On Parenting Teens

It's nearly midday, and you have to wake your teenager up. You are irritated, because there are promises they've made and broken and you are going to have to start their day off by telling them. Also, you are a teeny bit jealous. You want to sleep the day away, too. Well, a very small part of you does. Your parents never would have stood for this.

You open their bedroom door and stumble over piles of clothes, books, toiletries, cups and towels. You resist the urge to yank open the curtains and open the window to release the hormonal fug, because that's what your parent would have done. You step carefully over the detritus, not knowing what's precious and what's not. You reach the tangled bed.

And there – there with crazy limbs in twisted sheets, mussed up hair and soft, sleep-puffed lips – there is your baby.

That face curled and pressed into you right after birth, nudging you for love and sustenance.

That mouth smiled at you for the first time one crazy morning long ago, and your heart beat faster.

That nose bled out of the blue one day and the scarlet trickle shocked you for a second.

Those lips told their first joke one quiet afternoon, and it was so terrible you laughed.

That chin was grazed more times than you can count, falling off walls and trees and things with wheels.

Those eyelids closed on a secret shared, a bedtime story, a favourite song, a game of hide and seek.

You've kissed those cheeks a hundred times. A thousand. A million.

That's your baby lying there, in essence. Your own lips smile and sigh, but you wake the sleeper anyway, to begin the push and pull of parenting a teenager that you think might be the death of you before you're through.

I sometimes think that teenagers are exactly like toddlers, only bigger, and a helluva lot more knowledgeable. More knowledgeable than me, that's for sure.

They have the same exuberance as toddlers. They experience emotions in extremes, rocket-like excitement and searingly painful frustration. Their emotions overwhelm them and spill out at inappropriate times, frightening teachers and conservative party voters. Those supermarket tantrums have become street brawls and classroom riots.

Their bodies are learning new things, like toddlers' are. They learn how to dance and fight and have sex, a step up on how to walk, run, jump and push. They learn how to push, too though – just push in a slightly different way.

They have a desperate need to push you away. It's the equivalent of the toddler's 'No!' - the 'I can do this by myself, and even if I can't, I'm going to try and try until I can.' You remember? It's the drive that children have to learn to walk, get dressed, feed themselves, only grown up. It's an 'I can do this life thing on my own' urge, 'and even if I can't, I'm going to try and try until I can.' They push you away because they have to, not because they want to.

It's not a rejection. It's growing up.

And because it is nature that creates the push, it's nature that creates the pull, as well. We apparently live in a universe governed by rules, one of which is that where there is a push, there must be a pull.

You feel the pull on your heartstrings, don't you? Every time your teenager pushes you away to take a risk, learn something new, experience a new emotional extreme, your heart is pulled back towards them, snapping on the elastic of the familial dynamic.

That shit hurts.

You can physically restrain your toddler from running out into oncoming traffic, but the best you can do for your teenager is teach them about the perils of alcohol poisoning and buy them a pack of condoms.

It doesn't matter how much pain you are in as you watch them risk their hearts and souls in the maelstrom of society, you don't have a choice – you have to sit back and let them do it. Even if it nearly kills you. Or them.

Just because they push you away, though, doesn't mean they don't need you. All the time.

All the time.

They need to know you love them. That they are loveable. That when inexplicable words are pouring out of their mouths in torrents, you love them. That when their bodies crave things they don't understand and can barely control, you love them. That when they run out into the street in the face of oncoming traffic knowing it is an extraordinarily stupid thing to be doing, you love them.

They need to know that when you are at your wits end and you want them to go and live with a different parent for a while, it is because you feel as though you are failing them, not the other way around.

They need to know that when you say no (and sometimes you must say no), it's because you want them alive and safe and well, not because you want them to experience social death by embarrassment.

When you are hesitant about how they look, it's because you are wondering how other people will perceive the beautiful child in front of you, not because you judge them and find them wanting.

When they mess up an opportunity that you were desperate for them to take, your disappointment is for them, not in them.

When you punish them for not fulfilling a promise or an obligation, it's because you want them to learn from their mistakes, not because you don't believe in them.

You always believe in them.

All the time.

How could you not? That's your baby over there, learning to walk and talk and have a good time. Finding out what hurts, what burns and what feels really, really good. Discovering consequences and the cost of living dangerously.

While they are doing it, because they are doing it and as a result of them doing it, they must know that they are loveable – and loved.

All. The. Time.

