Therapy. It seems like America is addicted to it yet over here, across the pond, we're allergic to tell people about our therapy. Mine, for now, seems to be this: writing. Once a week, on a Thursday morning. But today, it's Wednesday evening because I’m already thinking about this post and I have the urge to write it down.
During a bad time in my life, where I wasn’t sure where life was headed, I met with a doctor therapist who would help me know which way to go. She told me how anxiety and excitement are close to each other with how our body deciphers it. Sometimes we don’t know one from the other. She also taught me that when in doubt, I should know that within me ‘I got this’. She helped me realise that I needed my inner me to be my pillar of strength and how I needed to have an underlying voice telling myself that I can get through anything. Self confidence. I don’t think we’re born with it. We make it happen. I forever grateful for meeting that woman.
We are nearing 4 weeks with no childcare and I'm looking forward to some time with just one child (June will still be at home with me) while Olive goes back to nursery. The only thing is that she's sleeping the best she's ever slept and I'm scared that it's going to get worse again but hey ho, all things are phases that pass. Even the good ones.
So I'm upstairs and Olive is coming up.
I got 5 minutes peace.
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I’m writing again as June falls asleep on boob. I’m having a great day but it’s totally and overwhelmingly exhausting. The girls are just making me laugh so much and they bring so much joy but I can’t get away! Even those 5 minutes I had was disturbed by Olive falling over and knocking her yoghurt everywhere. It was even in her hair. They want me for everything. Every moment they need me for something. Ice cream gives me peace. As does Stick Man or a pantomime on the telly. I have done every bedtime for three and a half years (bar giving birth and the night after in hospital) and I wish some nights that Oscar could do it all but he can’t yet so we do it together. I bumped into a friend in the woods and she mentioned that she’s still needed 24/7 and can’t get away yet (she’s just had her third boy). I know I’ll be able to have a night off one day but for now, I’m their world and my exhaustion is just tiredness. It could be worse. I could be doing this alone. Or in a country with no hot water. If parenting is this hard with all I’ve got, I can’t imagine the inner strength other mothers/fathers/carers have out there - you’re all amazing - whoever is reading this.
Transitioning from boobing to sleep to cuddling to sleep with Olive was the biggest milestone of last year and she’s just so lovely at bedtime now. June will go through that too at some point and I can’t wait to read them both a book to sleep.
Anyway, therapy. This all came about because it feels like sometimes, in my life, there comes points where I’m struggling to push past an emotional barrier. I think Oscar and I have been together roughly the same time as my first long term partner so it feels like a strange time. Or maybe it’s the 7 year itch. We’re not unhappy, I’m just currently hitting a blocker with a few things and I need to work through them.
So, to my history. My first partner left me for a woman at work. He went for dinner round her house before he left me. He left me on Boxing Day. The recurring words here are that of being ‘left’. Unfortunately, I’ve been left with the fear of being left. So - in order to protect myself - I now want to run before being hurt again. Oscar promises and assures me he doesn’t want to leave but I have that inner worry that I will do something to make him suddenly leave (like with previous partner when it came out the blue).
My friend and I were talking about this deep-rooted fear and that maybe I should work through those feelings somehow. She helped me see how we have to find the right form of therapy for ourselves. Even when writing the above down - it’s made me think whether maybe I just didn’t see the signs of my first partner leaving. I knew it wasn’t right when I stood out of the window at his old flat and knew I wanted to come home to Newbury and have babies (even if I didn’t know the Father yet!). I knew we were stuck but I didn’t know what life was without him. He was everything I knew from ages 17-23. A huge part of being a young waitress, going through University, and becoming a young woman was with him. I didn’t know what I was without him. Oxford became my second home. Bath my third. Then I came home to Berkshire to be a Mum with someone I never thought I’d find.
Who knew I’d end up with the cute floppy chestnut brown haired boy with big eyes from the White House down the road? Who knew I’d end up with the boy who I went to Primary School with? I took a picture of Oscar with a disposable camera when we were 10 at PGL, standing outside the dorms. His cheesy grin staring back at me with his arms round his old friends, Tom and Patrick. When I left to go to Oxford for 10 years, I didn’t know I’d be coming back to Newbury to find him at a birthday party. I didn’t know how tall he’d got or how his hair had darkened. He still had that smile, and he said how pretty I was. I was hooked. He had a tweed blazer on and I wore a black jumpsuit with white palm trees all over it. The party was in July, I came back in Autumn to see if he was still around. He was, and we started going on big walks with our friends where I’d try my hardest to find a time where I could walk with him alone to find out what he liked. I made sausage rolls for a walk one week. Turns out he was hooked, too.
Back to Oxford, it’s important to feel grateful for going through heartache: I see it a blessing. I feel blessed that I can see now how my first love and I were great friends but not great lovers. I feel blessed to experience his close-knit family and I learnt how a big Irish family has such a big heart. I feel blessed for all the memories of our time and feel grateful that that old life led me to this one right here - where I’m settled, loved, in love, and safe.
Maybe learning that through heartache, I can empathize with people going through pain. It’s made me a kinder person. Less inward looking and more available to help others. Through someone else’s terrible actions, I’ve become a better person from learning how to heal myself and I’ve learnt who I am and who I want to be. I remember pleading with him to help me whilst curled up against a radiator. He left me on the floor. Real love doesn’t leave people like that. I remember my Mum coming to help me pack. I remember my Dad coming over to cook me a pie because I didn’t want to eat.
Before that pain, I was a wild one in Oxford with no real direction. Now, I have a plethora of ideas out on my horizon and I’m genuinely excited about where my life will take me. And I’ve got someone I want to go on that journey with. We make pretty good sausage rolls. We also make cute kids, too. And maybe, until now, I’ve never realised how lucky I really am.
Maybe this is therapy.
Find happiness in the journey. Happiness shouldn’t be a destination. Waiting for happiness once something happens means happiness will never arrive. Happiness should be with us every day, in all the little things.
I’ll probably still pop along to my acupuncturist. Erica Yung. She is a guru. Every time I told her something emotionally heavy, she’d yawn and say that’s how she lets out the negative energy. She is wonderful. I must visit her again.
Until then, I’ll keep writing because it seems to be working at the moment.
Lacrosse is back this weekend and childcare starts back on Tuesday. We need to book tickets to travel to Jersey in April.
Moving on and looking forward. I got this.
Oh, and if you ever see anyone crying, and curled in a ball up next to a radiator - please bend down and help them: they really need someone. But then again, if you walk away, maybe that person will end up understanding the real true meaning of love and life.
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