I got the Fear

A summer break from writing, and thoughts on HRT's affect on how I see the world...

Card by Nicola

It's been two months since I sat down to write a thing.

Actually, that’s a lie. Let me bring up the notes on my phone to see what I’ve got. Apart from some shopping lists, and a code for the lockers at the pool, and some other observations which are too dull to even mention, I have just TWO sharable pieces of writing, from the whole of the two months.

1. I noticed that olympic divers have verruccas on their feet

2. I learned that Angelica, a beautiful angelic looking pale pink flower, smells of day old piss but in a sort of nice way.

There are a few other lists, and notes. But are they boring? I can’t tell. Did I used to have more interesting observations? I’d like to discuss this. Have I just been preoccupied? Or is there something missing? I think this is where the problem lies.

As it happens, I started HRT in July. Almost exactly two months ago. Since closing the shop things had started to feel - how can I describe it - pointless? And after discussing at length with friends, and my husband, and reading a lot of the internet (obvs) I took my list of woes to my (new) wonderful GP who offered me either hormones or Prozac.

I’ve been on antidepressants before, and not having tried prozac, was rather tempted if I’m honest. So I did some more reading of the internet, and answered my own questions. The anxiety and paranoia I had experienced the year prior, on a two-month bout of Sertraline, seemed to be more common than I thought, and if I was honest, I wasn’t depressed. At the time, I was becoming quite reliant on CBD oil for day to day anxiety, but the side effects were worrying me - mood swings and manic depressive episodes which affected the whole family, not to mention an awareness I was developing a complex around this self-medicating behaviour that didn’t feel honest or ‘medically approved.’

Because I knew a handful of women who swore by HRT, and because I’d read that the mild-to-moderate ADHD tendencies which I had recognised in myself over many years could be managed through HRT, I was faced with two options: pay to further explore this diagnosis, or try the hormones and see what they do. I’d recently self-referred for a private psychologist to offer advice on whether she’d recommend going forward with my neurodivergent diagnosis, and at the end of the phone call she was certain I showed signs of being both autistic and adhd. Did I explore this further? No. (Did I mention I have issues with attention?) I thought, let’s try the hormones first. So at the end of July, I started applying an estrogel to my thighs and a progesterone for 12 days out of my cycle. And here we are.

At the start, what I noticed first was my impulse control. I didn’t feel the need to fill space with words. I didn’t get annoyed with noise in the kitchen, or the kids asking questions out of turn. I could consider what we needed for dinner in the middle of a overstimulating supermarket, without feeling rushed. I could clear out a shelf in the dining room, face a pile of washing on the floor. I could pair socks without losing my shit.

I took the kids into the city of Manchester, for the day. We went to Primark, without having an existential crisis about fast fashion (we buy almost everything second-hand.) We went back to Primark because my daughter remembered something else she wanted to buy. We went to my husband’s office for lunch and sat with a colleague and I didn’t feel like we had to go, or that we were in trouble, or that something was going to go wrong.

Our summer holiday had been booked way back in May, an adventure many parents wouldn’t consider, but as I’ve said I think there are attention deficit issues within my personality whereupon one person might say ‘let’s go to France’ and I hear let’s go via train, and stop at 8 different cities, because one thing isn’t enough.

And so we went. We travelled to the South of France during August, via train, a journey which invited many, many opportunities for Shit to go down.

Train journey from Biarritz to Bordeaux, not mentioned in post, where we DID have a table.

For example, we arrived in Paris after a Eurostar journey which did not mimic our previous experience several years before (almost empty carriage, two young children who almost instantly fell asleep, table seats, you know when everything just falls into place?) This time we boarded the train to find our seats had been reissued - the table I’d requested was no longer ours - sitting in two pairs, the vision I’d had of us spreading out the set of beads I’d brought to make friendship bracelets now replaced by what was about to be two hours avoiding eye contact with - or more so, eclipsing my son’s view of - the teenage couple heavy petting across the aisle. It was a full carriage, the toilet was miles down the train, and my husband went to sleep. But it didn’t feel like everything had gone wrong.

We arrived in Paris, the city of food, (and love?) and, as it happened, the Olympics. The prime reason we booked a sleeper train to Biarritz in the first place was because I have impulsive tendencies - as discussed -and had overlooked the whole Olympic thing - so the train was our cheapest option in terms of accommodation. LOL. Meh, we’ve been to Paris before.

Instead of finding somewhere to eat in the surrounding streets of the Gare du Nord district, where you couldn’t swing a cat without physical connection with something stuffed with jamon, or a demi-biere, we decided to make our way to the Austerlitz district, to be safe, so that we’d be nearer our next station, and could relax knowing we could eat and then skip back to the station in time for our sleeper train departure at 9pm.

To our great disappointment, we found ourselves in what seemed to be Paris’ equivalent of The City - where people work during the day but go the Fuck home afterwards. Cafes upon cafes all sadly with their chairs on tables, floor mopped ready for the next morning. I quickly googled a pizza place and started us marching, the kids backpacks having long since left their backs despite their assurances they’d carry them the entirety of the journey, now resting atop the two suitcases clack clacking across the smooth pavements, which my husband and I heave, sweatily. I’ve sold this walk to them as ‘just 8 minutes’ but have miscalculated my own confidence and can’t figure out at which point I can share with the group we are in fact still 18 minutes away. Time is ticking and it seems I have fucked it as we need to eat and get back to the station, and still, IT WAS OK. We found a restaurant. We ate pizza. We got back to the train in time, even time spare to brush our teeth and get the kids pyjamas on.