Seventeen pebbles

Dear friends,

I came to the recent conclusion that if I am going to attempt to write poetry, I may as well publish it. Lacking any other forum, you valiant blog readers are the first to have your tolerance imposed upon. This is what it is like, living in my head. Don't worry, I don't expect anyone to actually understand! But if you do, or you have a theory, I'd love to hear your response.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seventeen pebbles

They are aligned in military order
Obscuring the chaos of small experience
Atoms colliding, pressure binding
Soft grains linking short time together
Boiled and cooled in seasoned tides
Their experience common, yet
Each fissure, each yearning pull
Uniquely patterned to the discerning eye.

Seventeen pebbles span the way
From one perspective, virginal, grey
Smooth, solid weight, equal in demeanour
Holding space and time in balance.
The stones know all truth and
They know all lies
And experience has yet to teach
One knowledge from the other.

Another path beckons
And when seventeen become one more
The route will change
The sun-baked streaks of expectation
Foreshadowing dreams dissolving
Reforming, renegotiating what you knew
To be real and honest validity
The best and the worst of you, stirring sand.

How many pebbles are permitted
Before the sifting of salt and iron
Reveals the crux of matter?
Learning to weigh truth and desire
Lies and stories, myth and mire;
Stumbling upon gardens, fruit-filled,
Tempting you to beat your own tail
Pick your truth, choose your lies to soothe.

Take care, seventeen; life comes
To the lucky and the unfortunate
And it holds no grudge
Against those who take the easy ride.
Right now, you know all truth
And you know all lies,
Though experience has yet to teach you
One knowledge from the other.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was seventeen, I believed that I was an adult.

From the perspective of forty-five, I know with absolute certainty that I was a child.

The cliché that teenagers know everything allows us to joke about them, and belittle those feelings that we all remember well. But I got to thinking about it, and wondered.

When you listen to young people, and when you see what they create, you begin to question whether in fact they do know everything. Their words can demonstrate a clarity of perception that stops you in your tracks. Their writing, composing, art, performance – any mode of creativity, unweighed by experience, taps into truth and freedom of expression in a way that adult art does not.

Perhaps everything it is important to know about life is already known to you by the time you have lived seventeen years. What comes with experience isn't so much more knowledge, as the ability to distinguish truth.

It's the difference between theoretical life and applied life.

The extremes of childhood, recently lived, allow you to access all the theory you will ever need. By the time you reach seventeen, your story is already written.

But the highs and lows of adulthood require you to apply your theory, and that is much harder to do.

At first, when things happen to you and you are responsible for your own reactions, life can leave you confused and bewildered. You may anticipate your story, but the reality of what it feels like to actually experience it can be shocking.

Eventually, you reach a point when the pattern of your life-story has repeated so many times, applying your theoretical knowledge becomes a simple matter of recognition.

Ah, so deep, so deep – you just want to know how to feed your kids and make them happy, don't you?

Here are two recipes for soup, both soothing and nourishing for teenagers writing exams.

Butternut squash and apple:
Soften an onion in olive oil while you chop the squash into small pieces. Pop them in the saucepan with the onion and add ground coriander and nutmeg. Cover the squash with stock, and allow to simmer while you peel, core and chop three tart apples – Braeburn are good. Add these to the stock and simmer until the vegetables are soft. Blend and serve with sour cream or crème fraiche.

Spinach and parmesan:
Soften a couple of shallots in olive oil on a low heat, then bung large handfuls of spinach into the pot. Sprinkle with allspice and mild mixed spice (the kind you use in Christmas cakes). Stir until the spinach is wilted, then cover with hot stock and cream. While this gently simmers, grate in a chunk of parmesan. Don't let it cook too long. Blend and serve.

Now you have nourished your teenager, ask her about the meaning of life. Perhaps she'll tell you, if you can listen.

Why I think GCSEs are tantamount to child abuse.

When I began writing this, we were in Cape Town. The weather was perfect – hot, but not too hot. The sea was glinting below the mountain we were staying on, next to its companion curve of soft, white sand. Youngest Daughter coped well with the long, uncomfortable flight, despite our trepidation. My Man was working any chance he got, but was prepared to be enticed away by his girls without much complaining. I was delighting in the peace and freedom to read and write at my leisure. And Oldest Daughter? She was trying very hard to avoid soul-crushingly boring studying.

I knew what I wanted to write about, but it has taken me a long time since then to work out quite what it is that I wanted to say. Being away from the relatively brutal reality we had been ensconced in, while wonderful, wasn't helping me to understand myself. At all. This afternoon, I think I finally have. It is all about choice. I acknowledged the reason my brain was hiding from this understanding, and it popped into focus without another murmur. So these are my thoughts on choice, GCSE exams and child abuse.

