A return

I am back!

I was on hiatus as i started a travel blog and knew my family would be reading it, so I hid this one from my profile and forgot about it. (!) I've now created a separate profile for the travel blog, so I can return to my true form on this blog.

HURRAH.

An outlet!

I have been in England now for over 70 days and I only know one person besides my husband. One person to talk to, and a husband who is grieved by my constant ear-bashing. So, blog, I have returned to use you for my evil purposes.

I am a little bit lonely, and a little bit disappointed in the UK, and a little bit bored. I have decided I want to be a historian and to spend my days in research, but it is proving difficult to find a job - or work out other ways to make a living - doing that. Sometimes I feel elated, like today when I visited a big Waterstone's book shop that was like a giant geek mecca. Seeing all those books about history inspires me that maybe I could write one. That history does matter, and it makes me feel alive, which a slug like me needs. And other days I just can't be bothered with the hassle of carving a niche for myself, of searching for something different, of trying to be confident enough to try and sell myself.

I haven't been very brave over the past year and a bit. The earthquakes really took a chunk out of my confidence and security and self-belief. At uni in 2010 I almost felt whole - I found where I belong, and, for once, I felt really successful and really clever. It felt good to get A's and to be told "you're good enough". I've spent so much of this last year feeling scared and not good enough and hiding away in my living room where I felt a little more secure than I did in the rest of Christchurch.

And now I'm struggling to recover from that. We've taken on this new adventure to England, and it's not as safe and secure and homely as I expected. It is expensive and dirty and full of people who I'm scared of or who can't understand me (and I, them). And now I have to get back into the swing of earning money, and I really want to do something I love, but the question is - have I got the self-belief to do it?

Life, huh? Many challenges, few easy solutions.

Not this year, sorry.

I hate mother's day - it always evokes negative feelings, rather than happy ones. My mother always tried to force love and respect from us on mother's day, and thus it actually became a very difficult day for our family, rather than a special one.

We couldn't do anything right. If we made breakfast, we got yelled at for not making lunch. If we did the dishes for the day, mother cried because she'd had to cook. If we didn't get the right present, chosen from her precise list, then there were tears and tantrums. If my mother had to lift a finger on mother's day, then she was somehow less respected than the other mothers, her family less caring, and her life more burdensome.

Sometimes, if we were particularly unlucky, it would all go pear shaped and we would get the full monty. We would hear all about what failures we were, how we were such a horrible family, how we would send our mother to an asylum. She would storm out of the house and we were never sure when she would come back.

I'm not saying we were perfect: we were probably rather lazy and uncommitted. But that's not the way to go about loving your kids and gaining their respect. In my opinion, a good mother's day would include acceptance and grace and appreciation for however your family tries to love you. When love becomes conditional, and becomes about ritual and meeting some unspoken set of criteria, then it's not really love, but duty. And the danger with this is that any love that does exist can become resentment.

Whenever it gets to that time of year when all your junk mail and spam emails shout "EVERYTHING FOR MUM", "SOMETHING SPECIAL FOR SOMEONE SPECIAL", "TREAT MUM ON HER SPECIAL DAY" all I want to do is snarl and rip it all up with my spittle-covered teeth. You can't buy love. You can't force love. You can't hurt others in the name of love.

If you love your mum and she loves you, you don't need to pander to some stupid day to prove it. And just because you don't buy into the dictates of consumerism doesn't mean you love each other any less.

This year, I won't be celebrating mother's day. I've tried so hard every other year, and I'm tired. Love should be reciprocal. I know it isn't always, and I know the Christlike thing is to love regardless, but this year I'm afraid the stretch is too great. If you're always going to come up short then there comes a time when you decide to try a little less.

I'm sick of coming up short.