I'm okay... How about you?

In the aftermath of RUOK? Day, I'm only just starting to read all the other submissions to the Blogger Collective hosted by the lovely My_Big_Nutshell, which you can find here.

Why so long? Because it was so huge, and had so much coverage everywhere, I was completely overwhelmed with it all.

Because after giving you my story I have been feeling pretty raw, very exposed.

I needed time to get back to the simple things, to find my joy where it's always been, with my loving little family.

But I haven't been idle. And I haven't stopped asking the question.

I've taken time to appreciate the people around me, to let them know they mean so much to me, and to let them know it's okay to not be okay.

I have someone who does this for me. She didn't know that those times when she asked were like a lifeline, that when she let me say "Stuff is a bit shit right now" it made me feel so much better, and gave me the strength to go and face the shit stuff.

So I bought her flowers, to say thanks. And I know there are times when SHE is not okay, and I will be there to listen too.

This is what friends are for.

I've also spent some time "future proofing" our family. Making sure we will ALL be okay. Not just me, or WonderMan, all of us.

Tiger has been through so much in these short few years of her life. Even though things are settled now we are about to pack up and start our next journey, in a new place, with new people.

I know she is feeling anxious about WonderMan leaving. I understand why, but I don't know how to support her through this. Hell, I hardly know how I feel about it, let alone how I am going to cope.

I know that there are stresses on our family from so many directions. And that when you add them all up we should truly be a bunch of raving lunatics by now.

To help us make the best of our family, and the best of our future, I am booking us in for family counselling. Exactly how this will work I don't know yet, because we live in Hicksville, but I'm committed to doing what needs to be done to help us stay on the right track.

It will be a little while before we begin, but in the meantime we have several people helping to support us through the next few months.

After a meeting at Tiger's school today, she is being put top of the list for a mentoring program next term, which gives kids one on one time with teachers not in their class, and helps them to build relationships outside of their immediate peer group. It also gives a safe environment where kids can share when things might not be okay.

This is everything we have needed for so long. My beautiful girl has been battered by the tide and needs a helping hand. I wanted to be that helper, but I can't do it all, and I can't do it alone. Sometimes I don't know what she needs and that's when I have to ask for help.

I have a lot of things I need help with, so I have made sure I have someone to talk to. Someone outside of my little "world". Someone who can give me the tools to give this family a good future.

WonderMan is working hard to build a future for all of us, and he's not afraid to ask for help anymore. And we've been talking. Properly talking, and listening, and I feel like our relationship is the strongest it has ever been.

So we're going to be okay, we are all working very hard to make sure of that.

But we won't forget to check up with each other, to make sure.

We're going forward, no more circlework for us!

The Post I Was Not Going To Write

I wasn't going to write this. Everytime I thought about it I couldn't even keep my thoughts straight, let alone try to type them coherently.

Everywhere I go I see ads, reminders, posts for RUOK? Day. And I just felt like I wasn't able to say anything worthwhile.

But today I need to let it out.

