A letter to my sixteen year old self

A book of celebrity letters written to themselves as 16yr olds got me thinking...

Dear me,

Don't worry about what others think so much, especially the supposedly 'cool' girls at school. You will find out they are not that cool. Don't worry about what boys think either, they are just as scared as you underneath. It is more important to be loved by your friends and family, they will stick by you for the rest of your life and you will discover that is priceless.  Be true to yourself. Don't be afraid to make mistakes but be brave enough to admit it when you do. Start writing now and believe in your dreams, only you can make them come true. Have confidence in yourself, don't let others put you off by their interpretations of what life is. Practice compassion with yourself and with others, it is a strength not a weakness. Nothing worth doing is ever easy, so if it is hard, it is probably worth it. You are young -  enjoy it, you have a great adventure ahead of you. Do it, take a great big bite, it is there for the taking, no one is going to hand it you on a plate.

Lots of love 33 year old me. x

Neither up nor down!

It is time to come clean. The name for this blog is both metaphorical and physical. You see I actually live half way up a hill. Everyone outside my front window is walking a 45 degree angle - it gives a rather strange and unique perspective on life as I watch them bent over and battling against the wind and gradient or else free-wheeling towards the bottom.  The top of my hill (or any hill) is seen as a destination, an achievement, a place where the view is better, so I started to think that is where I am heading to in life. It's just that I seem to have been stuck around the tricky steep bit right in the middle lately! I am trying to write a book, to write my way out of the darkness and have something I can call my own. I hope it is the one thing that I am good at. I am trying to discover my potential and as Oprah would say 'live my best life'. So you see that is why I often feel just half way up the hill. I keep aiming for the top, for the day when I can stand tall and appreciate the view, whilst still remembering that beauty is all around me now and however good it is to have dreams I must not pursue it at the cost of reality.

Sentimental birthdays

The candles on your cake glowed like three flaming jewels. I looked at them and wondered how you had collected three so quickly. You blew them out with an air of professionalism and showmanship.  I could burst with pride for my growing boy who gets bigger and stronger with each year. I celebrate and cheer talking only of the greatness of the day. But what I really want to do is stop. Freeze frame. Because with each new candle you get further and further away from me.

GHOSTS OF SUMMER PAST

In the summer months we spend much of our time in the north coast of Ireland, enjoying what precious little sunshine we are lucky enough to get. It is nearly time to close up our caravan for another year and pack away the summer memories with the BBQ, the bucket and the spade. The beaches are deserted now, the sea swells in grey mountainous waves, brave walkers are swaddled from head to toe. The landscape feels familiar but different as though the summer might have just been a pleasant dream. In the distance I think I can still hear the screams and laughter of the children on their summer holidays. I see the image of my little man running in the summer sun like a watermark, on my vision.  Memories like footprints in the sand, semi-permanent, each one washing away to allow another to take its place. I want to hold on tight to them, relive them, and keep them in a glass dome so I can shake them into action.  Summer days with my precious little man, I will store them in my chest, snug tight to my heart.

I won!!

While blog cruising the other week I stuck my details on the fab mummy blogger www.violetposy.co.uk  website and I won an umbrella! It's years since I won anything! It has been really sunny here of late but it has been pouring in my head so I am going to put it up and dance underneath it's pink and blue spots! Poor dog was drafted in to model the umbrella - couldn't persuade him to dance!

BLOG TIME

Nothing is sacred once you become a Mum, now getting to the toilet on my own is considered a treat. But  my brain seems to have filtered out that I should really close the door behind me. Too much time spent with the trail of  a mini-man behind me, wanting to watch and demanding to know, "What ya doin?" So I have now acquired an open door policy that even the dog feels entitled to take advantage of. This morning as I answered nature's call he sat with his paws on my knees big, sad brown eyes looking up at me (I must have looked in trouble). Seriously can a girl get five minutes peace around here? From now on I am going to try and remember my pre-mummy habits and close the door behind me!

Happy Holidays

For ten glorious days we slunked around together, the three of us semi-naked in the sunshine. We ate till we burst, laughed till we cried and watched Madagasar late into the night. It was wonderful watching my strong, healthy boys turn golden in the sun as they dug towards Australia and swam in the salty sea. Little and Large. My world, my everything.

Biting Bullets!

I started this blog as a kind of self-therapy at a time when my marriage and my world were falling apart. It has seen me through the darkest days and I feel I owe it to myself and my blog to keep going now that those murky, sad days are behind me and write about the good stuff, write about when things go right! So I have also decided to take the leap and start trying to get my blog out there and get some readers and their feedback from all the amazing women and men bloggers who until now I have silently read and admired. So here goes... probably best that I am off to sunnier climes on holiday so will not be tempted to check on my burgeoning (?) popularity daily!

