three memories

I've been trying so hard to write something today. Anything! Everything feels dark and scary and uncertain, and I can't seem to focus. So I've resorted to brain dumping, which is basically when you just allow your thoughts to flow out of you until something coherent comes out. Here we go:

Occasionally when my kids are at school I get this deep, aching need to see them. Would it be okay to just go and get them? Make up some bullshit excuse? Or rock up at the school office and say, sorry, but I think I need them more than you do at this exact moment?

Nah. That's like, codependent. Or something. They've got their own lives to live. Sentence structures and number bonds and friendship politics and such. I don't know what it is about today. We've got workmen in the house, and no running water, so I ended up walking to the supermarket just to get away from it (and to do the world's longest wee). And then, I don't know, I think it was something to do with the change of temperature, the cold starting to bite at my fingertips, the darkness of the daytime now, the adverts for Christmas everywhere. I always used to associate Christmas with my own childhood, that deep fuzzy nostalgia for a time that feels increasingly further away. Now I associate Christmas with my children.

A memory: I am walking to our weekly toddler group. I have my daughter in the buggy. My son is snug in my belly. I am at the 'waddling' stage of pregnancy. I will have this baby by Christmas. This baby, who I cannot presently see but I can feel elbowing around inside me, will be with us, on Christmas morning, as we open our presents. I can't imagine it.

I am very tired. The day is long and grey. My daughter is a bit grumpy. She's been my constant companion for the last three years; my funny, sweet, cuddly little girl. 'Mummy,' she says, so quietly I have to lean over the top of the buggy to hear her, 'I feel poorly.'

I sack off the toddler group, go to the shop and buy a copy of CBeebies magazine, and we spend the morning inside, in the warm, doing Christmas crafts and watching Peppa Pig.

'We'll go to toddler group next week,' I reassure her. She doesn't mind. It's more to reassure myself. When you are a stay-at-home Mum, every little bit of connection and community you can find is deeply important, and this church toddler group, with its old wooden puzzles and efficient leaders and excellent selection of biscuits, has become an integral part of our week. We'll definitely go next week, I think. A couple of years later, this toddler group will close down for good, but I don't know that then. At the moment, my days feel so long, and there seem to be so many of them, stretching into the distance. I'm not even thirty yet. There seems to be just so much time.

A small moment of sadness, now, in 2024, on this boring, missing-the-children day: I can't remember the last time either of them called me 'Mummy'. My son says 'Mama,' a habit he's fallen into and can't get out of, or increasingly, 'Mum'. My daughter says 'Mum' now. Far too old for 'Mummy'.

I don't feel completely devastated by this. It's just strange. The shift. When did it happen?

I've read (and probably, written) hundreds of earnest blog posts over the years about motherhood and how it doesn't last and how you should enjoy every single second of it because one day they'll be grown-up and gone and your life will be a hollow shell compared to what it was before. It's what all the older ladies at the toddler groups say, all with the same wistful expression, remembering their own former lives with their own children: It goes so fast, my love, it goes so fast.

And I've read many equally strong opinions about how parenting small children is shit, actually, it's relentless and never-ending and you should counteract it by becoming a cool mum, the kind of mum who posts pictures of her kids having tantrums online, the kind of mums who only half-joke about what time it's acceptable to start drinking on a school night. The mums who say things like I couldn't be at home with my kids, I'd go insane.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, isn't it. That's the boring reality of it. Life can be so mundane and distressing and lovely.

When we moved into this house, I felt massively displaced. In all honesty, I've been displaced for a good few years now. This was just a kind of external symbol of it. I think I have become a victim to this modern phenomenon of not feeling like I belong anywhere except, well, here. I work here, I live here. I've got a circle of friends that I see and my own family, but that's it. I don't have church. I don't have the toddler groups and the library rhyme time sessions. I don't have a workplace. I'm sort of on the periphery of things. And it's funny because to my children I am their home. I am their ultimate place of belonging, along with Chris. It's why that one episode of Bluey really gets to me. (It's Sleepytime, obviously, it's always Sleepytime.) I once read a quote about children and parents, that as parents you are the suns, and the children are planets, existing in your orbit, with a constant gravitational pull towards you. You are the thing that anchors them in place. It's a nice thought, isn't it, in an egotistical sort of way. But what am I pulling towards? Where am I getting warmth from? At the moment I'm kind of just floating around here. And it's cold. And I probably know deep down what the answer is to that question, I know where answering that question will lead me, but I don't think I'm ready to face up to it just yet.