Today I want to tell you my story.

~~~~~~~

I started my adult life as a brand new mother, with an abusive and violent boyfriend who controlled my every waking moment, and punished me every time my baby cried.

It took a whole year but I escaped, finally, free of his fists, his hateful words, his insistence that I was not good enough, not fit to be a mother, not worth being alive.

He stole my baby from me.

My beautiful beautiful baby. My one reason for living, for fighting, for struggling to find a way out every single day.

He took her away and when I finally contacted him his only words were "How do you feel? Like your heart has been ripped out? GOOD."

I wasn't free. I was trapped in a horror only those who live it can understand.

Every day I woke and my little girl was not there. There was an empty cot, no laughter, no joy.

Every day I cried, then I picked myself up and prepared myself for the battle of lawyers, courts and the excruciating wait. Waiting for them to bring my baby back to me.

When she was finally returned, I found the light that had been gone for so long. This was my reason for living, my reason to be strong, to survive. And survive we did.

We endured two years of court battles, of hatred and lies. I stood firm and led my little girl away from the abuse, the taunts, the words that hurt more than his fists ever could.

I spent four years handing my beautiful girl over to the person who stole her every fortnight. That is when he wasn't in jail, or we couldn't find him.

We have spent two years waiting for him to call. Wanting the waiting to be over. Two years of holding my baby while she screams "My daddy's a BASTARD!" and wishing I could make it stop hurting her.

Wishing she had never been hurt.

By anyone.

Because someone hurt my little girl.

Someone thought my two year old child deserved to die. And nearly made it happen.

Someone hit my baby, and left it for me to discover. Someone I didn't love, I didn't really know, and who had pushed their way into my home, then decided my baby was annoying them.

In two minutes, that person changed our lives forever. I will never forget the moment my happy, bouncy toddler passed out in the bath.

I will never forget the minutes and hours of ambulance and plane trips, the horror of watching my child barely alive in front of me.

I will never forget the surgeon in the ambulance poised over my baby with the tiny paddles in his hands, as if she could go at any moment.

I will never forget the day she stirred again.

I will never forget those faint words "Mummy, Chris'm tree..."

We took her home the day before Christmas. This is where I do forget. I can't remember that day. Or most of the days after. Only that she was alive, and that is all I was living for.

Years on and my miracle girl is nine. She's intelligent, happy, and apart from still thinking her daddy is a bastard, she's fine.

Every time I am angry at her, when I am crying with frustration because she's late for school again, I get a guilty kick and I start to cry because at least she is here, at least I AM being frustrated by her snail like slowness. At least she can still kiss me goodbye as she leaves in the morning.

She so very nearly wasn't.

WonderMan has been a light in our lives. A man who truly loves us as we are, who has never really wavered in his commitment to take us on as a ready made family, and all that it means.

A man who doesn't care what is past, but wants to build a future. Who helps me up when the weight of my baggage crushes me.

I never thought such love could exist, never dreamed it could be mine.

But to have that love, we have had to fight, day after day, year after year.

We have been hit from every side. From the people we work with, our families, our friends....

It's been relentless, when all we want to do is live our lives.

It ended with me divorcing my in laws, which was a very hard decision to make, and has caused a lot of pain for WonderMan and I. But it's easier than the pain I endured from them every day. I can live with them hating me for this, but not with their hatred for no reason.

I had to give up my career, and my life, such as it was after all my friends deserted me, to shift close to support WonderMan and his family during the dark days of his father's cancer.

I've had to say goodbye to the one man in that family who loved me as I was. I had to stand tall and strong for WonderMan while he struggled to live through the days of darkness.

I had to hide my fear, my pain, my tears.

And I had to cope with a new place, a new baby, a new life as well.

We have struggled so much since returning to Hicksville.

I had to endure the bullying and persecution of a woman who I thought was my friend, but who was so power hungry and engulfed in her bitterness she tried to take down myself and my family.

I've been banging my head against the brick wall of small town bitching all. my. freaking. life. It's almost been too much on so many occassions.

There have been days I have made dinner from three pieces of bread and a tin of tomatoes. And many many more that I have starved so my family, my children, could eat.

I have been wavering for a very long time now.

My dad suffered a breakdown a year ago. I held his hand in the hospital while he cried and asked me to help him. I made a promise to help him get better. I begged him to stop drinking when his medication was not right and he coped the only way he knew how, at the bottom of a bottle.

During dad's breakdown, mum was the target of an untrue and serious attack where she worked, ending in her own breakdown of sorts. I was the one who took her to the doctor, who bullied him into answering her questions, and helping her, I wouldn't let him dismiss her, to give her tablets and shoo her away.

I opened their business day after day. I fielded the questions, visited the family, fibbed about how they were doing, held it all together.

My support people were now leaning on me, but it wasn't good at our end either.

WonderMan was losing it - the bottle up pain of losing his best friend and his father, the stress of coping with the pressure of being the sole breadwinner for our little embattled family, the constant warzone that our home had become with everything we were holding up - he started to crack.

So I held him up as well. Begged him to seek help, for us, for me.

What I didn't realise, or I wouldn't admit, was that I WAS NOT OKAY. And I was taking a toll on those around me. My loving partner, my beautiful children.

It almost ended our family. I pushed WonderMan into almost walking away. And I didn't even know until I found the phone bill, with all the texts....

My world dropped away and I barely held on.

But we made it through.

Things are getting better.

WonderMan starts a new job in four weeks. His dream job, something he has been denying himself to provide for us. He's like a kid in a candy store right now.

Money's not so tight, even after the $1000 operation to fix our beloved dog's hip. An amount that would have tipped the scales to homelessness a year ago.

I'm working, part time. I'm enjoying what I do. I feel healthy, I look better, our family is happy and lughing again.

But WonderMan has to go away for a little while for this new job, and I can feel my facade cracking.

But this time I won't hold it in, I won't risk losing the people I love because I am not winning the war against how I feel inside.

This time I am going to seek help before the storm.

And I WILL be okay.

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

Linking in with My Big Nutshell and so many others to spread the RUOK Day message