Being a mum

My job….

People always ask me what I do for a job. The truth is I work as a mum, a part time business owner and a part time executive assistant. Nothing crazy pretty grey to be honest. My hardest job by far is being a mum, it is not often considered as a job. It is often just a given, something women often do along side other jobs or keeping a house together (housekeeper, is an actual job). I didn’t know how hard it would be, there was not written contract, no job terms, no agreement at all.

I worked as a nanny for many years before I had a baby, I am a trained early year specialist and teacher. I also have a masters in Psychology, my understanding of the human mind, learning and behaviour is pretty well rounded and would be fair to say higher than the average person. I was not expecting to find it so hard. Surprisingly its not being a mum that is hard, I know what my child needs, I am kind and comforting and confident with my approach. He is a very secure and well-rounded child. What I find painfully hard is the loneliness.

Every day I face being on my own with him I face the feeling of being alone. Of existing in a world which continues turning around me while I stand in the middle locked into my brain and the chat of my baby. I don’t have other lives to fill my brain with like I did before being a mum and going to a regular job. I don’t have the worry of if I will get my work done in time and what does the boss think of me. I am my own boss, some people would say I am lucky not to work, that I have the freedom to do what I want each day. However, this could not be more wrong, I am constrained by naps, feeding time, bedtime, bath time, toys working the way they should, the need to be on call for comfort whenever is needed. I can’t even go to the toilet in peace.

I have made mum friends; I go to groups regularly but this doesn’t stop the feeling of being alone. I don’t have anything bigger going on in my life which offers me other people, connection to people. Being a mum for me is hardest thing I have ever done. It never stops but all I can hope is that one day it gets easier and find who I am again. Honestly, if someone asked me who I am or what I like I wouldn’t even begin to know how to answer that question. I feel like all I am trying to be all the time is a good mum and a good wife. I am not a good me.

 

Life of a 20 something

I have been on this planet for just over 27 years, really that’s no time at all. If you had £27 you could spend them in a moment maybe over something you wanted for a while or perhaps more likely over something more frivolous. Yet somehow, I feel there is an expectation for me to have used my 27 years to carefully craft out an understanding of the world which enables me to feel like I have some clue as what I am doing each day. I honestly have no idea and really every day throws a challenge my way that I do not feel prepared for.

If you go back to my formative years I lived in a fairly average household with an older brother and father who travelled a lot with Navy. I don’t know who I was then, what sort of child I was, I only know from what others tell me (which can’t be very accurate as our memories as humans aren’t). Therefor my start life is completely unknown to me but yet has some impact over who I am now. I would say that my first memories of attempting to navigate the world are from Primary school, I have a couple that stick in my brain.

1. The first French afterschool club I went to with a new teacher who just spoke French the whole time and I had no idea what I was doing and I remember feeling scared.
2. In year 6 when I started additional support after school classes as I could not keep my writing next the margin or spell anything correctly.
3. Doing handstands in the summer against the swimming pool fence and showing off our knickers.
4. Probably my earliest memory was in reception when I saw some knickers in the spare pants box that I really liked so me and my friend swapped our pants for them.

I remember the ease at which I made decisions, the freeness of being able to explore and say what I thought. The vision I had of grownups and them being a very different type of species to me. I wonder how these memories have shaped me now. I know that memories from secondary school have impacted me, perhaps because as we grow so does our emotional understanding. I was able to put names to feelings and therefore track when I had felt them before and link up experiences in my brain (not consciously). I remember my excitement of starting secondary school and how I was going to have a locker and to be able to carry all my books with me and I would look so studious, something I had always seen on TV to mean I would be well liked, cool and clever.

I have such a clearer memory of school than I do of my home life. This seems so odd because we are so aware of creating a home life for ourselves which makes us happy but my memories are not of home. Don’t get me wrong I can remember playing rough and tumble with my dad and my mum always sneaking into my room after big family arguments to say she was sorry. I remember having nightmares and making a bed out of towels in the bath as somehow this felt safer than my bed. I remember my dad reading the magic faraway tree to me while mum meticulously picked nit eggs out of my hair, and how cared for I felt.

