Complicated.
I hate that word.
What does it even mean?!
It's a horrible excuse people use when they can't make up their mind.
'Oh my relationship is complicated'
'I can't do this or that or whatever else' 'why not?' 'It's complicated'
However complicated is what my life is right now. There's no other word for it (and trust me I've tried to find another word!).
I'm writing this blog as a bit of a peek into our REAL life. You know, not just the fun and games stuff, what happens in our real life. And hopefully you will understand our life just that little bit more.
My husbands job is a residential job in the Pilbara. We chose to move here, we wanted this. However what we were promised, what we quite literally signed on the dotted line for is very different to what's happening. I obviously can't go into all the little details, but it's safe to say that Phil is busier than we ever imagined, his co workers make Days Of Our Lives seem like a childish cartoon, and he's away a lot more frequently than we expected him to be. His 'roster' is non existent and as such our life is very unpredictable.
For reasons that I won't go into changing jobs at the moment is very hard, bordering on almost impossible unless we move back to the city.
As neither of us want to pick up our life and move to a place we don't like and change the kids schools etc we are staying here.
But while we are here things are unpredictable and 'complicated.'
And when things get hard in our family our little Kaitlyn spins out of control and her anxiety and such start taking over.
We can try all we like to hide what's really happening, hide our emotions, carry on as we always do but Kaitlyn is very intuitive when it comes to emotions and she just knows...
One of the first things to go when Kaitlyn is feeling stressed or upset or her anxiety is getting out of control is sleep. Today Kaitlyn awoke with dark black bags under her eyes after a late night tossing and turning and an early morning playing around with Bradley in their room. Even when she finally does crash out I don't think she's getting a decent deep sleep.
The next thing to go is food. When everything around her isn't working out my little Kaitlyn stops eating.
Sometimes she completely stops eating and will literally have nothing but water for 3 days straight.
It's not that bad right now. At the moment it's chucking her recess in the bin at school, not eating the homemade things I have baked, refusing or 'feeling full' after a small amount of dinner.
As you can imagine this is something that's very worrying to us.
Believe me when I say we have sought out help for this problem from all manner of professionals, with not much success.
We talk to her, we try to tell her the truth as much as we can, without telling her too much. We try to keep the adult conversations for after bed time. We try to keep her busy, to take her mind off things but not much makes a difference.
It's been almost 2 weeks now. Most days Kaitlyn eats a few weetbix for breakfast, maybe a sandwich for lunch and plays around with her food for dinner. For a kid that usually eats more than her dad it's quite worrying.
Add that to the lack of sleep and she's not looking her best.
We are trying our best, but we know that this too will pass. She will make it through and get back to her normal self. Everyone will be fine. This time.
Of course I worry that as she gets older and uses food as control over her life more and more she will end up quite sick.
She's 6 years old and has already learnt to stop eating when life gets 'complicated' and she's been doing this for at least 3 years.
And by learnt I don't mean it's something she's seen at home. In fact not much seems to change my appetite. I like food, food likes me and no matter my emotions or how busy I am I still eat.
I don't know where she's picked this up from-but I wish she didn't.
So why am I suddenly filling everyone in on our personal life?
I'm not after sympathy, in fact I don't want anything. Maybe just a little understanding.
If I don't feel like talking, if I don't post much on Facebook, if I don't go out much in public, if I seem to be unsocial or hibernating, if I seem distracted or not a great conversationalist just know it's because my life is 'complicated'
I'm dealing with a lot at home. I'm trying to protect my daughter, to help her, to get through this. And sometimes that means I'm tired, run down, obviously stressed out and preoccupied. But it doesn't mean I don't care-I may seem distracted in the moment but I can promise I'm taking in everything you say. It may take me a few hours or a few days to get back to messages and phone calls, but I haven't forgotten, I'm simply trying to deal with something.
Not always though, sometimes I just stay home because I want to...
