Bodies

Yesterday, while in town, my sister and I saw a girl walking with her friend. They were both dressed, as lots of younger people are at the moment, in very tight jeans and a cropped top. One of the girls was very slim and one of the girls was not. Now people should wear whatever they like but the larger of the girls looked so uncomfortable, enough for us to comment on it. She looked just fine, but uncomfortable and it just seemed so sad that she felt like that when she should have been out relaxing with her friend.

In reality, clothes should be practical and comfortable, a uniform almost. They should be warm in the winter and cool in the summer and there should be no prices attached. A top would cost whatever and trousers whatever and we all wear the same. Can you imagine how liberating that would be. Wear them baggy if you want, tight if you prefer and get on with your day.

Almost like pajamas. I said this to my sister today as I mulled over this thought. I never feel anything other than comfortable when I’m in my pajamas. They are practical and comfortable, cotton mostly and cuffed at the leg, I can crawl around after Poppy, I can play with the big girls, I can cook, bathe the kids, almost entirely without thinking about what I’m wearing. I put a hoodie on if it’s cold, take it off if I’m warm and I don’t think at all about any of it.

Now I’m lucky that I don’t have any body issues. I have the usual insecurities, but they are very minor and generally I like my body. I prefer it in winter covered up admittedly and I am a bit nervy about the upcoming summer and dresses and shorts and things but I am lucky. However, a couple of weeks ago, on our anniversary, I got dressed in a dress and jumper, tights and boots and went out with J to look at a flat. I hated the outfit almost as soon as we got in the car but there wasn’t time to change. I could barely concentrate on looking at this flat because I wanted to rip all my clothes off. We looked at the flat and I came home and got changed.

Rationally, I am aware that I looked fine. But in my head, I didn’t and I needed to come home and put my jeans on. I did and I felt immediately as if a weight had been lifted. And that’s the same as pajamas. Warm, comfortable, almost comforting. Maybe it’s because they are associated with home. And that just my four see me in them mostly. And love me either way. Or maybe they are just comfortable.

This is an ode to pajamas.

Comfort

In another life, the life before my children, I was the manager of a shop that sold sex toys. Amongst other things, but there were sex toys and bondage bits and bobs and mostly lingerie but let’s focus on the toys for now. I could and would talk routinely about orgasms and bodies with all sorts of people, straight couples, gay couples, single people, older people, you name a type of person and I’d have a story to tell. I worked there until six weeks before the girls were born, and I would have a conversation about a toy and then have said customer feel my bump and wish me well.

The girls were born and everything changed. I changed and my friends changed. I got jealous and made some choices that I should not have made and the bridges that I attempted to rebuild were never built at all. As a result, social anxiety set in. Not so bad at first, and then crippling. I would take the girls to soft play and watch other mums, I simply could not imagine being able to make conversation with them, I couldn’t fathom that they might be interested in what I had to say. I’ve written about this before, here and here.

Obviously, the big girls started school in September last year and whilst I was excited for them and they were so excited, I was worried about the social side. You know, the school mums, the pick up in the afternoon, something that would be completely different to the way that I picked them up from nursery. And birthday parties. I’d been to a couple, only with Jody, but mostly, I managed to get him to take them if they were both invited, I was pregnant, or Poppy was a teeny newborn or some other reason.

The first invite came home with Isla really early on. It was for a little girl I didn’t know in her house and I was dreading it. But I went and more than that, I enjoyed it. I went to the next and the next and this last Saturday, I didn’t dread it at all. Today, I walked part of the way home with another mum, the mum of Isla’s best friend M, and it was fine, enjoyable even. I’m looking forward to organising the girls own birthday party in April.

It isn’t easy. It hasn’t been easy. There is still a group of mums that stand in a group, I’ve met them all and they barely acknowledge anyone but each other. That hurt at first but as time has gone on, I don’t worry about it too much. It is what it is.

I wouldn’t change very much at all about the last five years, not my girls, not Jody, none of that, but I would change my own behaviour about friends. I would go back and shake myself and make sure that I remembered my own value. Remembered that becoming a mum hadn’t changed me fundamentally. I’m a massive cheerleader of that, that having babies doesn’t change who you are, it changes what you do and how you do it, but not your morals and values and the things that make you who you are. And yet, I allowed that, allowed that to happen, and I am so cross with myself for that.

