I finished work! The moment I’ve been crawling towards for the last few weeks like a dying beetle has finally arrived. The relief is colossal. I never knew I could feel so tired and broken. Maybe it’s preparation for being a little old lady one day. There is certainly a similar level of tea drinking and biscuit eating going on.
As well as feeling relieved, the sense of transition has taken me be surprise. I have my feet in two worlds now, not really wholly in either. My relationships with the people around me are changing, with virtually everyone. Some people have nothing to say to me anymore, to some I am just a baby-vessel they have nothing in common with, some are wistful as if I have been lost somehow, some are excited, some are fascinated, some (a very few) are just exactly as they always were. Predictably I am being drawn closer into my own family, in-laws suddenly dancing round me like I’m sitting on a golden egg, my own parents over-emotional and more interested in me than they have been since I was in bermuda shorts. My Mum left tearful today as she won’t see me again until I am to someone else what she is to me.
The world is moving around me even though I feel like I’m standing still. It’s a strange and dizzying sensation. People moving closer, people stepping back. I’m not honestly sure how much is real and how much is in my hormone-addled, over-sensitive brain.
Perhaps the trick is not to care too much about any of it, real or imagined. Maybe life is teaching me to have patience and rely a bit more on myself. To forge out into the unknown with nothing more than my (radically depleted) wits and a bit of faith in my own instinct instead of constantly building a picture of myself through other people’s eyes. Maybe that’s a pretty good kick-off for some confident parenting.
Billie Holiday is great thinking music, isn’t she? I promise to talk flippantly about something pointless next week.