Oldest has just entered her sixteenth year. Her South African cousin, who was born a year and a week before her, just turned seventeen. Due to population pressure in South Africa when she was six, Cousin still has two years left at school before she joins the confusing and choice-ridden world of 'adulthood'. She is spending her time discovering who she is and who she wants to be. Her experience of school is very different to my daughter's.

When she was fourteen, Oldest and her English contemporaries were made to choose subjects to study that would potentially impact on the direction their lives would take for ever after. Subject choice at this age is not unique, but the method of examining them in this country is a singular decision.

National political agendas determined the core of the 'choice' – science, English and maths, as well as physical education and some woolly ideas about citizenship and personal health that were to be hidden around the curriculum.

Local political agendas determined that at my daughter's school, a language was compulsory, and in her particular circumstances, her choice was between German and French. Religious education was another locally-determined non-option, I can only speculate as to why.

Logistical agendas determined the narrow range of acceptable combinations of other subject areas that were available. These ranged from vocational courses to academic selections, courses for those unlikely to achieve any qualifications at all, and courses for those likely to achieve more than most. The 'choice' appeared immense, but the reality was a lot less impressive. Once you had decided on the most common, i.e. academic route, there were three subjects available to choose from; two if you decided to take the misnomered 'separate sciences' course.

The three choices had to be popular enough to ensure that a class would be made available, but not so popular that places were limited by clever timetabling.

Lots of advice was handed out. Printed information, parents' evenings, ten minute interviews with a member of the management team, many of whom were interacting with our children for the very first time, so that was effective. Apologies for the sarcasm.

Subject teachers enthused about how wonderful their subjects would be – although, I suspect they were only really this enthusiastic towards the pupils they expected good grades from, my daughter included. There was subtle competition between the heads of academic departments, and fantastic (and expensive) school trips were touted unashamedly to bewildered students. Our awkward, spotty teenagers were courted like investment bankers, if their teachers thought they might deliver the grades they needed to prove their own worth.

I'm a teacher, and paid by the government. If I worked in a state secondary school teaching GCSE subjects, I would be touting for the good students come options time, believe me.

There are probably as many management positions in your average UK state secondary school as there are in the whole of the Microsoft corporation. Well, perhaps not, but this is the sole mechanism for retaining good teachers in a role in which they are judged to within an inch of their sanity by their paymasters; the State; deranged parents; brutalised children; issue-hungry journalists; power-mad politicians; society at large.

But the responsibility and pay rise each mini-management position brings is equalled and overshadowed by the necessity to justify it, hence raising the judgement stakes.

No wonder heads of department try to 'sell' their subject area to unsuspecting kids.

Once they have their prey safely ensconced for the next two years, these poor teachers are made to devour any creativity and passion for particular ideas and notions the pupils initiate, forcing them instead down the narrow alleys allowed by league tables and exam results.

Does that sound harsh? I don't blame the teachers. I don't believe any of them came into their jobs thinking, 'gosh, I can't wait to bully children into doing only and exactly what is needed to get grade C or above in my subject area, so that I'm not judged to be failing them'.

Adolescence is hard. Those of us who've been through it remember that. And teaching adolescents is exhausting, in a soul-sapping kind of way. They have so many difficulties to contend with in life – hormones, sex, no sex, acceptance, being different, being the same, pushing those they love away while desperately needing to be loved; rapid brain growth and body changes at the root of it all.

And so many of their parents have no clue as to how to deal with them. The social change akin to extreme sports we've experienced over the last century has made it impossible for each generation of parents to keep up with what is required by their children. They experienced bad parenting themselves as teens, so the parenting many of this generation of teenagers have to bear is beyond endurance.

Teachers know this. The best and the worst of them struggle to contain the rage and the pain and the fear they can feel emanating from a fluctuating proportion of their classes of thirty or more students at a time. But what can they do? Only use the tools at their disposal to channel the young minds in their care down a well-trodden route, with the prize of a future beckoning them from the other end.

The tools, between the ages of 14 and 16, are methods of teaching which both take away all choice from their learners, and simultaneously fool them into believing that the very heavy burden of responsibility of all future happiness falls into their own hands.

I'll try to explain this another way.

GCSE courses make students unbearably passive. Teachers herd them like sheep through the coursework and exam study that, highly specified as it is, will achieve the grades they need. These, by the way, are the grades the teachers need, not the students so much.