Have been battling with one of my old arch enemies TIME again this past week. Why do I always feel as though I am running full speed but not getting anywhere? I was always an eight hours sleep girl - especially since becoming a Mum when I became a sleep binger - but like an addict I have cut down to rise earlier in order to try and get more into my day. So why am I still feeling short changed? And is it worth it when I am tired and grumpy as a result?! Anyone else feel desperate to achieve significant personal goals and that being a wife and a mother, though great and awe-inspiring, they can also be the biggest and most difficult hurdles to jump around?

A good walk ruined!

I got a new iphone, it is the snazziest gismo. I took it on my walk this morning with the dog, I thought I could lessen the guilt about the walk by checking my emails and 'working while I walked'. It was a nice idea. But technology tends to fug my head, i have enough chattering voices going on in there already without getting them from cyber space while I walk. Plus it meant I walked looking down, so I couldn't appreciate the sun in the dry (for once) sky, or the way the tree leaves were bristling in the wind. I walked blindly, my head in the clouds of cyber space. That is the problem with technology it removes us from the living and the present. It takes us away from our natural environment, to the point where we forget it is there living just beyond the screen. So tomorrow I will leave my iphone at home and walk with just myself and the dog as nature intended.

BABIES

Our son was an accident, a glorious unplanned wonder, fate stepped in and decided it was our time long before we knew it. We were barely three months married; children were something in the hazy out-of-focus future. I hate to say that I was dismayed, distraught even, the day the pregnancy line turned blue. I thought I was too young, I thought our marriage was too new and weak to withstand the rigors of parenthood so soon. And then nine months later he arrived. Strong and screaming and full of fight. I instantly loved him, suddenly three seemed such a better number than two. He has been the lynchpin in keeping our marriage together when it has felt tortured beyond physical limits, a ray of shining light in the darkest of times.

My baby is now on the cusp of turning three, a mini-man, his own little person, straining at the ropes of my motherhood for independence. We would love another, a brother or a sister for him to call his own. But fate is not working in our favour anymore, a baby still so new that it’s presence was a secret in the world was taken away from me last December and since that there has been nothing. To experience the flip side of life is tough, my heart and mind struggle with the extremes of it. The door of motherhood has been opened to me and I have seen the treasures that lie beyond and can’t help but want more. I am so grateful and blessed for what I have but there is space in my heart for another, I hope I get the chance to fill it.

SWIMMING POOLS

Went to the local leisureplex this morning with my son. We have been a few times before but I am afraid I am a bit squeamish about public pools so it would not be a regular haunt. As I lowered myself into the bath water temperature I tried not to let my mind detail to how many bugs this must be heaven or the number of kids doing a wee at any given point.

My normal childcare was not available which is why I found myself with a bouncing son and a morning with which to occupy him and distract him from trashing the house. What amazed me was the amount of parents, especially Dads, who were decked out in swimming togs and present for the swimming pleasure of their little ones. It was like lice coming out of the woodwork, but with fewer legs. I don’t mean they looked like lice (though that is something else you can probably pick up from a public pool!) but a whole community of people somewhere where you didn’t realize there was any before.

So there I was in desperate need of a bikini wax, sucking in my stomach and hoping that if someone did a poll I would squeeze into the vaguely glamorous mums category. As I watched the hundred of stories going on around me, each parent laughing and playing with their charge I thought the world is not so bad, the world is not so dysfunctional, the world is full of good people just trying to be the best parents they can be. It’s a hell of a job description.

Till Death Do Us Part

My husband was nearly drowned last weekend. Now, as you will know there may have been times in the past year when this might not have been such badly received news. But that was then. Here we are now, with bridges repaired and hearts patched up. I don’t want him to die, for many reasons:
He is the father of my son (and a great one too),
I am too young to be a widow,
I want to have more of his children,
I can’t pay the mortgage on my own,
I really like him and think part of me might die too.
He was lucky, others don’t get the chance to be. It was just one moment, one moment when the bravery of a friend and a guardian angel said, "Not yet. It is not his time. Let him go". In his struggle and fight to stay afloat in the choppy waters and climb out to solid safety he lost his wedding ring. The irony is not lost on me considering recent events. The symbol of a promise made, blessed in faith and hope. A reminder of a day that was. Gone forever. But a ring would never bring me comfort, the symbol is gone but I am thankful to still have the man. Thankful that the sea tossed him back to safety deciding it didn’t need one more human life that day.

