I find it alarming that I have so little effect on people. One thing you will never, ever hear is: "I haven't seen Cujo in ages. I wonder if she's alright." or "I wonder what Cujo's up to." Obviously I don't make much of an impression on people.

No-one ever missess me. Except my kids who are too young not to miss me. I know eventually they'll reach the age when they don't miss me either.

It's not that people ignore me. When I'm actually there they show every sign of enjoying my company or at least of not minding it. But they don't really notice when I'm not there anymore. It's like they forget about me the moment I'm gone. No-one ever asks after me. If I'm ill or away for a while no-one bothers to check on me.

It makes me very sad to know that no-one's going to miss me when I'm gone.

"Nobody likes me,
Everybody Hates me.
I think I'll go and eat worms."

I've been singing that little song for over 20 years now. I learned it in the Brownies (Junior Girl Scouts to you Americans). That's what it felt to be me when I was growing up. That's kind of my default state. It's what it feels like when I run out of the energy necessary to pretend that I'm not that person any more.

Right now I hate all of you. I hate you for your easy lifes and your simple choices. I hate you for ignoring me and if you're looking at me then I hate you for paying attention to me. Most of all I hate you because some of you are happy some of the time.

Right now my life is sliding out of control. It does this periodically. In fact my life has three phases.

1. Sliding out of control. (lasts up to 6 years at a time but usually only a couple of weeks)
2. Didging my fingernails in and holding on to stop the slide. (lasts up to 6 months but usually only a couple of weeks)
3. Running round like a mad thing trying to clear up the mess caused by phase 1. (lasts up to 3 months, usually at least a week, sometimes as little as half an hour)

I hate you all. You are all scum and you are making me sing that damn song again.

"Nobody likes me,
Everybody Hates me.
I think I'll go and eat worms."

Of course I've never actually eaten worms. Nobody ever tried to make me. Though I think they would have had a hard time.

It's not that I want to eat woms or that i have done it's that I feel, deep down inside, as if I deserve to.

It's pretty bad to feel like your only potential contribution to society would be as an organ donor. It's even worse when you have kids. Two beautiful, healthy wonderful kids. But most of the time I feel like the best I can do for them is get my organs harvested and pray they get adopted by someone nice.

I'm so glad no-one but me is reading this.

I'm exausted all day and wakeful all night. I can barely function. When I do sleep it's fitful and full of dreams and if I don't keep waking up for no reason then the kids wake me.

It would seem that my biggest affliction is irony. Somtimes I can't help feeling like someone is playing with me. And then I switch on the television news and I'm reminded of how much worse things can be. Then I feel guilty for feeling bad. I only have exaustion, constant pain, two kids and a relationship in free fall to worry about.

Nobody tried to blow me up today. None of us is in danger of starving to death. No-one is trying to recruit my kids as suicide bombers.

Life is good.

Now if I could only make myself believe that.

We live in interesting times.

I find myself wondering if we're on the verge of a real war on terror. We've seen America and Britain go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq because someone blew up some Americans. We blew up a lot of Afghans and Iraqis so someone blew up a lot of Spaniards in Madrid. Now we have terrorists blowing up people in Britain and Iraq but they are apparently the same terrorists.

Do we face a future of random terrorists blowing people up all over the world for reasons they can no longer articulate while our once liberal democracies tear themselves appart looking for the perpetrators.

But don't listen to me. I know nothing.

Today someone tried to burn down my building. They set fire to my baby's buggy. It was parked in the outside hall there's no room in the flat. What kind of sick freak does a thing like that.

The flames and the smoke went up the stairwell. No-one was killed and we all got out of the building safely but for a while one of my upstars neighbours was just about ready to throw her kids out of the window. As she said later "How desperate is that?"

When I got back into the house the news was on the television. A suicide bomber drove a stolen fuel tanker into the middle of a crowded market and blew himself up creating a masive explosion and an even bigger fireball. Many people were killed. Many houses burned. Some parents were so desperate they were seen throwing their children from their windows to escape the flames.

How desperate is that?

I feel raw. Like someone born without skin. I feel too hot as though the air around me is slowly boiling. I feel out of place and awkward, as if all my clothes were half a size too small.