Students believe they need the grades. It is drummed into them regularly that without the correct qualifications at this level, they will have no future.

Given that they learn little of practical use within this curriculum, and given their extreme youth, this notion is absurd.

Isn't it? Can you really tell me that if you don't achieve an A grade on an English exam at the age of 16, you will never be able to access the skills required to live a long and successful life in our society? Bullshit.

On the other hand, if a significant proportion of the class don't achieve grades A* to C, the teacher will be sidelined; the long line of managers above her will be in danger; and the school will be reported as failing its pupils. Reputations will fall; middle-class families will fight to leave; grades will potentially be lost further; morale will drop. It doesn't bear thinking about. For the school, anyway.

So students are given no choice. Their responses to learning are tightly controlled. Like iron. And to reinforce their compliance, they are continuously told: “The choice is yours – your future is in your hands; learn these responses well, or you won't be able to access further education, and then you won't be able to access higher education, and without that, you will have no job – you will end up stacking shelves in Asda.” A fate worse than death, indeed.

Does this amount to child abuse? I think it does. Have you seen a fourteen-year-old lately? They are so painfully young, it hurts. A fifteen-year-old? What do you believe a fifteen year old should be doing with his or her time? Making friends, making music, making out? Or buckling under the responsibility of making their teachers and their schools and their government look as though they are doing a good job?

Let's give our children back their childhood. I want my daughter to come to me in tears because her best friend called her a bitch for flirting with her boyfriend, not because she is completely overwhelmed by the pressure of coursework that she has to do. Not that the first scenario is ever going to happen, because my daughter and her friends are just lovely, they really are, but you understand the sentiment. I want her to be her age. I want her to be dreaming of an exciting future, not terrified of not having one at all because she chose the wrong subjects when she was fourteen.

My beautiful, talented, amazing daughter – who knows what the future will bring. Let her live, explore, want and dream now. Don't expect her to look back at her young self from the other side of forty, and think 'if only I had learned my Geography better, I wouldn't be in the mess I'm in now, filling up the shelves in ASDA with goods from all over the world.'

It's absurd. It's institutional abuse of a whole generation. It's a violation of youth. And it's making my Oldest -still so very young – miserable.

I invented Rice Pie to cheer her up:
Cook some good rice in a steamer – I used Jasmine. In a casserole dish, sauté an onion and brown some mildly spiced sausages. Add some carrot pennies and sauté for a few minutes before adding some frozen petit-pois. Turn the heat down and add good stock, not enough to cover, about a cup full. A couple of tablespoons – okay, a good slug – of Grand Marnier or other orange flavoured liqueur finishes it off. Now spoon the rice over the top, sealing the food and liquid underneath, and allow the stock to gently steam into the rice for about ten minutes or so. Use a giant spoon to serve. It tastes delish.

Some of you

Something a little different I wrote while on holiday, triggered by some incredibly generous people:

Some of you

Small seeds of information
About you
Fall from your boughs
And drop onto the surface
Of my still pool.
Some skim the cool surface,
Skating over the rippled waterscape
Of my understanding;
Others drop to the depths,
Their hard casings
Saving them from the relentless
Decomposition of my insecurity.
Still others are drawn
To the reeded shore,
Where they take root
Grow, flower, change
The aspect of my outlook,
Beautiful additions to my soul.

My normal blog post is half written and on my mind, I just wasn't happy with the direction it had taken. It will appear soon!

Primal Parenting

We sat in the school room that looked nothing like a school room, and the pain and desperation of the parents in the air was a living, breathing, wounded animal. It was palpable. Our children had suffered, and there had been nothing we could do to stop them suffering. Then, we had been given something good, that worked for them in the way that no other education or social enterprise had, and now they were taking it away from us.

This could be the opening paragraph of a dramatic fiction, but it isn't, it is the opening paragraph of a description of a real life event. Our real lives. We are the painfully real result of a social policy that has arisen because of a dozen or so egos, a few decisions that have gained momentum, and a refusal to go back.

We were well brought-up parents. We listened as politely as we were physically able to, as they rained their philosophy and politics on us like blows. We challenged, reigning our anger and fear and desperation in as far as we could, but it slipped through in every word. We all understood that the people sitting in front of us absorbing our response were only part of a whole. They weren't going to stop the wheel of policy change rumbling over us any more than we were. We just wanted to understand their justification for it.

The truth is, there was no justification. There are no reasons. They can close a centre of excellence that has been of unmeasurable benefit to our children for no better reason than that they don't have it in Fenland; they need to get out of the building; 'we' think children are always better off in school.