My teenage years are perhaps the one in which I learnt the most, worried the most and carved out a lot more of who I am. I was odd at school, I have never been able to sit back and accept things which feel wrong to me, I have something inside me which fights with every bone in my body to be heard. I made school hard for me and hard for those around me but I remember there were moments when I was arguing with a teacher or purposely making the wrong choice where I felt truly powerful for the first time. Where I was winning. Soon after secondary school you are thrown into college, I could happily say that I loved college. I made the best friends that I could have asked for who are still my life long friends now. However, being 15, 16 and 17 is tough. Boys where a big part of my life, I am not sure I really understood what consent was and I am certain I drank way too much.my time at college was formative and amazing.

In the summer before I started college, something happened which is perhaps one of the biggest things of memory to shape who I am today and my understanding of the world. My parents got divorced. My whole life up until the age of 16 we had been a family, a family unit. All I had ever known.  I will never forget the conversation I had with my mum. She asked me how I felt if she was to leave dad. It wasn’t out of the blue, I knew they both were not happy. I was 16 and well aware of people and how people feel by now. I was confident and charismatic and always had an opinion. I was honoured to be able to support my mum in this way. It felt like she really trusted me to be her confident, I said to her you get one life and there is not point living that life for someone else’s happiness. We were parked just around the corner from our house, in her hard-top black Renault.  I had just basically given her permission to leave my dad. At 16 I had spoken without realising the impact of my words, without understanding how I would feel and without pressure.

The next few years home was hard, I stayed living with my dad because although in my early teens we did not have the best relationship I could not leave my family home. I couldn’t leave the place which had brought me so much happiness and so much comfort. My dad and I grew close and I saw the pain he was going through, due to his broken marriage, which somehow felt like my fault. It was the first time in my life I had seen how someone can break. Really break. I held his hand and he held mine. I started uni and I left him behind and I missed him dearly but he had become my best friend. My relationship with my mum had been rocky and it was healing slowly. I guess this whole time in my life taught me that although I could feel powerful by refusing authority and fighting back with people, the damage I could do was so much more than I can see. It taught me a level of humility I had not even begun to understand until then.

I was lucky at uni as my parents has raised me to be very independent, I could wash my clothes and cook my dinner. I could even manage my money pretty well although not perfectly. In the first few years I lived along way from home and learnt to just be me, in a place where I knew nobody and was completely alone. There were good days and bad days. After 3 years of living away from home, I was super home sick and worried that my mum and my grandma needed me. My grandma got very sick and I hated not being nearby to help. I quickly moved universities to one much closer to home. I took another risk and moved in with 7 boys who I didn’t know. This was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Soon after education was done, I was in the big bad world. I had bills to pay, a body that needed looking after and friendships to maintain. I had no preparation for this. I didn’t know how to live as a person in the real world. In a world which required me to think about what I should do each day, in a world where there is no end goal in sight. I was 23 and out in the world with no idea what to do.

I can safely say that in 4 years not a lot has changed, I have no idea what each day holds. Just to make sure I feel even less in control I became a mother at 25. I had always wanted to be a mum and I knew that after leaving uni and meeting the man of my dreams it wouldn’t be long until we had a baby. I was pretty desperate for a small person to call me mummy and to love me as much as my nanny charges loved their parents. I have that now, my son calls me mummy every day, he holds me tight and he buries his head in my lap. He chooses me over everyone and I am his ultimate comfort blanket.

I had no idea of the impact this dream would have on my reality. I have developed my understanding of the psychology of the brain throughout my education and my working life but that doesn’t mean I knew how it would feel. To have a person rely on you and need you for everything is the most draining thing I have experienced. My brain is overloaded all the time and I exist in a world which isn’t the me I knew before I had him. Before him I was confident of who I was, I was outspoken and impulsive. With him I am so lonely, wary of others, I don’t want to create upset or hurt anyone without meaning to, I am scared to talk about what I think is right. Perhaps it’s the world we live in now, a world in which people seem to enjoy backing others into a corner and making them feel shame for their opinion. I don’t know how to manage my money, eat well, cook meals to look after my family and look after who I am at the same time. I don’t know to stop myself hiding within and to find my voice again. I was to feel more like me, but I don’t know who me is.

How does society prepare us for being in our late 20’s and being seen as a grown-up? It doesn’t. I live for a day when I have the ability to manage my money and organise my life in a way in which feels comfortable. I think it is about time we started to spend more time as country supporting young adults and children to understand the world and how to live in society, it’s time we set people up to succeed and not to fail.

(Please know that I love my family very much, I am extremely lucky to have an amazing and supportive husband and extended family. I just wanted to share some of the inner goings on.)

Feeling 22??