Is it just me that feels this way. I look at other people and they seem to fit in but perhaps they feel exactly as I do. Maybe other people can't tell how I feel. Maybe other people look at me and envy my apparent unruffled calm.

I know that some people envy me my mind. That's because they don't have to live with it. It's a very clever mind but it gives me no piece. It's never still or quiet and it is far too much in love with it's own cleverness. It makes me ill with it's constant chatter. It makes too much of everything.

Sometimes I wish I was stupid. Or at least a bit more average.

You'll often hear people say 'If only he/she/they had asked for help'.

Well that's not true. You can ask for help all you want and most people just do not want to know.

If you're someone like me and have a reputation for being capable then people will simply assume that you can deal with whatever it is. Even if it is something completely outside the scope of your knowledge and experience. They'll actually get really pissed off at you for asking. Even if it's their job to help you.

And of course after it's all gone horribly wrong I just know they'll all be standing round saying "If only she'd asked for help."

Is it wrong of me to want more from my relationship? Not much more. Just to actually spend time with him.

He spends all day with his back turned to me and the kids. Doing things on the other computer. Then he goes to bed. I love him. I believe he makes me happy. But it would be nice to see his face occasionally during the day. It would be good to discuss something without getting the feeling that he's pissed off at me for disturbing him.

And what is it that I'm disturbing? Vital beta testing. Of a MMORPG.

I would say it's sobering to be less important than a computer game but actually I'm used to it. To my father I came a long way down a list which included, ahead of me, the television and the car.

I knew that most women end up marrying their fathers I just thought that I'd be different. NOt that we're married. But that's another story.

Today I am not well. I've had ME, aka Cronic Fatigue Syndrome, for years but it seems that I sometimes need reminding just how ill it can make me. For a while this morning I was stuck slumped in a chair, unable to get up, and , for a short while, unable to move my head.

Of course I'm sure there are lot's of people on hand to tell you that I'm not really sick. It's all in my mind don't you know.

Well quite possibly it is all in my mind but that doesn't make it any less real to me.

I love frendship. Isn't it great the way you think you have friends until you need them and then, all of a sudden, you find out that your 'friends' just don't look at you that way. They think you're all independant and capable and strong so you don't need help.

I am fairly independant, occasionally capable and usually quite strong. It doesn't mean that I never need help, just that I never get it because my 'friends' are always off helping their obviously needy friends.

As someone once said to me "At least you have your dignity."

Possibly. I think dignity is what you get when you can't have money or power.

Cynical? Me? Hell yeah.

It's official. I'm not such a bad mother after all and they're not going to take my kids away.

So why do I feel like my safety net has disapeared?

The one good thing about having social workers about the place is you know that if you're really screwing up badly they'll take the kids away. It means that there's a limit to how much damage you can do to your kids.

Oh I don't mean physical damage. I mean the really nasty stuff. The mental damage you do without even meaning to.

Take me for example. I have a deep conviction that I am a bad and usless person. I have a self eteem so low that not even snakes could limbo dance under it. And my parents didn't mean for that to happen. They tried their best and if I'd been born with a slightly different personality I might have thrived with exactly the same upbringing. They wern't bad parents they were just unlucky and ignorant. But it was the 70s and no-one was making helpful TV progams for parents.

Woe is me for I am sick of heart.

I don't know where that comes from but it keeps running through my head. I suppose it's the grown up version of "Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Think I'll go and eat worms." Which was the recurring thought that haunted my childhood.

I find myself living in an implausable alternative reality. I never expected to be a Mother and now I am I find that I'm strapped to the wheel of time. I find that I'm part of a genetic chain stretching back through my Mother and Grandmother and forward through my daughter and son. My mind keeps rebelling aginst the whole unlikelieness of it all.

It's a strange thing to be a parent.

I know I'm a better parent than a lot of other people but it's not enough. I'm still a terrible, terrible mother. I'm failing in almost every department and yet I'm still better than a lot of the parents I see. Should I keep striving to be better or would it be kinder to my kids to let them go and give someone else the chance to do a better job?

My daughter is old enough to miss us. It would be a terrible thing to do to her in the short term but what about the long term? The longer I keep her the harder it will be for both of us if I do have to let her go. The longer I keep her the more damage I'll have done to her.

