Fifty for Fifi

OK so today’s song was going to be a wonderfully sweet sounding one. Linger is a beautiful song but on re-examination, really terrible to link a song about a relationship to. Unless that relationship includes someone begging their unfaithful lover to let them go because they can’t.

Dolores O’Riordan does, however, link well into the topic this post’s actual song leads us into. Slightly younger than me and a little older than FI, she’s a contemporary who lived a life greatly impacted by mental health struggles. Her loss in 2018 hit us both deeply.

Our lives have also been impacted by mental health struggles. It’s one of the ways we connect, it’s one of the things we understand and recognise in each other, and it’s one of the things that drive us apart when we’re both in dark places at the same time.

Until a few years ago, my mental health had been stable for a long period. Inevitably when that changed on me, it changed in a big way and very quickly. I’m proud to say that Fi stepped up in a huge way. Together we have learned to walk a path of being co-carers without being codependent. It takes a lot of conscious thought and forthright discussions, but we get there.

This shared journey provides us a platform from which to offer our daughter support in her own journey. We forget sometimes, but having had a mother who became disabled when she was three has created its own trauma, a third thing to manage alongside her already very complicating ADHD and autism.

Fi’s been telling me how deeply she was in to hiphop at during these years, so today’s song is a fun riff on being plain nuts. Take it away, Cypress Hill.