I am back… I guess because again it has become a necessity for me to share my thoughts as a way to start processing them. Life has been a whole army of chaos over the last year it really has become quite unruly and just plain out of control!

I worked for the summer from about April 2014- October 2014 it was an amazing summer, I really enjoyed my job and the people I had working in my team where amazing! I loved training them and working closely with them and i guess i just really enjoyed being the expert, being admired and looked up to. Having said this the office politics within the senior roles were ridiculous. I do not think i helped at all though to be honest!

Start of summer: April, me and Tom the infamous ex were back together again, things were tough but we were working hard and enjoying things 🙂 We were both happier together than apart thats for sure! May comes around….. I took him away for his birthday which was lovely but something wasn’t quite right… I caught him watching telly for a long period of time whilst having sex with me!! Not really okay considering the film was ‘Click’ (which if you don’t know is quite emotional). So we got back things were a bit rough and he sort of decided he wanted out… we had some pretty traumatic phone calls and then called it off all together. This was pretty heartbreaking considering this wasn’t the first time we had be in this situation.

So then came the time for me to experience the summer single, not new to me as the summer before I has also been single, I quite quickly started seeing a guy i met on Tinder, he really was lovely, kind, thoughtful and interesting but there was just no spark, no passion so that didn’t last long. I then spent the rest of the summer getting close with one of the senior managers, who i must point out was living with and in a long term relationship with another member of senior staff. As you can imagine this ticked her off no end! I mean he wasn’t happy and nor was she, not my place I know but still has to be said. To add to this no quite awkward situation her best friend was my manager, she didn’t like our closeness at all. This really began to drive a rift in our friendship towards the end of the summer. At the same time as me being close to this manager man there was also another on of the other staff members I was spending alot of time with, watching films cuddling and just chilling out together. I guess I was getting the comfort i needed from this and it was nice having someone so wanting in my life but I didn’t want him so this wasn’t going to last. So to sum things up, I ended up sleeping with manager man and seriously pissing off the other guy as although no one knew about the manager man and I, my repeated rejection appeared to piss him off.

End of the summer is looming now and a girl I have been having fun with over summer starts to appear a bit more than just a friend, I should point out now I have never been into girls until her and probs won’t be again. Although I am a true believer of its the person you fall for not the sex so of course there will be anomalies. So anyway we grew close and the time for me to return to uni grew close, we spent alot of time together and after I drunkenly kissed her things sort of just sped off from there. I really enjoyed our closeness to start with but it soon became apparent that I was her carer more than anything else. I mean she really was hopeless at being self supportive and became so needy and desperate. She well and truly brought out the worst in me, we had such blazing rows and she really knew how to push my buttons. So I knew I wanted out after about a month, but I didn’t want to hurt her and didn’t really know how not to. Any way i began pushing her away, and this is how we lead to my current romantic status, I play ultimate frisbee, have done for about 2 years. I was at a tournament, the first I had had been to when i didn’t have any of my close friends there. I had gone because of the guys i played with regularly had asked if I was and I saw as an escape from the girl and some fun with him, platonic fun, he was in a long term relationship and had spoken to me about his proposal plans so defo nothing was going to happen. We spent the whole weekend in each others pockets, we went swimming in game breaks and just chatted about everything in fact the conversation didn’t really stop compared relationships and it became more apparent his relationships had more cracks then i thought.

Anyway I am not sure I have the emotional strength to rehash our relationship journey right now but it really was something quite special, we both broke up with our partners, she moved out, Start of the new year placement was looming and dissertation was due he helped a lot with the final parts of this!! I was pretty stressed about placement as I was being put into a school I really wasn’t happy about and about 40 mins away from home. With his support I reckon I was up for the challenge.. for the first 3 weeks we had a really good thing going on… we stayed alternate nights at each other placed and spent every moment together when we were not at work. It really was amazing, and the sex, the best I think i will ever experience, so connected to someone it was amazing. I knew in the back of my mind the whole time that it wasn’t healthy for him to jump straight out of such a serious relationship into one with me but I was happy to ride it out… then came the night when he decided he needed to try to again with his ex. It was rough and ever since it has been rough over the last 2 months he has changed his mind several times as to who he wants, he is an emotional wreck and I have been his buffer, although this time has been rough it has also had some really amazing times which I am grateful for.

