Feeling Happy Feels Weird

As I sit here, watching The Goldberg’s (yes I’m a fan of the show) I find myself feeling quite happy this evening.

That’s a weird feeling for me, I’ve not felt noticeably happy in a long time, and I find myself wondering why. I’m still shattered from lack of sleep and late nights, I’m in pain and run down from dialysis and I’m full of stinking cold. Not to mention a whole long list of other things that of late have been wearing me down. But again, tonight, I feel quite chill and upbeat.

I like it when I feel like this, and I’m glad I’ve started this blog, for my own benefit to write it down and revisit it later.

I’m taking this time to reflect on why I’m happy, and I hope (or like to think) that I am happy more often than not and it is the point-in-time daily trials that just cloud the feeling and that tonight, some miracle second wind has given me the energy I need to not let those things wear me down quite so much. Again I don’t know. But what I do know is what I’m happy for, a few obvious ones listed below (I won’t put a whole list it would take forever):

• My wife;
• My kids;
• Our Home;
• My Job;
• Despite my poor health that it’s not life limiting

But the strange thing I keep coming back to is just why I don’t understand how everything seems so amusing, my daughter is up next to me, keeping me up, and I don’t care. My wife is moaning at me that she is ill and got a long list of things wrong with her, and I’m finding some sort of funny side in that and laughing. Not in a mean way, but when she’s getting hysterical “I’ve had enough of the girls tonight, seriously like every ten minutes, I can’t deal with it tonight” that’s how I’ve been, and I’m finding it funny seeing, what you could consider my reflection.

I need to understand what is helping me see the world with this emotion right now, so I can hold on to it, and get it back at times when I loose sight of the good in my life and get snappy and tired and run down, and that’s what I’ve been working on in counselling. A long time ago, I was so disconnected from my feelings, when asked how I felt about situations I couldn’t tell you. I’d never give myself time to reflect life was very much a thing I did, without a second thought and once a moment had passed it was gone, “what’s the point in wasting time with feelings” I would say but I was so wrong.

I’m glad I can write things down like this now, and know I am changing, noticing my feelings and taking the time to take care of them and listen to them, it’s certainly made a difference in who I am of late, and I hope I can continue to improve and make progress, but as it is, for tonight, I’m signing off, happy, chilled and most importantly ready for bed!

Feeling Blessed; A Reminder Of Good Family Days.

I’m in quite a good mood this evening, that could all change as I’m waiting to start dialysis, but it’s been quite a good day today with the eldest of my 2 girls. She’s been a right pain the last month or so, fighting with going to bed, not staying in bed, and having such disruptive sleep, up 3 or 4 times throughout the night. Now this is out of character for her, ever since 6 weeks old she’s slept through from 6.30pm until 7.30ish am (yes that’s right, 6 weeks, not to boast)  but as I say of late she’s just really been fighting us.

I’ve put this down to sleep regression which I’ve been told to expect from her current age of 2 and a half, of which can last anything from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, but as she’s been a creature of habit sleeping through, it’s kind of shocked the system of my wife and I. Anyway, this lack of sleep has had a knock on effect to her daily behaviour, where she was once placid and calm, she has now been a screaming wreck, nothing is right and the slightest thing puts her into meltdown, nuclear meltdown!

She started fighting us to the extent she would go into the living room all night and (eventually) fall asleep on the sofa, and as we are only in a 2 bed, the girls share a room, so if she starts creating it wakes the other one up, even more hell breaks loose, so she knows we are at her will!. Anyway, last night, she went to bed without fighting, we tucked her in, gave her a kiss, said goodnight and all was calm, amazing I thought to myself. With that hurdle down, I decided to get an early night, see, my wife and I don’t take the nights in turn, because I went down from full time to only a couple of days a week half a year ago due to starting dialysis, my wife, who didn’t work got a full time job, so I’m the main care giver and the one who doesn’t need to go to work the next day. So fighting sleep deprivation, tiredness from kidney failure, and then 3 late nights a week from dialysis is a lot to cope with, and often this impacts my ability to deal with the girls during the day, especially when the nuclear bomb does go off.

I digress, as I was saying I went to bed. The monitor only went off once in the night, ONCE! I couldn’t believe my luck when I got up and it was morning, I only got up with her at half past 1 and that was only a 5 minute effect before she was happy back in bed, and today, her attitude has been remarkable, just like good old days, days that I had since forgot. I used to think she was a pain and a handful then, but having it back today I long for those days, and it has truly overwhelmed me, she’s been happy colouring at the table, taking great delight in explaining to me who in the family each squiggle is, playing with her baby dolls and just generally being a happy child. I won’t lie, when she was pushing her baby around in it’s pram, talking to it, getting it toys and treating it like we do her little sister really feels me with joy, I became very close to welling up and that’s not like me, it was very emotional, and I’m glad for the experience to see them both growing up and developing, not many fathers get this opportunity.

I know this is a random post, I know I’ve not been clear with my thoughts and I know this may have been a senseless read, but remember, and I have to remind myself of this all the time I know, but with the 90% bad times, where you simply want to drop kick them out of the room (don’t do that though!!) there are the 10% of times where they are sweet and remind us of why we had these children, and to all you dads out there, that are in the position where you work a lot like I did, because you have to to provide, when you get the time with them, enjoy it, get down on the floor and let them jump over you, savour it, it will pass, within the blink of an eye. I think, that fact that I’ve missed out on so much through being in hospital helps reinforce this to me, but just keep it in mind.