The Wrong Shoes

What are the early signs of Alzheimer’s? I am sure I have blank brain spots where information used to be. Is there a way of increasing your brainpower once you are over 30? I heard once that the number of brain cells you have is your lot for life. If that is the case I am f**ked. I left my little man in nursery this morning with his shoes on the wrong feet, it is a wonder I am left responsible for the dog never mind another human!

Gossip Gossip

I strayed onto facebook last night and eavesdropped on the lives of others, cause that is what it feels like. Apart from this blog, which I do more for myself than for others, I have yet to plunge myself into the world of virtual friendships. Yet there they all were past and present acquaintances climbing mountains, feeling happy, feeling frustrated, sharing feelings. They post them for the world to read, yet I felt like I was trespassing, looking into worlds where I no longer belonged, worlds that I had left behind and had lost the right to share in. I looked and read, I voyeured . I am a traditional kinda girl; this digital age is scaring me.

GROWING PAINS

Why are we always so desperate to ‘grow up’? Life does that to you, makes you want to sample the green grass on the other side of the fence. It makes you wish away and waste your youth on yearnings for adulthood. When you get there you look back longingly at the pastures you left behind realising maybe they were the greenest after all.
Today there was no grass just sand, miles of beautiful golden sand and sunshine – actual sunshine on the north coast! You gleefully stripped down to bareness to run through the waves. Splashing and smiling, your cup running over. What a simple, special pleasure to watch my healthy, strong and wondrous little boy. With wind in our hair and sun on our backs, I thought, I never want to be anywhere but here, in this moment forever.

CLOCKS

‘Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans’
Sometimes I feel like the rabbit in Alison in Wonderland, running endlessly trying to catch up with time. So I stay up later, get up earlier, try to squeeze the most out of everyday. I am a time-junkie always wanting that little bit more: then I will write that book, read more, exercise, phone my friends more, do a cookery class, I will lounge back on my sofa and learn a new poem everyday. Internal clocks tick too chiming down my mother years. Time is cruel. It plays trick or treat with your life, you never know time’s trump card, never get to know the balance of your own account.

Rough Edges

Marriage is like a circle - united, smooth, symmetrical, unbreakable. How then is it supposed to be made up of people who have edges – pointy and sharp, with separate needs and wants?
I suppose that over the years it is hoped you rub the rough edges off one another, you grate together long enough to sand off the corners, leaving only smooth curves for the waves of time to wash over. Time. Time sprints past in pairs.

FRIENDS

There are women who have walked arm in arm with me through many years of my life. Women who understand me better than myself . Friends who help give me a place in this world. Their arms form a super-strength spider web of sisterhood that will catch me no matter how hard I fall. These friends are constant, a part of the many pieces of myself. There is one that has flown far away, I cannot feel the comfort of her presence, our bond reduced to an invisible thread that wraps around the globe. Some of these friends are wives, some of them are mothers, some of them have grown-up jobs full of importance, some run their own successful businesses. They are smart and brave and wise. They are all unique and extraordinary.

A few of them are understandably cool towards the arrival of my husband back into the family fold. They had to watch my pain, see my face crinkle into uncontrollable tears, the sparkle and life snuffed out. To stand on the sidelines and see the one they love hurt has hardened and changed how they feel about him. With backs arched, claws out, teeth barred, they sense danger and want to protect their little one. I understand. If it were the other way, I would be the same. My newer friends, the ones I have gladly picked up along the path of marriage and motherhood have found it easier to find forgiveness. They did not see me dressed in silk and lace at the altar, fresh faced and young, full of hope and love offering up my dreams for him to hold. They have not been on the whole journey.

I tell of how he has changed his ways, become a better man, put wrongs to right. Their eyes and silence speak a million words. They have little faith left in my man and want me to stay out of harm’s way – his way. I hope he will prove to them in time that he is an honourable man that has made mistakes, but is worthy of a second chance. Life is too short to hold the broken pieces and sharp edges of disappointment next your heart. If he fails… God help him, they hunt in a pack.

Summer Lovin'

Your hair has gone beach babe blonde, your little button nose has been kissed by the sun as well as by me. Days are spent with sand between our toes, wind in our hair and salty sea around our ankles. You are a King adventurer, brave and fearless, ready to conquer the summer ahead, green crocs on feet and shorts hanging at half-mast. I want to endlessly drink you up, kiss and squeeze your trunk clad bottom as you race in and out of the sea. I want to protect you from the badness of the world and let only the the goodness through. I want to be the soft, warm towel that envelopes you and makes you dry.