But tonight has seen it all come to a head, we were seeing how things went and enjoying each others company but the lack of commitment was getting to me and he couldn’t cope with feeling guilty all the time. Guilty when he missed me and missed her at the same time like he wasn’t being fair to either of us. Then there is that element that he is just using me to give him comfort. Any way the ins and outs are pointless the position I am in now is that we are waiting a few weeks to see how things go not talking or seeing each other and have agreed to meet in a few weeks time. I am worried he will never message but we still play on the same team so who knows.

So basically I am lonely now and in a bit of dis pear as what to do.

Along side the love life, alot of other things have been happening, so I dropped off placement and have chosen to change my course so I will not come out as a qualified teacher, my car exploded so my dad brought me a new shit one AMAZING but emotional blackmail all the way, I owe a ridiculous amount of rent and seem to be be forever in debt 😦 with no way of paying it. I have been attempting to spend some time to find myself and learn to deal with things a bit better but not really managing as of yet, this has meant alot of talking to friends about my issues and has now led to me feeling a mixture of shame and embarrassment as also now means they ask me how things are alot more which makes me talk more and it isnt really solving any of my issues.

I have also been offered a potential new job full time permanent for when i graduate and have been offered a job in america for the summer two amazing things to of happened only prob is both expensive things to set up so I now alongside owing rent here have to figure out how to fund these other things as the job requires me moving about 1.5 hours away to London. So this is my current dilemma I need to solve whilst also worrying about the new love being okay and hoping he wants me at the end of all this so we can get married and babies and live happily ever after!!

I think it has helped writing it all down but I still don’t know how to solve it, maybe there really is nothing to solve, I need the money for the practicalities but perhaps then i just carry on living and stop worrying about how i dealing with things? maybe that’s the way forward, accepting that all this is just who i am and just me, that maybe i don’t follow what society would deam normal or all the moutains of advice from my loved ones but i do things my way and that’s just how i work.

MMM this is all food for thought… but i need sleep

Apologies for the massive offload it’s prob the most boring un sense making post your ever read.

Keep smiling 🙂

But tog

Creative writing….

I have just finished my most recent university module which was named creative writing in the primary classroom. Overall I would say I enjoyed this module, it gave me a real chance to engage with my imagination but I would have to agree with the following blog, writing is very difficult to judge and mark. Writing is so personal, I learnt so much about our mental processes that we visit during the procedure of writing. We use soi many of our personal life experiences to give us clues on how to develop our writing. We interpret our environment in a personal way, this then informs our writing. Due to all these personal influences I am left with the dilemma of how am going to even attempt to judge a child’s writing without the fear of cause them psychological self esteem issues. Of course as a teacher it is often considered that is would be judging a child on their ability to write a coherent and aesthetically pleasing text but is this really important considering the technological advancements that we are working with? 
http://thepaperbookcollective.com/2013/05/29/the-newly-conscious-young/

Overall I would the teaching of and the marking of writing are both complex processes which involve a lot of thought and consideration. We all know we hate it when we have put a lot of thought into our own writing and someone comes along and scraps it like its worthless. My aim is to never let a child who has really tried feel this way! I struggle now with my writing and know that I will never be publishable but this hasn’t stopped me blogging or going to uni and writing. I just wish that I had a little bit more backing relating to my writing at uni! Something more personal, something which recognises me as a writer and not just another bit of work a lecturer has to mark.

23 things….. Blah blah blah

The girl who wrote this blog has an outlook on life which I can imagine is desired by many and on the other hand is hated by others. This has been clear in the impact it has had and that’s it gone viral, it made it my facebook and as you know this blog and my fb are not linked at all! I have read the recently ‘freshly pressed’ response and again agree and admire the women behind those words. I am left questioning why this has caused such an uproar…how can so many people be so angry at one girl and her choices in her life? She blogs just like you and me and uses it as a space to express her views and emotion, so why is she being ridiculed in public and put to shame for how she feels? 

I wouldn’t imagine having such a strong opinion that i would publicly put down those choices of another person, I get that the choice and words she wrote might not be right for everyone but wouldn’t the world be an extremely boring place if we all thought along the same dead set line and made the same sensible choices in life. Yeah okay society creates rules which many of us feel obliged to follow but why if we do not do so is this considered wrong… her opinion was that you should be free and independent and  not reliant on others, grad life running. The girl who wrote the response see’s life in a different way and enjoys being surrounded by the people she really cares about and wants different things from life. Who are we to disagree? Why should we be the one’s to judge? Should we not just celebrate our differences and congratulate one another on the steps we take to better ourselves? 