Do they really, truly believe that children are always better off in school? Surely that is not a belief that an intelligent, thinking, functioning human being can actually hold?

Schools are brutal. Even the very best – and by what measure we define the very best requires a long debate of its own – brutalise children in some way, in order to have them conform. That's okay. For most children, a brutal training ground for the adult world is more beneficial than not. We might not like it, but we understand it, and so we allow it. Parents are protective of their young, but they are pragmatic, too.

Some children, though, through no fault except of fate and nature, are made to suffer inordinately. It might be through physical illness, like us; mental illness – no less painful; or circumstance. Life can hurt, and it can hurt our young before they are ready to take the pain. The idea of taking children who have suffered beyond others, and forcing them into the storm of a huge, statutory institution - an institution with not only the potential of making them suffer more, but the experience of having already made them suffer more - to their parents, at least, is anathema.

And to have had something good – something soothing and stretching and challenging and gentle, an imperfect gift, but a gift nonetheless – to have that withdrawn, for no good reason – that hurts.

There are good parents and bad parents. Mostly, there are parents who do right and wrong by their children every day. We respond to the circumstances of our bewildering lives as best as we can, and sometimes we get it right. In that painful, anguished meeting, we did do something right.

It is important that our children see us fight for them, even if we don't win. They need the lesson that the smallest of us can effect change; and it is more important to show our love by standing up to the juggernaut of social policy than to actually achieve our ends. If the only change we manage to make is an understanding of why something is wrong, we have done something good.

Even though our children will remain subjected to anxiety beyond their reasonable capacity, shifts in understanding will make a difference. Tiny changes in attitude and motivation, even at this stage, will affect the actions of policy makers and policy activators. Determination to control our lives, though control is an illusion, will motivate us to take our own steps to put alternative measures in place.

As parents, we are in a better place to protect our young than we were before we went in to that room; even though it doesn't feel that way at all.

Following on from this meeting, we met with the Head and management of the local school that is going to take responsibility for educating our daughter back. The Head, with no conscious instinct for survival, felt compelled – driven, almost – to make us listen to his political and philosophical reasons for wanting to provide an education for our daughter.

I have never in my life come so close to physically attacking a relative stranger.

Social policy can, and frequently does, come between good parents and their children. It is the world we have to live in. There are too many of us for it to be any different.

Those who wield social power would do well, though, to remember that the bond between parent and child is primal. You have read my words, you can acknowledge the breadth and depth of my understanding; you know I am no fool.

But if you want to hurt my child - even though you think your reasons for doing so are justified by beautifully constructed and morally sound philosophical and political motivations - you have to get through me first.

And I know that you, for all your standing in society, would do the same for yours.

Extra-sensory Nutrition Perception

Don't get me wrong, I am a science kind of woman.

I mean, I hated science in school, it never made any sense to me at all, apart from biology. Physics was as much of a mystery to me as an Edgar Allan Poe tale. (He's a miserable-looking man, isn't he? I think it is the down-turned 'tache). I couldn't settle for the fact that electrons moved from one pole to another, I wanted to know why they did. Who made them? Did they decide on their own? Did they fulfil a pre-ordained destiny, or was it complete chance that they did so, a random universal coincidence of fortune for the humanity that had managed to tap into it? I fully understand why my teachers didn't like me very much.

But now, I love science. It fascinates and intrigues me. I read about it and watch television programmes about it and talk to my family about it. Admittedly, I still can't help Eldest Daughter with her GCSE physics homework, but I'm no sap, and when I hear the arts graduates on radio four mangle their interpretation of the scientific news it drives me crazy.

One of the particular areas of science that I find most interesting is that of nutrition. There are good reasons for this, of course. You know I love to cook; and at one stage in my potted life, I even catered for a living. And then there is the issue of nutrition and illness, and we have an awful lot of THAT in our lives – it's natural that an intelligent, well-read woman would make it her business to know all she can about the effects that minerals, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and roughage will have on a body suffering from the wide range of immune-system related disorders in our family.

Nutrition is one of the very few areas in which we feel some sort of semblance of control over the evil forces of CFS/ME and psoriatic and/or rheumatoid arthritis. It isn't just us – it is the straw that the medical profession is grasping for all around us currently. And who can blame them? They want to help, they feel as helpless as I do, they are looking for their very own bazookas in the headlights of our need.

