big shoes, big fall

So I’m a mum of 4 young women. No real news there. My house is filled with vaginas and I have always loved it. I mean I yearned for a little man, for a long time, I think because social norms told me I was defective for not producing one. Anyway, I got side tracked. The challenges for the last 6+ months in our house for one of our young ladies has been slowly escalating and we have tried everything to get her to see past her own wants, needs and desires. 

My heart had started to show shows of breaking apart, because what she was saying and doing was slowly tearing our world apart. It’s been like the cancer that had already smashed our world into pieces was regrouping and sinking it’s teeth into whoever was left. The behaviour has been escalating where fierce verbal arguments seemed to becoming a daily occurrence. 

These fights were like a finely balanced glass ball on top of a very busy life of juggling work, single parent living half the month, study for my course and making sure the rest of my humans weren’t being to affect by this monster. I’ve scream, I’ve cried in the shower where I hope no one could hear me, I’ve begged the heavens to just give my Mum back because I can’t do this and then I’ve also begged the heavens to take me away. 

At times I question whether my depression will just grab me from behind and pull me back off the ledge. The thought scares me because I have worked so hard to be the best version of myself when my world has been a struggle. The difference between it winning or losing at the moment is I’m being honest about how sad this is making me. 

The last two weeks the fights have been coming more frequently. We almost could go a week, then it was every 4 days and now it’s been everyday. She is walking around, like a human shell of what she once was. No smiling, barely talking and then when she would talk, it would barely be a minute before she erupted because she didn’t like what was being said. 

I’ve openly said I don’t know how to help anymore and then it happened. Everyone told her how she made them feel. Tears fell like rain on a dusty paddock, it was cleansing. It hurt to see everyone has been hurting because of the arguments but we all needed to know how everyone was feeling. She needed to know how it was affecting her sisters and to see the pain in her strong Dads face. 

So since this happening last week, we have reached out to professionals for help. The fighting and arguing that is present in our house is not normal for our home and we need to help her. She wanted to runaway and this scared the crap out of me when I found the bags. Inside of this angry human, we know lives a beautiful human who is just hidden at the moment. 

Being a parent is a very solo journey that we rarely share our hard times of. It becomes very isolating and we are all guilty of thinking that the grass is always greener somewhere else. This moment in my journey is requiring great strength, that at times I just have not had. I feel a huge pressure to be better than I’m being and the fear of failure is huge. I feel the huge shoes that need to be filled from my Mum. Shoes I’m struggling to fill, but know I have to keep growing so I can one day. I need to be more for the girls and myself. 

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So this is only around a month late in doing, but how time flies when we are in the middle of a pandemic. Last month two major milestones collided like a meteor hitting the earth. I turned the naughty forty, argh how it pains me to speak this out loud. I do not feel forty, I’m told I don’t look forty but seriously people are just being nice and while this major milestone occurred so did the 1st anniversary of Mum’s passing.

I had struggled a lot in the weeks prior to my birthday. Struggled with my loss, struggled with having to share this moment which should be joy with profound sadness, struggled with not wanting to admit how much I was still hurting and struggled with the fact age although just a number is scaring the f*ck out of me. 

So the morning of my birthday, which I honestly thought would be hell as my grief would consume me, was in fact beautiful. I woke to Marty’s warmth behind me and a sense of calm and peace. It was like Mum was holding me too. My day was filled with such love and joy from my girls love, to the kids at work who brought me in not 1 but 3 cakes, which was overwhelmingly lovely, the staff for being beautiful and to the dinner with decorations and favourite pastries, that awaited me when I got home. 

It was like the day I had dreaded became a day of joy. Not because she is gone but because she wouldn’t want me to not be happy. Her dying on my birthday although was terrible, it is now and will be forever her greatest gift to me. To not see her suffer anymore, to not see my beautiful strong Mum in pain. That is how I will forever treat her anniversary and my birthday from now on. 

So before the country went into lock down we celebrated my birth with a party that was pure extra. Extra in every way! We ate great food, with all my people and the cocktails were pure (very strong) decadence. Laughter and joy echoed through the star lit night. I’m forever grateful for the humans we do life with, their love and friendship is life’s greatest gift. 

Being forty is not what I thought, it’s not the end. I feel like I am stronger than I ever have been. I’m more grounded in who I truly am. Big love, Bx