These days you make me roar with laughter and I think my heart might burst right through my chest with pride in you. I want to keep you close, so close, wrapped in my mother love, but I cannot. You are not my baby anymore but a soldier, marching with strength and power into your own world of independence. I have started to need you more than you need me. So I will let go, loosen out the cord but just a little, just a fraction. I will give you the freedom your adventure heart desires because I know there is plenty more time for mother love ahead. I will take a step back but I will always be within reach.

Love and madness

He came back. Like a boomerang he went to the physical limits of separation and then started off where he had begun, with me. I didn't have to take him back, I could have left him there abandoned in the grass, but I didn't. I have found it unnervingly easy to forgive and forget and move towards greener pastures, rarely glancing back at the painful memories scattered like fragments of broken glass, lethal and laced with danger, that lie behind us. He seems changed, happier, comfortable in his own skin again and well, I made vows. Vows that are supposed to keep you together when nothing else would. It has made me think that love really is akin to madness. The madness I felt during our separation, the madness for letting him back so easily, the madness of marriage. But what is this life if not mad!

How are you?

Do you ever feel like you are living a lie? I do, especially now. The next time someone asks me how I am, I would love to say. "Awful. Actually awful, probably the worst I have ever been in my life. Thanks". But I don't. I never do and probably never will. Every time I hear myself say, "Great, thanks", a voice inside my head says, "No you are not. Your husband has left you, you are totally heart-broken and facing life alone. You are therefore not great!" The thing is my realities keep crashing into each other lately, huge head-on collisions. To all intense purposes I look the same, I get up, put my make-up on, accessorize, I look the part. I laugh and sing and play with my beloved son. I chat to the butcher, to the people I meet in the park while walking the dog, I smile, I laugh, I appreciate a sunny day. I think my life is good. Then my other reality will come crashing in, my husband has left, I am on my own, I am not sure if I am Mrs now or not and suddenly it all changes. The picture is still the same, but everything is different, everything is painful, everything is tinged with sadness, everything feels like it is ending not beginning. The thing is I do not know how to live this life, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do this life on my own, cause I made a vow, a promise with someone I thought I would be with forever. I had his child. We became parents together. We do this life together. I do not have the instruction manual for how to do it alone. I threw away the guarantee, I didn't ever think it would break. So here I am one careful owner of a broken marriage, that I have no idea how to fix or how to live my life without it.

Heavy Heart

Broken, cracked, bruised whatever way you call it when your lose in the game of love your heart hurts like hell. Mine feels heavy, really, really heavy. Like a boulder, cold and hard sitting in my chest making it difficult for me to breathe against it's weight. On the days when my heart is a boulder there is a chain reaction to another one, a smaller one that lives in my throat, it is probably more of a stone or a large pebble. It makes me take large gulping swallows that cause the tiny furrows between eyebrows to deepen with the pain. My whole face will crinkle up like a newborn and I am crying. Crying huge gulping painful sobs of hurt and I have to remember to breathe but breathing is difficult because of the weight in my chest where I have the boulder in the place my heart used to be. And i can't see any end to the pain, I am in it's epicentre and sometimes i feel as though I am being crushed by the sadness and the brokeness of it all. I know I just have to wait and let time take it away but time as a companion can offer little comfort.

A long good-bye?

So here I am still in the head melting maze that is 'separation'. I went to see my husband's therapist last week (God seeing that in black and white is so weird. When did I become one of those people whose life required a word like that?) Anyway it went better than I expected. He helped me towards an understanding of the mental block my husband is up against when it comes to our marriage. So here I am trying not to put up too many barriers so that we can exist on some sort of friendly level - a neither here nor there - until he can work through his issues. It's horrible, I am not sure how long I can keep it up, well actually I know how long I have to, until 30th June. That is the deadline we have given it. So much for forever, our forever will start or end then. Is a peaceful pact the best? A harmonious environment for him to work out what he wants. Should I be putting on the best show of my life, "Look at me, see, the best wife you could ever want, how could you possibly leave?" Or should I be pulling down the shutters in the knowledge that this is just a really long and painful good-bye?

Spring Days and Old friends.

