The Mummy-Vortex

If someone had told me almost seven years ago that I’d be sat here typing words about how hard ‘just being a mum everyday’ could be… or how lonely, isolating, and constantly emotionally draining moments of parenthood can be – I’d be telling them to fuck off.

It doesn’t mean it’s not wonderful. Because it so often is. It doesn’t mean my kids aren’t the fire of my life. They are. It just means today – on a miserable Tuesday evening in February where I’ve literally stopped my toddler-son head butting his sister 5,000 times wearing a hulk mask, after another un-eaten dinner, another loooooooooonnnnnngggg bedtime, another series of angry-poos where I’m not allowed to look him in the eye until it’s time to wipe his arse, and being told ‘Mummy’s girl bottom is really stinky’ in the middle of toddler group… I’m a bit over it this evening.

No-one can tell you. No-one can prepare you. Even you with a magical time machine and some week-day-pinot-grigio in your hand can’t tell you – it’s a fact. It’s just hard some days.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just boring as fuck? I picture myself at parties discussing the fact that what I ‘do’ everyday is spend 90% of my day asking my son if he needs to go for a poo. And the other 10% of the day either being pooed on. Or sleeping. (Just kidding – I close my eyes whilst eating a twix in the utility room and crying a bit and that’s close enough.)

I want to have more fun stuff. I want to go out… sort of. But I’m honestly just too exhausted most of the time. So what I really want to do, is occasionally go out and make sure FACEBOOK FUCKING KNOWS ABOUT IT… when really behind the scenes I peak at about 10pm and start sipping water and wondering why the fuck I wore an underwired bra, and if I can get my Uber now. It sucks but it’s true.

I’m naturally a bit of a worrier… not obsessively. But becoming a parent has brought out the side of me that lies in bed at night and worries if I’ve made the right choices, been the best I can be, and remembers that time back in 2007 when I didn’t get on with that girl I worked with and had that row where I didn’t really say that I meant and now my mind is gonna keep replaying it to me in different variations so I can forever regret not being enough of a badass… FOREVER.

Ok – that might be a slight exaggeration but seriously? Being a grown up sucks sometimes. Adulting is HARD. There are far too many forms and uncomfortable situations, and times I was supposed to go for an eye test. Friendships are harder, relationships suddenly seem to require ‘work’, and there’s constant little bits of disappointment every day and that feeling of wondering if you’re fucking it all up…? Just seems to be looming there. All the time.

I have moments where I just wish I could transport myself back to my early twenties and scream at myself for not making more of that time I got to sleep, and wear thongs, and have manageable hangovers, and taking all the shit I miss right now for granted… But then there’s times I sneak into my kids rooms before I go to bed at night and watch them sleeping for a few moments and I feel like all the shitty adulting is 1000% worth it.

I have moments, days, sometimes even entire weeks where I absolutely ace life. I feel like mother-flipping unicorn. Followed swiftly by times where I want the universe to swallow me up and take me somewhere I can nap on a bed of Toblerones and there’s no fucking washing, or relentless pile of crap at the bottom of the stairs that no-one is capable of tidying up except me. Apparently.

But here I am in my mid thirties realising that I am stuck in a bit of Mummy-Vortex if I’m really honest with myself. And that adulthood mostly consists of collecting a lot of Bags for Life in the space under my sink, saying yes to things I have absolutely no intention of attending and spending most of my time dreaming of “time off” from my kids, before getting it and feeling overwhelmingly guilty and missing them so much I MIGHT DIE. (Before getting back to them and the whole process starts again. Obvs.)

So yeah. You can’t win – we can all pull out cliches about nothing being worth it unless it’s hard work and all that bollocks, but maybe those sayings exist for a reason.

All I know is, regardless of whether I get it right all the time or not (clearly don’t!), winging it is part of parenting and part of grown up life. And just because I’m happiest in my pyjamas on a Friday night with a takeaway and a bottle of wine, ready for a weekend with the kids regardless of their amazing ability to ask for snacks every 12 seconds and HAVE AN ACTUAL ROW ABOUT WHO HAS THE BEST WILLY EVEN THOUGH ONE OF THEM IS A GIRL – that’s ok.

#themummyvortex
#wineforthat

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