when I was coming home from/leaving for work and he was going into the bathroom to do a poo. Not once in these three meetings did I see his face. Not because he had his back to me, but because he was wearing A F*CKING LATEX BEAGLE MASK. For reference purposes, it looked something like this:

Yes, I know.

Once I decided that saying "Hello" was probably polite given that he was my (mentally dysfunctional) next door neighbour. He just sort of stood there looking at me blankly and then gave me a muffled "Hi." and if that isn't terrifying enough, he then continued to stare at me until I got back into my flat and put the chain across faster than I thought was possible.

Back when I was still a dirty smoker, I would stand outside the front door of the building and have a cigarette under the security light so that my bachelorette pad didn't smell like an ashtray. The front door was at the side of the house, as part of a spooky alleyway that led to another house with it's own bizarre little miniature car-park further down. 

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good security light, and was more for getting-your-key-in-the-door-at-night purposes than for protecting me from nutters. It would stay on for about twenty seconds and then go off, requiring me to flail my arms around frantically until it came back on. Not only that, but it only seemed to light the area directly below it, meaning that anything further than two feet away was some sort of black abyss. One evening I stood there, freezing my bananas off, and every time the security light went off I would hear slow footsteps coming towards me down the gravel pathway. Being as how I could only see two feet in front of me when the light came back on, I tried to repress my absolute terror and ignore it. The footsteps stopped. Twenty seconds later the light went out and the same thing happened again... and then again. After suffering from a rabbit in the headlights moment, I stepped back inside and locked the door behind me. I never smoked outside again.

For the weeks that followed, it seemed that Beagleman was using powertools at all hours to construct what I can only assume was my coffin. Not only that, but he seemed to take a liking to randomly knocking on the wall between us, or worse still... on my front door. I would hear a quiet knock knock knocking for about five minutes, before he would give up and leave. I knew it was him because I could hear him walk away and go back into his flat. There were also numerous times that I could hear somebody tampering with my lock.

Creepy enough already right? WRONG.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I walked into work, hung up my coat and washed my hands ready for a normal working day. My supervisor came up to me and said "Oh, I thought you weren't coming in today!" Confused, I asked her why. "Well, your dad called us this morning to tell us you were ill and weren't going to be in for a few days so I assumed you weren't coming today."

I'll tell you why this is bullsh*t. Firstly, I wasn't living with my dad. Secondly, I wasn't ill, and thirdly, my dad didn't even live in the same country as me at the time.

Still totally confused I asked if she was sure the call was meant for me. She stated that it definitely was because [I was] the only Laura to work [there] for years and he called the kitchen directly rather than going through head office, so he knew the transfer number. I'm fairly sure a little bit of wee dribbled out at this point and I felt like somebody had just walked over my grave. Clearly Beagleman had some sort of plans for me that didn't quite work out the way he thought they would. I've no idea how he knew my name, and I can only assume that he knew where I worked based on my uniform and possibly overhearing me talking to people on the phone through the wall with some sort of ear-horn contraption.

Very shortly after that I moved to London, and not long after *that,* a friend of mine still living in Bournemouth called to see if I was okay as my building had been bulldozed. I didn't ever receive a letter stating that it was to be destroyed.

So, since then, as much as I love dogs... I do shiver a bit if I ever see a Beagle coming towards me.

And people wonder why I've got Anxiety Disorder.

"Hi, nice to meet y-... is that an Ed Hardy t-shirt?"

At some point in the future, I'm going to need to meet somebody of the male persuasion so that I don't start amassing an impressive 'personal cobweb' collection. Unfortunately, this means that I will have to go on a dreaded FIRST DATE. I have decided to prepare myself with a list of 20 bulletproof tips to success.

#1: If you decide to go in for a handshake upon first meeting, spit in your hand first. Bros for life.

#2: Open a packet of Salt & Vinegar crisps and hold them near your face to activate your salivary glands. Your date will undoubtedly be aroused by your excess of spit.

#3: Tell the most racist joke you can think of.

#4: If things aren't going well, spit directly into their eye. They'll be forced to spend the night winking at you. 