I have always loved Spring. To feel the days slowly stretching so that we get more than a few precious hours of daylight, hopes of a warm long summer ahead and to see the bouncing yellow headed daffodils, cannot fail to lighten my spirit. And that is how I feel right now - lighter and maybe even a bit brighter. I travelled to London and met an old uni friend on Sunday. We wondered aimlessly around the shops for a couple of hours in the sunshine. It was close to bliss. When you find someone who seems to know yourself better than you it is a rare and wonderful thing. We met on the first day of fresher's week nearly fifteen years ago and were inseparable for four years. Since then we have lived in opposite ends of the world and have probably managed to see eachother every six months or so and yet everytime it seems as though not a day has past. When two souls meet I think they keep having a conversation unbeknown to us forever. Our souls - like swans - they mate for life. I like the idea of my soul having it's own independant etheral life outside of me, it's own social network. I can see it hangin out with all it's soul friends, maintaining it's invisible connections, allowing me to carry on knowing that they are there - my true soul mates, if I need them.

Rules

Alcohol and marriage crisis do not mix.

So went out out for pizza last night with some girlfriends -innocent enough huh? Hmmm I have no idea how a pizza ended up getting me very drunk. O h okay it was proabably the three bottles of wine that accompanied the pizza. Whatever. I vaguely remember my journey home, useless estranged husband was babysitting and I know I ranted at him but have absolutely no recollection of what I said. All I know is that I am still in a rage this morning. I think the alcohol has unleashed the demon in me, I want to kill somebody, preferably my husband! My friends keep telling me that I should go for some therapy, to help me 'unload' and ease my heartache, I think I need an anger management course instead. Perhaps the fact that said useless husband has gone off on a ski trip today with a load of other equally useless male friends has something to do with the burning fury I feel inside. How can he go skiing when his marriage is in crisis? I am thinking such bad thoughts, I wish I had a voodoo doll so I could inflict lots of inexplicable pain on him. I think my broken heart has splintered and started to leak out bitterness, anger and venom. Guess that is what happens when love goes wrong, think I know now what all those songs mean when they say love hurts. It hurts so much my insides feel sore, it hurts so much sometimes I find it hard to breathe, it hurts so much I think I can't live through it, sometimes it just hurts so much.

Poems to last a lifetime

This is a wonderful book compiled by Daisy Goodwin. I hadn't looked at it in months until I picked it up last night. It is packed with poetic gems to get you through every obstacle life might put your way. I am in awe of how poets can sum up an avalanche of emotion in a few select words, explaining and defining life's journey in bite size portions. Some of these poems brought me immense comfort. I am not alone, my heartache is not unique and there is life and more importantly beauty in life, after love.

Acne

Just when you think it can't get any worse. So my marriage is in the dull drums and I have developed 'adult acne'. I'm not just being over dramatic, I have genuinely been diagnosed as having acne - apparently it happens to a small percent of people once they hit their 30's. Great! Super! Lovely! Husband has left and spots have arrived to keep me company. Maybe it's from all the crying, maybe I am allergic to my own tears? What's next a frigg'in moustache? All dear friends keep telling me you wouldn't really notice them (my inch of foundation might have something to do with that) but in kinda the same way Heather Mill's friends (if she actually has any) probably tell her you don't really notice her false leg. Kind - but total liers. So I am on antibiotics from today and have ointment that I have to keep in the fridge. Lets hope it works. I could really do without these ugly red invaders my self-esteem is taking enough of a battering due to the conspicuous lack of husband by my side these days!

Spotty unwifed

Bells..

The bells are ringing - no I am not going mad - it's the church behind my house, just means it is 2pm and I have to be quick cause I put toddler in the car with promises of going swimming only for him to fall asleep so thought I would catch a few quick cyber moments. Is it a genetic make-up that makes me feel guilty about doing this instead of folding some washing?

Anyhoo it is day 42 since I heard the fatal words 'separation' from my husband and I had to fess up to my neighbour about the lack of husbandly presence lately. I thought it went quite well. I was composed for the most part, with only the occassional strangley voice and annoying tear in the corner of my eye. Little hurdles, each and every one, just another hurdle in my journey out of the comfortable and protective surrounds of marriage.

I better go incase he wakes and I get rumbled and the bells are going to ring again in a minute which means it must be 2.15pm. I feel like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland but I better go, I better go or else I will be late.

When the tough gets going..

Six weeks ago my husband proclaimed he wasn't happy in our marriage and that he wanted a separation. This is my story of how I am coping with a failed husband, a failed marriage and being a single mum.

These days a broken marriage is nothing new, but I never thought mine would be one of the casulties. Only 3 years down the line of a supposed lifetime together we are fatally wounded. Some men just aren't meant to be married, unfortunately some poor woman has to marry them first in order to find that out. I think I have been one of them.

I take each day at a time, I am a modern woman in a modern dilemma. I focus on the day the hurt starts to fade and the nightmare looks like ending, my marriage is broken but I am not.

I'll keep you posted on how I get on.

Non-wife.