I try to reassure them that when it comes to feeding my daughter, I really Know What I Am Doing. But saying it, even with capital letters, doesn't help them to understand the depth of my knowledge. I never will be able to make them understand this, because my knowledge is not actually derived from study, or science, or anything remotely understandable to anyone with a medical degree. I have a secret that I am going to share with you, and you, too, are going to think I am mad, and may even worry for the safety of my family.

{Whispers – I have extra sensory nutritional perception. Sssshh.}

Have I lost you?

There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, whether you are called Horatio or not. This is something I know to be true, and yet, how can I make anyone believe me, ever? What I can do is this: I can sense the nutrients that my daughter's body needs. This sense is exponentially improved the more time I spend with her, and I need to be physically fairly close to her to be able to sense it. But I don't do it through sight or sound or touch; I look somewhere inside of myself to find what it is that she needs, and when I do this, consciously or unconsciously, I am always right.

I say my daughter, but in fact I can do this for both girls and my man, too. Hell, I can even do it for myself, that's fairly easy. But I most often do it for the youngest, because her nutrition is regularly more urgent than Eldest's or my man's. This is because they eat pretty well, and through a week, usually take in more than they need of most elements. I do have to work to ensure Eldest gets the iron and protein that she needs; and my man is terrible at feeding himself. But youngest will frequently need very specific nutrients at odd times of day, and when I am there, I can read and fulfil her need.

Do you believe me? I ask because I am intrigued by how this will come across. There is such an emotional connection between a mother and the feeding of her children. Anyone who has ever breast fed a baby will understand the depths of this. The first time your baby rejects your breast? Iron to the soul. And moving onto weaning, the emotion involved can be overwhelming. I have seen an otherwise gentle woman physically hold her toddler's mouth open and force food into it, in her frustration at his refusal to take in the nutrients she had lovingly prepared for him. Feeding our children can make us mad, I know it. And the way we feed our children can make them mad, too. Anorexia, bulimia and over-eating are enormously prevalent in young people. Using food as a means to self-harm is a child's most accessible weapon against himself and his parents. (Yes, this is not a female issue, boys use this weapon too).

So, I get that people might think that I am a deluded over-bearing mother with food control issues, especially if they are doctors and see people like that all the time. And I get that even if you know me and know that I am not controlling in this way at all (and I have enough self-awareness to try to avoid the other ways in which I tend to be controlling), you might think that I am deluded, even if I have great excuses for my delusions. There is no way that I can explain myself or prove what I know to be true.

I am a scientist who believes in magic. Or am I a magician who understands science? Either way, I am highly unlikely to be the only mother out there with extra sensory nutritional perception. Will my declaration bring others out into the open? I would LOVE to hear from you if you think you can do this too. Read this, share this, leave a comment - you know you want to.

Would you like a recipe? Hmmm... don't have much time this week. How about a quick and easy cocktail? Chill some lychee juice almost to the point of freezing. Pour half a glass full, add a double tot of gin, and top up with soda. A slice of lemon will tart the sweetness up just enough. Enjoy!

If I haven't talked to you in a while, this could be why.

It's not you, it's me.

The people this blog post applies to unfortunately probably won't ever read it, because they have no idea that I occasionally write a blog. But before trying to mend or build bridges, I need to examine the underlying broken structure, and writing seems to give me the opportunity to do this. What a wonderful thing the written word is.

The thing is, it is so much easier to write about things than to talk about them. When you write, you are in control. You can make light of the sad and fun of the ridiculous. You don't have to answer questions, you don't have to respond to anyone, and you don't have to lie. I suck at lying. I can’t even get lies past my lips - not without a great deal of practise, anyway.

Social intercourse is peppered with white lies (and black lies and red lies and pink lies, too). How are you? Fine. How've you been? Great. What have you been doing? Lots. How's the family? Just wonderful. See where I'm going with this? I can't answer any of these questions without pain. Or lying - and I can’t in all conscience spend the time before I speak to you practising lying. What kind of small, furry rodent would that make me?

So, we have a stalemate, missing friends. I can't bring myself to call you, because I can't bring myself to lie when I answer your questions, and although it seems overly dramatic to admit to this, I can't speak the truth without feeling the pain of it. I don't really want to experience any more pain right now, so I won't call you. I’m sorry.

Remember me as the rabbit in the headlights with the bazooka? When I think of calling you, I just can't find that damned bazooka.

Let's say I take my courage in my hands, and I call you. We navigate the minefield of truth on my part, and we begin to explore yours. Actually, we will do this very quickly, because although I am not at all skilled at lying, I am a master of deflection. I will swat at the conversation ball with my silvery verbal squash racquet, and we will very quickly enter the territory of what's been going on in your life.