#5: Explaining your bowel movements from the last seven days in great detail is guaranteed to get their motor running. They'll have no choice but to mentally picture your butthole. 

#6: If your date has something in their teeth, don't tell them. Leave it for them to find during their next bathroom trip. On their return, if they ask you how long it had been there, tell them "It looked like it had been there since yesterday. When did you last have broccoli?"

#7: Complement your date on the shadow their nose casts over their upper lip.

#8: Order a whole fish. Use the head as a hand puppet to quote Star Wars. Dudes fucking love Star Wars.

#9: Pay your date a backhanded compliment to keep him on his toes. "You've got surprisingly good facial hair for a ginger."

#10: Mention everyone you have ever known who is now dead.

#11: Eat vast quantities of garlic before meeting. Breathe on them in a French accent to make yourself seem more exotic.

#12: Having a bad hair day? Wear a balaclava. Nothing says 'marriage material' like a balaclava.

#13: There is no #13. You're gonna need all the good luck you can get.

#14: Talk about your ex boyfriend a LOT and mention frequently how much you hate men because of him.

#15: Frequently ask him: "Do you want some gum? I'm not planning on kissing you, it's just that your breath smells like Rice Krispies Multigrain Shapes and it's putting me off my Chateaubriand."

#16: Get as drunk as is possible without needing to get an ambulance involved.

#17: Leave your phone on the table in front of you and frequently interrupt him to tweet about how great his bulge looks.

#18: Cry a lot for no reason.

#19: If you manage to miraculously get a kiss at the end of the date, include as many of your teeth in the process as you can.

#20: Don't ever text or call him again. 

"Mum, I'm going to be a vet like Rolf Harris."

When I was younger, I wanted to be a vet. 

I would do chores for my parents in exchange for staying up 'late' to watch Animal Hospital with Rolf Harris. Not physically with him. He was too busy watching other people save animals. He was with me in spirit, though. 

My mum and I would sit together, cooing over the adorable puppies and laughing at the wildlife rescue squad tripping over a LOT as they stumbled after escaped swans. Donning my invisible cape of animal welfare duty, I vowed that I, too, would be a vet someday. I collected countless magazines and books about animals and randomly gave our dogs "teeth checks" when nobody was watching. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was hoping that, one day, I would accidentally save their lives by discovering something of note hidden in their mouths. 

I decided that I was going to be the best vet there ever was. In my head, I was already wearing the disgustingly pastel vet scrubs and rambling on about "poop worms" to an unassuming dog owner. I even went so far as to "protect" our family pets by giving them "important vaccinations." When I say important vaccinations, I mean I clicked a mechanical pencil to its full capacity, and then held the clicker down and pretended it was disappearing beneath the skin of our Labrador/Collie cross, Murphy. "AND NOW YOU ARE SAFE FROM PARVO!" I would exclaim.

This all changed when I was 10. I watched an episode of Animal Hospital in which a Jack Russell gave birth to a litter of pups. Not one survived. At the end of the episode, I excused myself to my attic room (it was a lot cooler than it sounds,) and cried like a little baby. I decided, at that point in time, that I was unfit to take care of animals. I figured that if one ever died in my care that I would become some sort of desperately depressed recluse and never venture out into the world again, in case I stepped on a snail and had to end it all because of the guilt.*

Since then I have been a potential musician, artist, archaeologist, palaeontologist, web designer, textiles artist, translator, travelling hobo, caterer, baker, sculptor, astronomer, writer, comedienne, psychotherapist, masseuse, beauty therapist and a doll maker.

None of these things have ever come close to the desire I felt to love and care for animals, apart from my current profession... a mother.

moth·er  

/ˈməT͟Hər/

Noun A woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth.

Verb Bring up (a child) with care and affection: "the art of mothering".

Synonyms mama - mamma - parent - mom - ma - mum - mummy If anything is ever going to come close to being a vet without actually being one, it's being a mum. Not only do I get to worry myself sick about a small, helpless creature all day... but I also get to clean up a hell of a lot of poop.

*No snails were killed in the writing of this blog post.