And there was another episode, after picking up our rental car, from a tiny French train station. The French do things exactly how they fucking well please, and in this case, the well-known rental company which I’ll not name, insisted that the car would be there on our arrival (it was not) and when it finally arrived, an hour later, started clicking.

I can’t speak for all wives of husbands, but with mine, it’s like his sense of pride has been deeply compromised and exposed upon interacting with a rental company. He’s never been one to research something like rental car insurance, or indemnity, or what a person’s legal rights might or might not be upon let’s say - crossing the border into Spain, or dropping the car at a different location. He’s morally fine with 'winging it,’ which is fine, but then will no doubt complain when he’s guilted into an on the spot excess waiver that will cover damage to something ludicrous like windscreen wiper fluid or seatbelt malfunction. So therefore faced with the jargon of not only a car hire representative but one that speaks very little English, and he is out of his depth having to sign various waivers claiming responsibility for hubcaps and mileage, and is flustered for days after. Ten years into our marriage I’m used to it but this time around, on my hormones, I didn’t get involved.

Panic about directions? Not my problem. Overreacting to the overly sensitive touch screen in the car? Meh. Funny clicking noise on the way home from watching the sunset whilst sharing a chocolate pudding between four using a medicine spoon I serindipitously had in my bumbag? Can you sort it in the morning? I’m enjoying this pudding.

We stayed in so many different places that the kids started leaving notes to ask what the next place would be like.

And the morning after the clicking noise started in the car, amongst baguette crumbs and a broken glass and a nespresso machine that wasn’t working (how hard can it be?!) and sometime between looking at my watch at 9.45 and realising we had to be checked out of our room at 10am, and saying to him just drive the car back to the airport and tell them to give you another one I thought to myself, huh, this is all usually so hard. And it’s not.

And I told the kids, the cleaners might turn up, but get your swimmers on we’re going to the pool. Dad’s going to swap the car. And I shoved everything in the suitcases, and it wasn’t until 10.30 that we left the room and I explained in broken French to the cleaners that we had in fact had a bad morning but it was fine.

And there was instance after instance of this new coping and the kids started saying ‘Mum, it’s the gel!’ and before long everyone became used to the new Mum, which wasn’t really just the new Mum but the new family dynamic, one which was calm. Mum’s gel has taken us on a different path.

But here’s the thing, and I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Without the in-built urge to flip out numerous times each day, have I simultaneously folded up and buried a sense of self? My ability to notice beauty in the mundane. Have I, since coping comes naturally now, forgotten how to describe the pain. Of not coping. And was that the source of beauty which I relied on?

I’d convinced myself of this fact maybe as a way of justifying my neglect of the work. Maybe I have a natural leniance towards finding fault, and ironically even when fault has been eased, to find fault in the lack of fault.

And maybe the benefits outweigh what I’m missing, and maybe I’m not missing a thing - it’s just me being lazy. My mind is clearer, and I find it easier to slow down my thoughts. I can compose a reply to a difficult text, locating the correct words to express more exactly what I mean. I can make a packed lunch like nobody’s business. Heck, this morning I got the kids up and out of the house in 15 minutes after we all slept in. 15 fucking minutes!

I feel less like I might punch someone when the tupperwares in the kitchen drawer prevent the drawer from opening. The kids weren’t arguing with each other over whose turn it is to squeeze the potato ricer, because I have the peace of mind to engage positively with them, and they feel seen.

I have the time to line all the shoes up in the hallway so it’s stopped feeling like a middle class-themed episode of Fort Boyard when anyone tries to leave the house in the morning, and we simply calmly put our coats on, locate the keys which were where they were meant to be, and walk out the front door, just like other families who I have always yearned to be more like.

This is what other families do. They have their shit together.

So have I simply gotten out of the habit of writing? Or am I clinging onto a false belief that my art is intrinsically linked to the chaos and… sadness… in my head?

I went to a poetry festival at the weekend and my God did it remind me how important it is to write stuff down. There I was, thinking I was the first person to ever go on a new medication and think their art was affected. There I was, thinking I was the first person ever to get out of the habit and blame it on something else.

You fucking idiot, I thought, as Donna Ashworth’s books flew off the table quicker than you could say ‘live laugh love’ at the signing.

She’s doing the work. And she’s bloody successful.

Pam Ayres, she’s what? 85? She’s been doing the work for a long time. She’s so funny and it’s because she’s taken the time to notice it and write it down.

And I tell you what, there were a few up on stage that I thought, huh, that’s not for me. But they’re on the stage. And I realised you could be the most boring ass person and as long as you do the work, day in, day out, you’ll have a point of view that some fucker will want to read.

So here’s what I’ve decided. Yeah, there’s that whole thing about sorrow and darkness making the best art. About feeling misunderstood. But I wonder if it just takes a little shift in focus. Speaking of Olympians and all. The verucca observation perhaps was all I needed to remind me that even the best of the best have warts - but it’s in the doing of the work that gets you up on the diving board. The day in, day out, going to the goddamn pool and practicing. No matter.

Here’s to just doing the work. And maybe easy on the italics. Happy to be back.

List of joys hanky