Blogging is a way for us to express who we are. By no means do i mean don’t have an opinion I just think there are better ways to go about voicing it.  Nobody is right and nobody is wrong we are all just different. 

Tom…

So I more developments in my love life…. I know I have spoken a lot about staying happy and spending a lot of time focused on me which I am holding close to my heart 🙂 I have been thinking a lot about the things that make me happy and one of them is and was my ex boyfriend TOM. We didn’t end on bad terms just a lot of pain because neither of us wanted it to be the end but we both knew it was the only way we could move forward with our relationship. Neither of us said never to being back together but we both had things to get straight first. The more I thought about being happy the more I wanted to be back with him. So I spoke to some friends and it was suggested as I thought already that I should make this my endeavor, my mission, my aim to get him back. I spoke to him more and without wanting to our conversations became emotional and we discussed what went wrong and were we stood. We know we have a lot of trust to gain back between us and I really want to show him he can trust me. (just a quick reminder he is 350 miles away from me) Due to the distance we can only talk over the phone or by text and messages as we all know never come across how they should and can be easily twisted into meaning other things. So we have had time over the last week or so when things have become awkward which is tricky I have worked hard at trying to stay reasonable and strong and not to sink back to old ways. 

I asked the question had he slept with anyone else, he said yes…… so this was really tough to hear, I know I shouldn’t mind because that’s what I wanted him to do but unfortunately it really wasn’t that easy but I remained relatively calm. He then asked me back and I said no!!! I know big lie as I was seeing someone only a few weeks ago. The guilt of lying to him really got to me and I knew I had to tell him, so yesterday I told him, he asked a lot of questions but on the phone seemed relatively and I guess surprisingly calm. We continued our conversation and he left the conversation very calm and seemingly happy. He said he would text me when he got to work, which was in about 3 hours time, I got no message, I was okay with this and just asked when he was home so I could call. I have not heard from him since except from a message to say he needs time to process it all. 

I am now left stuck, just hanging on. I hate this! How do I make this turn around, make it better and make him see that I do only want him and I want to make this work. I am happy with him, the happiest i have ever been. So how do I make this better? Sorry about the rant. 

I have been super poorly for the last few days hence the lack of posting, I am still working toward my vow’s and with continue to do so. Thank you again for reading!

 

I hope you can help me some advice for my dilemma…help a fellow blogger out.  

“To be nobody b…

“To be nobody but yourself in a world that’s doing it’s best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to the fight. Never stop fighting.” E.E. Cummings

Motivation to keep on smiling 🙂 

The Loneliness Generation

This is so true…there is such a difference between loneliness and being alone. I need to work on being better at being happy when I am alone and not seeing it as lonliness.

Start of a new year….start of new me?

I love to look at life with as much optimism as I can but I know I will end this year with a very similar set of flaws that I have now. I perhaps wouldn’t really want to change me, maybe underneath the surface I am the person I want to be. Isn’t the new me thing a little misguided? I am unsure of the person I am deep down as I am sure many of us are. Who can say they have never followed popular music because their friends did or liked particular clothing because everyone else was wearing it? This blog just sums up perfectly what it is we really fear and how best to approach the new year. It’s 2014. Now what?.

I think we need to think less about the ‘new me’ and more about the person that we are…if this leads us to thinking about changing ourselves for the better then by all means change away but never forget what your core values are. The blog above is right we all shy away from change in our lives, we all approach change with inset fear and high emotions. I want to change this. We are all different and we all know this yet most of us stick to social norms of likes and dislikes. I want to reevaluate my wishes for 2014 with the aim to come out on top! The best way to do this is not to go about trying to change all of me or to go find myself, all I need to do is to approach life with a smile. See the positive side of change. Approach situations with strength and power and with the knowing that whatever happens, good or bad, I can learn from it. Grab every opportunity with both hands and make plenty of foolish mistakes. I never want to forget that I am 21 and have a lot of years ahead of me to have the perfect job, man and family.

I vow to stop getting caught up with life’s little problems.

I vow to always find the silver lining.

I vow to spend a little less time worrying about what others want and a little more time worrying about what I really want.

I never want to stop changing and learning about myself and the world around me. Accept the good with the bad and the bad with the ugly. Life doesn’t always have an equal balance of good and bad, sometimes things are rubbish, and sometimes we have to look a little harder for those things that make us smile. Never stop looking. for me this year is about continuing my journey and planning for the life after uni!