Anyway. The house was a shit tip. I can say this with my full chest. We did most of the box-moving ourselves and there was stuff, miscellaneous stuff, boxes and baskets and bags and loose objects everywhere. I came home from the school run the morning after we moved, locked the front door, put on a song, and burst into tears, sitting on the floor amongst the boxes.

It's almost two months later and I still have that song in my head quite often. It's 'Crave' by Paramore. I was singing it under my breath on the way to the shop to do my epic wee earlier. You say, live in the present, I'm already dreaming of how it begins, and I'm trying to savor the moment, but I know the feeling will come to an end.

I've got to stop talking about song lyrics in my newsletters. It comes across as massively pretentious. Here we go anyway. I like the song. I connect with it quite deeply. I am constantly cataloguing these moments. Partly because I'm a writer and that's what we do, isn't it. We squirrel things away for later, hoard our everyday conversations because we know we'll need it later for our own sustenance. But also, I'm just that way minded. I don't know how often I am fully present in a moment. Part of me is always aware that this moment is going to disappear and then I won't be able to have it again.

I listened to the song 'And Nothing is Forever' by The Cure the other night. I tried to explain the lyrics to Chris afterwards but I couldn't do it without choking up.

I know, I know
That my world has grown old
And nothing is forever
I know, I know
That my world has grown old
But it really doesn't matter
If you say we'll be together
If you promise you'll be with me in the end

There aren't many songs that make me instantly cry every time I hear it, but this is probably going to be one of them. I DMd my friend Daniel:

Me: This album is going to break me isn't it
Him: It is, yes. Sorry, I should have warned you!

Another memory: I am in the car with Chris. We are listening to the album Light Grenades by Incubus. We are on our way to the breast clinic at a hospital in Bristol. It's 2020. It's another one of those endlessly grey days. I'm not allowed to take Chris with me to this appointment. I leave the car and cross the hospital grounds, rifling around in my pocket for my face mask and my appointment letter, and I am trying not to cry. Round and round in my head go the lyrics:

Sing this song, remind me that we'll always have each other, when everything else is gone

and I want my husband so badly I almost turn on my heel and get back in the car with him. I don't want to be going to this hospital, I don't want to have this scary appointment, I don't want to think about fucking death anymore, because it's all I think about. I don't want to go in there and have my boobs felt up by what feels like a dozen people, I don't want to lay topless and vulnerable on a hospital bed, I don't want to have the ultrasound scanning wand pushed deep into my already inflamed tissue, I don't want to have to bite my lip from the pain and silently cry and beg please God don't let them find anything. I do it anyway. I am so relieved to be back in the car with a leaflet and an 'all clear' that I bury my face into Chris's neck and try to inhale as much of him as I can, until my breathing goes back to normal, and we can drive home again.

Oh
If I turn into another
Dig me up from under what is covering
The better part of me

Life gets on top of you, doesn't it. I've not been myself lately. Over the last couple of days I've finally - after reaching absolute breaking point and starting therapy - started to feel a bit like the Megan I was before I got so preoccupied with all my little problems. It's not like I'm magically better now. It's more like ... I'm starting to wake up a bit. I look at Chris differently. More like I used to, before I got all tired and wrapped up in myself.

Last memory. I'm walking to Matalan. I need clothes because I'm going to Plymouth at the weekend to see my boyfriend. I want a miniskirt, because I am a teenager and I don't feel the cold. I have my iPod (it was a pink first-generation iPod Mini, in case you're wondering). I am listening to Zero 7's The Garden. I'm newly in love. It's happened so quickly that I literally feel lightheaded a lot of the time. And I am quietly singing:

It's never gonna be normal
You and me
What you're signing on for is a storm at sea

So if you think you're tough
Give me all your love
And I'll give you every little piece of me

I look at that version of me with a lot of fondness. It goes so fast, my love. It goes so fucking fast.

The past is a nice safe space. (Mostly.) The present feels like prolonged eye contact: it's just a bit much. And the future? Well. I can't rely on that at all.

Perhaps one day I'll learn to be fully present in a given moment. I'll fix my brain. I'll figure out how to push past all this existential fear and just allow myself to, you know, be. In the meantime, I need to get my shoes on, and go out into the cold, and pick up the kids.