I made it to a toddler group last week! What a bittersweet experience. Firstly, shellshock: the noise level and general pandemonium of 30 odd mums and their offspring in one psychedelically toy-filled room would have sent me straight home again if mum hadn’t already driven off at my bequest. But I found a quiet place to sit with Sofia and soon saw a familiar face who introduced me to some other mums. All very nice. The kind of women I instinctively felt I could be friends with.
From then on it was bliss, for 40 mins or so. My ME being the best it’s been since 1993 meant I managed to ride the noise levels and function normally for that brief window of time. No one knew, or needed to know, that I have ME and have lived a strange hermetic existence since the age of 23 and that I only manage a veneer of social normality through masterful skills of artifice. I looked like a nice new face, the sort of mum they wanted to meet too. With a gorgeous little girl wearing the cutest of shoes. And so I sat there making pleasant conversation under the giddy illusion of having a group of peers with the same experience, the same points of reference, for the first time since about 1991 when I started University. All without having to make any special effort to reach out to anyone.
I say illusion because that’s what it was. Today relapse looks like it’s kicking in, though how bad and for how long is anyone’s guess. And realistically, at no other time this year would I have coped with the noise and chaos of that setting. Today was one of those one-off glimpses into life in a higher gear; the peak before the relapse when the doors abruptly close again. I'll probably never meet these women again. They won’t become the casual day-to-day acquaintances I dream of having. They will be, as ever, out of reach. I will resort once again to desperately snatched phone numbers in my usual superhuman efforts to maintain some kind of contact with the “community” of my imagination.
I’m fed up. Of reaching out for people who have no particular need of me. Not because I’m not as good as others but because, for them, other mums are ten a penny. Because their friendships grow out of the encounters of their daily comings and goings. Not from going out of their way to keep up with someone they met once. And, for the most part, I won’t be coming or going anywhere.
26 May 2006
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i learned not to compare or try to keep up with 'fit' mums early on, it was hurtful and upsetting for me and didnt help my little one. you just have to go at your own, and sofia's (luvly name) own pace, and give up a concept of what is 'normal' and what isnt. whatever works for you/sofia is best! i also learned that a lot of the mums i initially tried to keep up with, were often not having an easy time of it as i assumed.
motherhood is tricky for most of us in different ways. i also learned that some mums who made out that all was rosy and wonderful were in denial or good at lying!!!!
like you say were all unsung heros in our own way,and some more than others.
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