I doubt I’ll become friends with any of these mums, not really, but it’s nice that the school run is a good thing. And that birthday parties are fun. It’s the best thing for me and definitely for my children.

Reconciliation

I have reconciled myself with every break up I have ever had. Whether I was dumped or I did the dumping, I am OK with it all, the way I felt about each one, the fact that I hope that every single person is happier now than they ever were with me. If that sounds selfless, it isn’t, it just comes from a place of love and of being loved.

Friends, however, are a whole different kettle of fish.

In my last job, the one that I had before the girls, I had amazing friends, people who started off as colleagues or staff and they became family. It is no exaggeration to say that one friend in particular went a long way to piecing me back together. I was in a very bad place when I started that job and her friendship allowed me to show a side of me that hadn’t been allowed to be shown. Put bluntly, she allowed me to be myself, and I doubt that without her doing that, I’d ever have been able to open myself up to Jody.

We supported each other through many things, big and little, not to mention the day to day minutiae of working together. I mentored her in lots of little ways, the bits of management that you can’t read about in a book and my word, did we laugh. Everything was funny sometimes and we would finish a day at work and still sometimes what’s app into the evening. She called me her chicken.

She moved to Australia with her boyfriend a little before the girls were born. The truth is, I didn’t ever really get on with him, I don’t really know why now. I was worried that she was being reckless, emigrating to the other side of the world with someone it felt like she barely knew. We kept in touch for ages, never quite getting the time difference right, waking each other up by texting something completely random.

Then it trailed off, and in a fit of pique, when I felt like everyone had left me, I unfriended her on facebook. That sounds silly, I’m 38, beyond facebook in many ways, but that ended it. She likes the odd photo of mine on instagram, and I always smile when I see that she has viewed my stories.

She is engaged now. To the same guy. Still living in Sydney. Everything she wanted has come to pass. She is a successful retail manager just like I was. I am jealous and proud and everything in between. I miss her very much. She didn’t hurt me, didn’t wrong me, didn’t do anything.

I wonder if she misses me too.

 

The Fall Guy

Once, back in 2011, after the epic dumping by e-mail, I sent out the message I’d sent out maybe a dozen times before. Asking if he was around and if I could see him. I did, we talked, we always did, and then we slept together, we always did.

We would then not see each other again.

Until the next time.

That was the last time. I panic sometimes, when things feel scary and I’m tired and we have a tiny newborn, that I don’t have his number anymore. I have absolutely no desire to see him, none at all, I never did really until I was waiting anxiously for him to reply, but I always had the option. And I worry, when I’m dumped and alone and I have nowhere to go, that he won’t be there.

I picture him exactly as he was. Over seven years ago. And, of course, he will have changed, he might be married, have kids, he will look the same I guess, but subtly different like we all do, the fine lines around our eyes a little deeper, the eye bags a little harder to eradicate.

I have never loved anyone the way that I love Jody and I have never been loved the way that he loves me and we are good and strong and happy. There is nothing to worry about. But yet. But yet. We aren’t married, though we talk more and more about taking that step, we don’t own a home, it is our daughters that bind us physically. I don’t have a back up plan, I don’t want one, this is plan A and I want it everyday, even when things are hard.

I saw a quote on Instagram today and it went like this (ish, sorry if it’s wrong):

“Remember when what you have was all you ever wanted”

I have thought about this all day. And it is. It definitely is. I am so unbelievably blessed, so unimaginably lucky. And so very scared. Most of the time. Of how much I would lose if this disappeared. When we were first dating, Jody and I, I had a plan B, I knew what I would pack, just one small bag, I would leave my job, immediately as it wouldn’t matter at all, and I would disappear. I had a mental list, two bras, I’d wear jeans and pack leggings as they could roll up and wouldn’t take up space. I once offered him £1000 to follow his dreams and he turned me down flat. One day I’ll write about our dating life, before kids, before grown up life.

We never would have worked, the fall guy and me. We talked about it once, long long ago, and we admitted that we might have once wanted it, but probably at different times.

