Christmas concerts have changed.

So, today was my son's Christmas Carol Concert. Now that he's in year 1, and no longer in the semi-partitioned world of Foundation, he gets to participate with the rest of the school. I'm writing this, feeling like I've crossed over the threshold into the mythical world of the "School mum". As though last year and the weeks of this one so far didn't count.

Still, this is the first time I have felt compelled to write about something specifically and only relating to my children on here. So maybe that is a rite of passage of sorts.

You see, I was a little sceptical about the children having only a "carol concert", and no nativity once they were out of Foundation. I'm no practising Christian - I'm thoroughly agnostic with a logical leaning for much of the time, but I guess I can be pretty traditional about some things. And there's something nice, isn't there, about trotting out to see your precious child say nothing at all in the school play while the children of the more prominent PTA members get to be Mary and Joseph. (The highlight of my Nativity experience was being a rag doll in Santa's workshop, captured for milliseconds on gloriously blurry VHS.)

That was how it was done, right? When I was at school, costumes were home-made and nigh unrecognisable. You sang Away in a Manger tonelessly and raggedly, while the teacher who could play the piano trotted out her repertoire on an upright which was only a little out of tune. And there was a good chance the parents could understand at least one word in three of Silent Night.

This year, I sat near the back of a hall at the neighbouring secondary school, watching my son stand with his year group singing a song about Christmas crackers, after which they marched off the stage to let the next year on. There was no piano - instead, a very polished CD was played which the children sang along to, and tried to be as loud as the rather more in-tune children's choir it featured. It was a lot more slick and jazzy, but somehow, I couldn't help feeling as though something had been missed.

The only year group which do a Nativity at my son's school are Foundation. Well, last year the Boy was sick on the day we were to go and see it, so I was unable to see his performance as a "Non-talking Shepherd", and it looks as though that was my only shot. maybe it's just my bitterness at missing his one and only Nativity, but I can't help feeling that sitting children in rows so they can sing along to a bunch of other (no doubt older) children singing better than they can is slightly missing the point.

I don't go to a primary school carol concert looking for polish and quality. I go to see my son, and as much as it might make me a bad person, I don't care about the other five years, all singing in turn. Or even watching 360 children standing in a group singing a song I have heard a rather more flat version of at home for the last fortnight. Especially when I know that I'm not hearing him anyway. I'm listening to a CD, played out on speakers because 360 children means a whole lot of parents and the borrowing of a secondary school's hall to accomodate them.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think I would have preferred what my parents got. An out of tune piano and a rag-tag of children who sing their off-key hearts out, missing or forgetting words and generally sounding like what they are. Children. Our children.

When did it become the done thing to replace their (let's be honest, not very good) singing with the singing of some other people's children?

Problems with being Socially Anxious

I don't do people. I don't have a massive problem with them or anything, although large crowds tend to set shivers down my back and have me watching over my shoulder every now and then as though someone is about to run up behind me and plant some sort of: "I look really stupid, please laugh at me" sign on my back. 

Pictured: My trusty shield, defending me from imaginary "kick me" notes for a good decade or so.

It was once an indispensable part of my wardrobe. 

But largely. I can manage. I can walk next to people without freaking out. I might even make small talk with other parents outside the school gates after I've "known" them for six months or so. Heck. After the Girl had separation anxiety and used to go, screaming, into pre-school every day, I perfected the: "Oh well, it's just a phase," line as I forced a smile onto my face while walking past all the other parents with their not-screaming children, hoping that they weren't judging me, mocking me, or despising me for being responsible for such a noisy child. (And thankfully the Girl has gotten over her own anxiety and is quite happy in the mornings now.)

I will readily admit that as much as I try not to label myself, the terms "shy", "social anxiety" and "people phobia" spring readily to my mind when I think of my personality, along with somewhat more stigmatising terms such as "recluse", and "social pariah".

For the most part, I live my somewhat solitary life more vicariously through the internet. Here, at last, I am free, cut loose from my anxieties because no one can see how my forehead contorts with nerves as I post on forums. No one knows that I sit for five, ten, fifteen minutes with my mouse hovering over "reply" - all they see is TottWriter, a name on a screen, sounding confident, opinionated, bold. Even if the name does post somewhat infrequently.

Parenting puts a bit of a dampener of that shield, however. There's the school run, for starters, And while it's less daunting in reality than lots of forum topics would make it out to be (I've yet to see the parents actually divide into tribal formations, taking out the weaker specimens for sport), it still involves a degree of social interaction which I flounder on at times. Left to my own devices I would walk alone, stand alone, collect my children and flee, feeling pangs of longing for the parents who natter and gossip with ease, but knowing it's not for me.

Then, the Boy went and made friends, and suddenly we have a group of people to walk to and from school with each day. I've taken to calling bedtime "The Gauntlet" due to its somewhat challenging nature, but my true gauntlet runs twice a day, at starting times of 8:20am and 3:00pm. Here is when I am tested - when I smile and make small talk, all the while noticing every pause before someone replies to me, every time people don't hear my remark and talk over me, every time I am three paces behind the main group instead of one or two. Every occasion where the other parents are meeting up outside of school and I am not, when a grudge or conversation is discussed in which I had no part. 