Either, the stretch of time since we spoke last will have been filled with predominantly happy things, or your life will have brought you more darkness than light. Either one will provoke guilt. If you have been having a really tough time, I will feel the guilt. I will listen to your suffering, and wonder how I could have been so selfishly wrapped up in my own petty tragedies. On the other hand, if you have been having the normal share of moderate weather, with more sunshine than storms, we will both feel the guilt. You will feel guilty for having the pleasant existence you more than deserve; and I will feel guilty for making you contrast your petty tragedies with mine. You will do that, compare them, because you must be a self-aware, thoughtful and moral person, or you wouldn't be categorised in my head as Friend. Feeling guilty is painful, and I don't really want to experience any more pain right now, so I won't call you. The bazooka must be well-hidden down the rabbit hole, and I’m not looking for it right now.

Next, we come to the issue of our past. We have a shared history. We have enjoyed things together, laughed at things, perhaps cried at things together. We have shared stories and given advice or just listened to one another. We might have been drunk together, experienced art together, played games with one another. We may have been important to other members of each other's family. You may have given me far more than I gave in return; or I may have been the giving one, and you the taker. Whatever it was that we shared then, we haven't been sharing for some time now. There is a gap that has been unexplained, and you will have your own theories on what the cause of the gap has been. I will find it impossible to explain the gap, without invoking the pain of difficulty number one and number two, so the gap will probably remain unexplained, causing its own special kind of pain; the pain of the unsaid. I don't really want to experience any more pain right now, so I won't call you. I'm not sure a rabbit is strong enough to hold a bazooka, anyway.

For my part, I don't know why you haven't called me, and I won't speculate. I have frequently felt the need to protect myself from pain over the last few years, cowardly as that is. I often won't answer the phone, because I can't really bear to make myself interact. I stopped sending Christmas cards, because I have always felt the need to share something of myself in them, and really, I don't want to share. There isn't quite enough of me to share because there are people in my life who really, really need me. One of the things I most feel the need to protect myself from is your caring concern. And, yes, you are a caring and concerned person that ordinarily I would value very highly, because if you weren't, you wouldn't be categorised in my head as Friend.

Almost everyone who feels care and concern will have the urge to do something or say something to help 'fix' things. Your inner Bob-the-Builder will leap up and ask me questions about what anyone can do and what has been done, and the answer to these questions will be very, very painful, because we have tried so hard to do everything that can be done, and nothing - nothing - has helped. If there is something to be done, either we have done it, or we have very good and well thought out reasons for not doing it. Believe me. I don't want to experience any more pain right now. Fingers firmly in rabbit ears. La la la. Can’t hear you.

This is all sounding horribly serious, isn't it? I was thinking that friendships are like the ingredients to a recipe. You need a compatible range of them to make a decent meal. You need the fats and the fibre; the sweet and the sour; the salt and the meat. Oh, dear absent Friend, you are part of my recipe, and I do need you. I don't want to think about you not being a part of my life. I will have to find a new way to prepare you or myself, so that there is enough friendship to feed us both. I only wish I was addressing fewer people when I say this, because I have many, many bridges to mend. Perhaps some of you will read this, and begin to understand, and find a way to fix me instead.

I do have a recipe for you though. This pasta dish reminds me of friendships, because you cook most of the ingredients together, and the size that you cut each ingredient to is crucial to the taste. Like friendships.

Roast Sausage and Butternut Pasta

Slice a red onion into semi- or quarter-rings. Cut a butternut into roughly 2 cm cubes. Peel and dice a sweet potato into smaller cubes. Cut some tart apples into quarters, leaving the skin on. Place in a roasting pan with some whole sausages (Linda McCartney’s for vegetarians http://www.lindamccartneyfoods.co.uk/ ; Great Big Sausages from the Good Little Company range for meat eaters http://goodlittlecompany.com/ ). If you have a fan oven, these can be frozen. Drizzle over some olive oil and mix so that everything is covered, shake on a little salt, or it will be too sweet, and some garam masala. You’ll need to stir it again so that the oil-covered food coats the spice. Place in a moderately hot oven (about 190 *C) for as long as it takes to reach a moist, caramelized-ish state, stirring occasionally to ensure flavours combine. In the meantime, cook some pasta on the stove. When the roasting is finished, add the cooked pasta to the pan and stir again. Rich and delish. Enjoy, Friend.

Helpless but not hopeless

It has been so long since I wrote my blog that I can't recall how to post on it any more. But on the eve of Real Life restarting in 2011, I thought it was possibly time to try again.