I think that that’s enough, I think we can leave it at that.

Things

1. I am totally overwhelmed at the prospect of this weekend. I am so very tired and there’s so much to do, and the girls are exhausting (and wonderful) and the very idea of it is making me anxious.

2. I am ridiculously stupidly broody. Now I fully recognise that this is the most nonsensical thing possibly ever written down but it is what it is. My sister-in-law’s sister had a baby yesterday and I am jealous. She also called her Grace which is making me feel odd too.

3. I have very strange thoughts on twins. Now, honestly, newborn and baby twins are the hardest work you will ever do, the light at the end of the tunnel was so far away as be not there at all and I don’t want to do it again. When we went for the scan for Poppy, I hoped against hope that there would be just one. And there was. And I’m relieved everyday that she is just here by herself. But it’s a club, the twin club, and I miss being a member.

4. Healing from a c-section is really tough. Things still hurt, there’s still blood (sorry!) and I have still got a squishy tummy. Not the usual type of squish, but like plasticine, whatever waistband I’ve worn that day will be indented into my skin until I wear the next pair of trousers with a different waistband. I want to exercise but I can’t yet and I’m frustrated.

5. I have 13 days to submit a (completely new) excerpt of 10000 words to a writing competition. I can’t use the book I’ve written so I’m aiming to do 1000 words a night like the olds days. Can you imagine how I’m so tired?!

Friendly Fire

We took the girls to a new soft play centre this morning. They adore soft play and it is a rarity to go with J, as it’s usually my sister who comes with us. We will ignore the fact that he declared himself to be ‘so bored’ after half an hour, as that is not the point of tonight’s post.

If I had taken them alone, which is a future possibility, I would have been the only solo person there. Literally everyone else was there with a friend, their kids knew each other, there was talk of play dates and summer trips to Drusillas and I felt unutterably jealous. And very sad.

I don’t have any friends.

I did have friends. When I left work to have my girls, I had lots of friends, when I announced I was having twins, I had a huge number of people, people I knew personally, who wished me well. Wished us well. When I announced this pregnancy, I had lots of messages of congratulations, all of them very welcome and heartfelt, but they were from internet friends, people I have never met, will never meet but people who I know consider to be friends. And whilst that is the way of the world now, it is a weird thing to acknowledge that there are no real people in my life that I am not related to that I could talk to.

While I was sitting there today, on the floor with my girls, playing with what I would call baby toys but they would consider amazing toys that I am doing them a great disservice in not having at home, I thought about letting an old friend, an ex friend to be honest, know about this session. She has recently had a baby and there was a section for really small babies, bouncers and play mats and all sorts and it was perfect. And then i realised, almost simultaneously, that I couldn’t do that. That she would not want to hear from me, that i would probably, definitely, be ignored.

I am not a bad person. Not at all. I am kind and generous with my time, I would be good with your kids, I am good with kids, I adore my own. I would be shy, I think, out of practice at conversation, but I would get there. I would probably not know how often friends text each other, I might ignore you for a day or two thinking this was the done thing but it wouldn’t be malicious, just not really knowing what I’m doing.

I understand loneliness, I have been incredibly lonely in my life, and I am not lonely in the traditional sense. I have J and he is just wonderful, we had a day together today and we took a long walk while my parents saw the girls for a few hours and we still have so much to say, so much to look forward to. He has friends, both very good ones that he sees rarely but is close to and ones that he worked with and now sees fairly regularly. He is out on Friday night with a group of old work mates and I am happy that he has that, happy that he is able to talk to people other than me. I have two sisters, one I see all the time who absolutely has my back and one who is busier, has tons of friends, but I see in school holidays and it’s always good.

I am lonely in the sense that I have opinions, I have views, I have things that I want to say. I want to get things off my chest, ask advice, I want to be silly and giggly and muck about and not be a serious parent for a little while. I want someone to tell me that I’m doing a good job, that I am a good mum, a good person. I want to be thought about, I suppose, at any given time and I’d like to be remembered.

I suppose it could start with a hello. It could start with me initiating a conversation with any one of these people in any number of scenarios I find myself in every week. But I’ll not do that. I know that.

I’ll just play with plastics cars on the floor of a soft play centre.