In short, every time I feel that little bit more invisible than the others, when I start to worry that my mask of confidence has slipped and people can see me for what I am - an outsider, desperately clinging to the pack for my children's sake and out of loneliness.

I know I don't belong there, in conversations about nights out, fashion, and men. I'm none of those things. I stay in, I have never been fashionable, and I am currently coming to a full realisation that I am far closer to asexual than allosexual. I don't fit, and I never have. 

The problem with being socially anxious is that, even though I know that no one "fits" a group perfectly, instead of finding the common ground and building friendships. I falter at the first hurdle, and spend years berating myself for that failure, for "getting it wrong", for standing wrong, dressing wrong, staying quiet when I should have talked, or babbling when I should have been quiet. It's that I over-analyse every mistake I make and let it cloud my social interactions in the future, and although I no longer wear a rucksack and a mid-length coat to defend myself from other people, I still feel like I need to don armour every time I walk out of the house.

Farewell, Brown Envelope...

That's that then. On Friday I posted off my last DLA renewal. Here's hoping, eh?

It took me the better part of a week and cost me about six or seven seizures, not counting the one I had on the way back from posting the damn thing. That last one turned a five minute walk into almost two hours, and cost me a few pounds in impulse purchases made when I wasn't fully there. Having a seizure is like being drunk. You're not fully in control of your body, even when you can walk and talk. And that side of things can last for a good hour or so either side.

In either case, Friday was a write off for me. I came home and I was out of it for most of the remainder. Had a nightmare that night as well. I guess I can't prove causality on that one, but it's an interesting coincidence.

I had a fairly large seizure yesterday too, and another this morning. Yesterday's involved falling off my computer chair and landing head first on the floor. I jarred my left knee, and caught my right foot on one of the chair's wheely-feet. Both still hurt this morning, along with various other ouches. And then in this morning's seizure I've jarred my left shoulder.

For such a tiny mark, my foot still hurts

one heck of a lot 

In essence, everything hurts, to a greater or lesser degree.

Is this my life anyway? Well, kinda. But the severity of the seizures and how close together they are (three "big 'uns" in three consecutive days, plus auras on the side) is striking. And that's *after* the form sat on my worktop for three days, complete and envelope'd, just waiting until I had a chance to post it.

It was demeaning, and horrifying, to list in detail all the things I can't do. All the dangers I can pose to myself and to O&M. All the measures I put in place to protect my family seem so frail at times. I can "manage" (at the cost of regularly injuring myself), but I take for granted having that extra money there to buy takeaway when it's not safe for me to cook and I've already used my "emergency ready meal" from the freezer. Or if I have no food because I couldn't get out to buy it.

I try to cover up the fact that there are times I will lie on the floor in the kitchen and my children will come and stand watching me for a minute before they get bored and go and play. I downplay it to friends: "Oh, I'm fine; the children are as good as gold, they know what to do."

I don't think they really know what to do at all. It's normal for them, they aren't scared. But they do poke me, or climb on me, or fail to realise I'm having a seizure. They tell me to get up, ask me why I'm lying on the floor. (Sometimes they get rather cross that I won't fetch them drinks etc.)

I gloss over those aspects on a day-to-day basis. One of the other mums has authority to collect my son from school if I don't turn up, so seizures at pick-up time can be resolved, but other than that I do all I can to not make concessions. I'm a fighter. Well. You have to be, and I'm lucky enough to come from a family of women who are stubborn as all hell anyway. I still hold that faint hope somewhere that one day I'll get my driving license back, and if that's not a faint hope in reality, I don't know what else is.

I'm a writer, I make up worlds, so my most common coping mechanism is to pretend there's nothing wrong with me all the time I can. I take risks. Last week I went to London for the evening. I spent the next day exhausted and had seizures as a result, but at least I had my fun night out.

And then, there I was, confronted with that God-forsaken form and an instruction to list, in detail, all the things I can't do. All the inhibitions on my life, all the ways that epilepsy gives me the finger on a regular basis. There's quite a few. Of the many sections, I think there were four or five, maybe six, that I could leave blank. I probably could have said more. I certainly would have said more, had I lots of consultation notes to hand in, but as it happens there's no access to specialist support here, so I don't have any. I did at least get to point that one out.

And now the wait. Fingers crossed I "pass", eh? Because I still need that DLA. Whether I meet the increasingly stringent criteria or not won't change the fact that most days, the longest I spend out of the house is an hour. In term time. Taking my son to school and picking him up.

And now that M is 3, I somehow have to start volunteering when term starts. Good old ESA, tailor-made to stretch me to the limit. Let's just hope it doesn't make my seizures worse, eh? Maybe double up on those crossed fingers. I might need the extra luck.