2010 was like battling through a raging storm. It became harder and harder to move forward, so more and more luggage was set down along the way. Writing felt like a luxury too painful to indulge in, so it was set aside in favour of getting one foot to move in front of the other. I don't mean to overly dramatise the difficulties we have faced, I know there is still a very long way to fall and so much precious to lose before reaching the dark depths life has the potential to take us to. I count my blessings religiously, like a mantra. But, yeah, 2010 was a rough, tough walk.

I am also determined to place no significance on the turning of the year. Nothing has changed, nothing improved, nothing got worse on January first. 2011 could be as bad, much better or infinitely worse. It doesn't matter – one foot in front of the other. This is the way. There is one change. I have had some time to think over the Christmas period (not always a good idea) and I have been able to identify the emotion that has kept me hostage for some time. Helplessness.

There are so many situations that have left me with this feeling that I don't really know why it has taken me so long to put a name to it. I'm only going to describe one, because I know that the key player – youngest daughter – will understand. There are countless more, so although I know you'll read this, dear youngest, you will know this is not only about you.

Christmas is lovely – exciting, pretty as a tree, full of food and sweetness and fun; and if you have CFS/ME, it is utterly energy-sapping and exhausting. So when, a couple of days later, youngest daughter staggered from her bedroom and laid herself in a puddle of tired at my feet, it wasn't a surprise. She didn't have the energy to speak, so communicated in little moans. I knew lifting her would hurt, and I didn't know where she wanted to be or what would immediately help, so I turned to oldest daughter for help. We improvised a system of communication – moan if you want this, don't if you don't; then oldest gently helped her up and in to her arms and carried her to a warm, soft spot while I found the food and drink to give her a quick boost. And all the while this was happening, I felt helpless, but didn't know it. Weird, huh?

Helplessness is a numbing emotion. It is the opposite of control, which is about action and initiative and movement. Helplessness shuts you down and clams you up and saps your reason without your knowledge. It is the rabbit in the headlights situation, only the reason the rabbit doesn't move is because it doesn't know it's paralysed in the glare of oncoming doom. When you feel helpless, all you can do is stand there and take it, and hope to hell you survive. When the car misses, you stumble on as though nothing untoward happened. You don't deal with the emotion,because you aren't really aware of its presence at all.

But, helplessness is not hopelessness. To be without hope is a wholly different thing, a deep, dark thing that if you were to experience in the glare of oncoming headlights, it would have you turn your back and wait for the impact. Helplessness is easier to recover from, once you know it is there.

When I was a young twenty-something, desperately seeking an identity, I asked my man one wrung-out day what made me special. What was I good at, because I felt bad at everything. His answer surprised me so much, I mulled it over for years. He told me that the thing that made me special was how good I was at being able to love. And no, he didn't mean that physically – well only a bit, anyway. He meant that not only did I have a high capacity to love, I was very good at doing it too.

Twenty odd years later (and you can take odd any way you like), I think perhaps he was right. If there is one thing I can do when life holds me hostage in the headlights, it is love. I can't change anything – I can't take away the pain or the frustration or the sadness or the anger or the fear or the despair that the things my family has been going through have engendered, but I can love. I can listen and hold and talk and hug and cook and soothe and smile and laugh. I rarely say the right thing at the right time, but I can try. And to try is to be active, and to be active is to take control, and to take control is the opposite of helplessness.

So this is my new year's resolution. To recognise the feeling of the rabbit in the headlights, and to consciously decide to arm myself with the only weapon I can use. I will be a rabbit, true – but I will be a small furry mammal armed with a bazooka. The bazooka of love. I do hope you enjoy this image.

Winter Love Soup
In a heavy-bottomed casserole or saucepan, sweat an onion gently in a tablespoon of olive oil. Find a selection of vegetables that your family likes and chop them into small pieces to add to the onion and olive oil – as many as you like. Leave any green leafy ones to the end though. Crush some fresh ginger and add it to the mix, then cover with stock to simmer. In the meantime, cook rice and red lentils separately, then add them to the stock with any greens. Add the secret ingredient, which in my case is ginger wine. Simmer altogether for a few minutes, then ladle into bowls. It will be very hot. Add some creamy plain yoghurt, or not, depending on how you feel. Eat with a spoon.

I meant to use this blog to explain myself to the friends and loved ones that I have not spoken to in some time. I guess that will have to wait. If any of you actually read this, though – I am sorry. I am, after all, only a small furry mammal, very recently armed. Give me time.