I’ve decided to restart my blog after much difficulty in recent life. The past two years have been very painful, and won’t be something I discuss here. But to cut a long story short, I am single. I am also a single parent. Scared yet?
When you offer this information to someone for the first time, most people force a smile while silently thanking all the gods they can think of that they aren’t in my position. There are millions maybe hundreds of millions of people in the same situation as I am, struggling, alone for the most part, putting on a brave smiley mask for all the world to see. I know what is under that brave mask, the thoughts that slide in under the can-do exterior.
‘I’ll look like a failure if I slip up, even once.’
‘I can’t ask for help because it makes people think I’m weak.’
I can hear the condescending tones in smug couples’ voices when they snuggle up on the sofa with a glass of wine in hand, ‘It’s only parenting, darling. How hard can it be? We manage just fine.’ Well, to all those smug couples out there, and you know who you are, I wish to say quite a few things, but unfortunately the majority of those things aren’t for decent folk’s ears. Some of the more printable things can be found throughout this blog. Let me kick off with just one.
‘Life is not predictable. It will throw whatever it likes at us, usually choosing the least opportune moment for us to duck away. It’s what we make of these ‘curveballs’ that will, ultimately, define us.’
Admittedly, these curveballs are easier to negotiate when you have a partner to lean on. They make the hard going feel like a shorter duration and worth the journey. When you’re a single parent trying to do it all alone, no one is by your side to comfort you on that journey.
In fact, my particular curveballs tend to smack me straight across the chops. I have to stand there and take it head on because I don’t have anyone to help deflect the blow. I mean, of course, I have fantastic friends and brilliant family I could go to. But it is not the same. Somehow, I actually feel guilty asking for help, because although I love the people around me, I know and understand they have their own lives to lead with their own curveballs to dodge.
Parenting is the single hardest job in today’s world, but when you have to do that job alone, it can seem like ten times the journey it would be if you had a partner to share the load. Being a parent, to two little boys in my case, is so difficult and so comical at times that it can be a situation where I either laugh or I’ll cry.
I’ve been single for two years. I became single and developed very bad depression, unfortunately, both of these curveballs were flung at me at the same time. The beautiful thing is I‘ve come through that dark spider web of depression and relationship breakdown, into the blinding glare of sunshine on the other side.
I really hate it when people say depression isn’t real, or that it’s ‘all in your head’. It is a very real, often debilitating illness. I’ve been there. And I’m here now, still alive, and some days are better than others. I now make a conscious effort to keep the darkness from creeping at the edges. And to anyone else out there in a similar position as I was, all I can say is I’m here for you.
Keep on going. There’s sunshine in life for all of us. The path there just has twists and turns for each of us.
Posts