I don't mean physical damage. I don't beat my kids, but I do shout at them when I shouldn't. I don't give them a proper routine. I don't think I set consistant boundaries for them. I'm bad for them but things could be so much worse.

The thought of keeping them and the damage I could do to them makes me sick to my stomach. The thought of giving them up is even worse.

A quick update
Just in case there is anybody out there still paying attention.

I am now pregnant again. My beloved and I are in the throws of moving house. My health has been a lot worse. My little one is doing really well.

Ummmmmmmmm.

Not a lot else to say just now.

There will be an update soon, I promise. I'm just not up to it right now.

There are some things that you just can't say if you're in a relationship and you plan on staying in a relationship. There are things that will kill it stone dead. And if, by some chance, you can rebuild the relationship it will never be the same. It will always be a poorer, weaker thing.

You have to know what these unsayable things are because if you don't you might say them without thinking, without realizing the consequences. But once you know what they are they have a terrible power. Every time I get really angry with my beloved I can feel the words rising up in my mind just begging to be said. It would be so easy to say them just to get it over with, just so I'd know what would happen, just so as I would have to fight the urge to say them any more.

I don't say them. That is - I haven't said them yet. Partly it's because I love him and I don't want to hurt him. Partly it's because I need him and I don't want him to go away. Partly it's because I don't want to be the bad guy and whoever says the unsayable first is definitely the bad guy. However there is another, secret, reason why I don't say them. He might have unsayables too. It's the relationship equivalent of mutually assured destruction. I have these verbal atom bombs and if you really push me I might just use them but if I do then you might drop yours and I don't want to find out what those are. I don't want to find out what you really think of me in those terrible moments of rage-induced clarity. I don't want to hear those thoughts that you can barely admit you think.

The unsayables are one of those doors which once open can't be shut. You can never go back an unsay them. You can't pretend that you didn't hear. They will always be there and they will colour your recollections. Not only do they rob your relationship of it's future they take the past as well.

I think this is why long term relationships are getting harder. Once upon a time we just didn't talk about our feelings. Now that we've all got into the habit we can't stop. Relationships used to hold together for 60 years or so simply because neither partner knew how the other felt. Both people were in a fantasy relationship and they supplied the other person's half from their own heads. Now we tell each other how we feel. We communicate. A relationship can only stand so many sentences that begin "You know your problem..." or "You make me feel..."

I feel sure that honesty is not the same as always telling the whole truth.

In answer to Candy's question my little one is a little girl. She had her first birthday on Friday. We had the in-laws visiting over the weekend. It wasn't too bad really. They nagged my beloved but not me. I think they know me well enough now to guess what my reaction would have been.

We all have terrible colds now and mine has turned into a chest infection.

I haven't been posting recently because I've had difficulty getting online. Hopefully I'll be on more regularly in future.

My baby will be 1 year old later this month. So this time last year I was waddling round the house cursing my pulled back and having long talks with my bump about how it was time to come out.

What else can I tell you about myself? I have two brothers and my beloved has two half sisters. My best friend is very nearly my sister-in-law. I mean that she lives with my youngest brother and one of these years may get round to marrying him.

I belong to a Kung Fu school. A proper one. Yes, me, what are you laughing at? Whenever I tell people that I can see them thinking "You do Kung Fu? How?" And the answer is, "Badly". But that doesn't matter because Hung Ga Kung Fu training seems to be more about how hard you're trying than what you can do. I try very hard.

Maybe more later. If I can think of any more to tell.

I suppose it's time I introduced myself. I live in the North East of Scotland with my partner and our baby. I'm 32. I'm female. I'm Scottish, which just means that I pronounce r fully and the 'ch' in loch properly and I get offended when people call me English. I'm also a pict, maybe, which means that in winter I'm a pale blue colour and in summer it takes me a week in the sun just to go white and I spend the rest of the summer with my face peeling.

More later

Just in case anyone's wondering (you know who I mean, Candy Froggie) while my blog is personal I do mean for it to be read. If it was a secret I'd write it in a notebook and hide it under my mattress.

Pretty soon I'm goint to have to post some backstory on myself. Not just now though, I'm all written out. I've been posting crits on the Crime Story challange over on the BBC Get Writing website.