Write on…and on…and on…

I am full of words at the moment. Absolutely spilling, brimming, twirling over with them.

I thought Twitter would help.

It just seems to have unleashed more of them.

There is a quiet desperation humming away in the background as I struggle to shove all these things, trivial and serious, down on the page. It is troubling me rather.  I have never been quiet, wordless, mute. I am always the one over talking, over thinking, over writing. Going on…

I am the one people think: ‘Just shut the fuck up now.’ about. I am used to that. But even I am finding myself and my need to document, write, collate and collect my experiences and thoughts exhausting.

I think it might be related to Oscar going to school.

Obviously I miss him.  He is the only one of the three who I had full time from day one.  He was also the baby.  There are no more.  There will be no more.

I did not cry when I left him in his classroom on his first day.  I was not sad in that way. I was, quite frankly, looking forward to the peace.

I think I am sad because it marks the end of my babies altogether.  I don’t want any more, don’t get me wrong. I struggle with the three I have at the best of times, love them fiercely though I do.  I do not want to go back to broken nights and colic, and hefting a bag the size of a small town round on my aching shoulders. I love the freedom of not having to take a buggy everywhere.  I love being able to converse with my children properly. Going back to coos and gurgles is not the answer.

And then there is the thought of losing more in the quest to have another. I cannot lose any more children. I will not take that risk again.  My heart is full of lost babies. There is no room for any more.

The sadness is bigger than something that can be filled by an individual baby anyway. Even if I had another child, this particular sadness would come eventually. Every one who has children has to face the fact that one day they will stop, and that will be the end of a phase in their lives that will never return.  I knew Oscar would be the last baby as soon as he was born.  But I know it more profoundly now, in a way that matters more deeply to me.

I don’t know how to explain it really. Despite all the words. I know I am not getting it quite right.

I just know that since he has been at school I have not really been able to settle to anything with concentration. I flit from thing to thing like a gnat. Everything wears me out. I try to capture it all in words.  Every last detail.

I think I am trying to hold onto a part of me that is dying by writing myself down, and I am not yet ready to relinquish my hold over this person who I was, despite knowing that my time as her is ending, and that it is a good thing.

For what are we if we are not words made flesh, or flesh expressing our meaning in words? We are memories, thoughts, feelings, ideas, pain, anguish, love, amusement, boredom, hopes and dreams. We are all these things in a sheath of skin, making our way into the unknown, and if we cannot capture it, think about it, reflect on it and own it, what do we have?

I am trying to capture the essence, the shadows, the thoughts and meanings of my dying self, before I start on the next leg of my adventure, and it is making me sad and thoughtful and anxious and unsure.

What kind of future will I make for myself now I have more time to be me? Me that doesn’t have to wipe bottoms and blow noses all day? I don’t know.  I kid myself that I might have known pre children, and that children were a hiatus on the journey, but I know that isn’t true.

My children have been the greatest part of my journey so far. Not because I have helped create three, perfect human beings (which I have), but because by their testing of me and questioning of me, and their provoking me and loving me and demanding things of me that I never knew I was capable of, they have shaped and changed me irrevocably for the better.

I hope I am wiser now. I hope I will make better decisions now. I hope I won’t fuck things up as much now. I probably will, but I hope I learn more quickly from those mistakes.  I am worried that the children were a crutch that allowed me to be braver, and now they no longer need me in the same way, that I might go back to being more cowardly, like I was in my old life, before children.

I really have no idea what will happen.  Which is part of why I am so nervous.

But I have to accept that change is the natural order of things.  I have a new phase of my life to live now. I have to find my own meaning and my own way.  That does not mean I stop being a mum. I will never stop being a mum, but I will never be a mum in the same way again.

Which is fine.

I hope.

And I know I have expressed myself clumsily, but I am hoping that expressing myself clumsily is better than keeping it all bottled up while I gibber on about sherbet lemons and Dale Winton, and maybe I can make some quiet space in my head now.

For about five minutes.

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