Before and After Sofia

The great difference between life before Sofia and life after Sofia is this:

I spent my twenties making plans for a life which was always tantalizingly just around the corner of recovery. Each cycle of relapse and remission would end up the same way. I would climb slowly out of a bad patch, rebuilding my shattered identity. Then eventually I would reach the peak of the cycle: a week or two of exhilaratingly unprecedented energy levels. And, giddy with new horizons I would inevitably think that finally, this was it. I’ve turned a corner. The trend must be upwards now. This time next year I’ll be better, and the next year a little better again. So where’s the party? What thrilling career can I embark on once I get my life back? And then the relapse would creep up on me all over again. Back to square one. And I would abandon the course I hastily signed up for. Put the latest fantasy career back on the back burner. And steel myself for another stretch of solitary confinement.

Ever since the age of 18 I survived on this bitter diet of deferred hope. Waiting to begin my adult life. And I hit my thirties and realized, after a spectacularly bad relapse, that it was never going to happen. I wasn’t ever going to grow up, in the sense of becoming someone with commitments, responsibilities and a public persona. I was just going to grow old. Have more grey hair and wrinkles after each round of relapse and remission.

It felt like a bad dream that I couldn’t wake up from. Often I had the feeling that I did exist as a normal person somewhere in a parallel universe, if only I could pinch myself awake from this surreal repetition of rebuilt hopes and shattered dreams.

Now that I have Sofia the relapses and remissions are still there but the nightmare is over I have all the responsibility and commitment I could ask for, if not the public persona. My life is no longer a dream of the future that comes crashing down around me with every setback. Sofia remains through the good times and bad; ME can’t abort her now. And I’m OK about time passing by, about growing old. When I think of five years ahead it’s to wonder what Sofia will be like when she’s six years old. To imagine how much more I’ll be able to share and communicate with her than I can now. How much joy she’ll give us. Not about growing old without ever having had a life.

I no longer want to pinch myself awake to escape the here and now. That is the biggest gift of all. I wouldn’t say I’ve fully accepted ME as a life sentence. Or that I have given up the Siamese twins of hope and disappointment about recovery altogether. It’s just that time is less marked by their vagaries. Instead time now marches to the brisk tune of Sofia’s incredible blossoming and becoming and the challenges that lie ahead for me as her mum.