Motherwhelmed

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After a minute, the sensation stopped and I opened my eyes. I felt normal again. I wasn’t going mad. I called Mum, and she said that Dad had come out to eat lunch but had then gone back to the shed. He hadn’t washed his hair in two weeks and was sleeping in his clothes. Apparently, he’d set up a makeshift bed in there. He was playing very loud classical music in the middle of the night and the neighbours had complained that it was keeping them awake.

‘Did you have some sort of argument?’ I asked. ‘What kicked it off?’

‘I’m worried darling. I think he’s sinking into his old ways. I don’t know what to do.’

‘This is his personality, Mum. He doesn’t like too much social activity. He likes to be on his own. It’s fine. Stop trying to make him do stuff.’

There were times when I suspected I was actually more like my dad – it wasn’t in my nature to be overly social.

‘But the hair thing is driving me crazy. What if someone sniffs him in the supermarket?’

‘There are plenty of smelly people, Mum. No one will notice. Just get him dry shampoo.’

‘Dry shampoo?’

I explained the concept in detail (I’d worked on a project recently all about it – it was one of those things that was doing well because we were TOO BUSY NOW TO EVEN WASH OUR HAIR) and she promised she’d buy some. I wasn’t sure why the head-detaching thing had come back because I was clearly being very successful today. I was solving problems, being social and managing to control the head-detaching feeling. If I could keep this up then maybe I’d get over this bumpy patch (if that was what it was) and start some sort of upward trajectory.

I looked out the window at the trees draped in plastic carrier bags and felt my heart sink. I then got my laptop out and spent fifteen minutes wrapping up my baby wipe presentation. We stopped for ten minutes so it bought me more time. YES, the IDEA of the baby-wipe-sleep-aid was flawed … but DESPITE these challenges it showed potential AS LONG AS it kept a focus on CLEANING benefits rather than SLEEP ENHANCEMENT. If the client was nice, and not too demanding, then things usually went well. It was only when they wanted innovative and weird methodologies (anything that had the word DIGITAL in it was usually a warning sign) that I felt out of my comfort zone. Perhaps I was going to be okay and wasn’t losing relevance with each passing day.

As I came out of the station, I looked down at my phone and right on schedule i.e. AFTER regular work hours, Phoebe had sent an email. She wasn’t happy with my ideas for the fish finger thing. She thought they were outmoded and showed a lack of strategic thinking. She just came out with her critique and didn’t mince words. I bit my lip and used words and phrases like ‘awesome’ and ‘thanks for the interesting feedback’ and ‘I look forward to collaborating on some interesting strategy’. I promised I would do better tomorrow. Then visualized her head being squeezed between the doors of an elevator. Her head would be hard and it would take a while to squash it completely but I tried to conjure up her expression, and how I would stand there with my turmeric latte in one hand just smiling (or maybe with no expression at all, which would possibly be more frightening). Just when I felt I was still relevant and could contribute, something would happen to tell me otherwise.

Pete had texted to say he’d collected Bella. As I turned into our street, I felt my blood pressure finally return to normal. We lived in a beautiful, leafy suburb. There were lots of families, a lovely park with swings and some climbing equipment, and it felt like the opposite of the glass monster I’d been freezing my ass off in all day. Our overweight tabby cat was sitting on the kitchen table. The early evening autumnal sun was coming through the French doors. Bella was playing with Pete upstairs. Dad would come out of the shed and wash his hair. I would write some more fish finger strategies. I had a beautiful daughter who would hopefully never work in an air conditioned brick like me. I also had breasts that were saggy, but not actually touching the floor. I could listen to Radio Four and understand about forty per cent of what was being discussed (less if it was the news but on Women’s Hour I could understand more, as it was trying to be more accessible). I ate burritos. Perhaps one day I would be more like Bryony and change careers. Like just change … it might be possible?

I had no idea who was in the charts but I was the SAME AGE as Kate Moss and younger than Kylie Minogue. I would always be younger than Kylie. I hadn’t seen any photos of her of late. Was she going to move into the Helen Mirren phase next? Or was she stuck in the middle like me? Not yet in the ‘it’s amazing that she can still speak and walk,’ bit.

Despite these positive affirmations – I am younger than Kylie. I ate a burrito. I am younger than Kylie. I ate a burrito – I felt confused. This head detaching thing was perplexing. If I’d been Mum I would have Googled ‘brain cancer’ or some such but I wasn’t a hypochondriac. Despite being self-obsessed (though, arguably, no more than your average modern woman), I didn’t go to the doctor until I needed stitches or a limb fell off. I avoided them at all costs.

I heard a shriek coming from upstairs. Bella ran down, her face flushed and rubbing her eyes. She was excited to see me. She wrapped her arms around my head and squeezed hard. Another moment noted. It was enough right? We sat on the small, stained sofa in the kitchen (I must replace it at some point), and she told me about her day (drawings, fights, cake for one child and not for her because she’d called another child ‘a bum hole’). Pete and I nodded at one another, and he went to fetch his iPad. I put Bella to bed (we chatted a bit first about unicorns and whether they were real and she told me how much she hated her the nursery grown-ups again). Then once she was asleep I sat stroking her hair, and when I came back down, Pete was still glaring at the screen. Technology wasn’t good for couples who were looking for excuses not to talk to one another.

‘How was work today?’ I asked.

‘Fine,’ he replied.

‘Anything interesting happen?’

‘No.’

‘How was my day then?’

‘How was your day?’ he said looking up for a millisecond.

‘One of my colleagues didn’t even know who Thurston Moore was.’

‘Well they’re much younger than you so it’s hardly surprising.’

‘Well thanks, I know that already.’

Suddenly I felt angry. There’d been a time when I’d have vented about Phoebe but there was no point. His advice was always the same – ‘why don’t you just tell her to fuck off?’ Pete had a low tolerance for office politics because he’d never worked in one. It was also boring. I knew it was boring. I was goddamn bored by it all too.

‘There’s a new drama with Suranne Jones starting tonight,’ he said finally putting his iPad down on the floor. I sighed. We were back on familiar territory. We either talked about TV or food (but this seemed to be true of the population at large). Later on we watched a drama about a couple going through a marital crisis, and the female protagonist murders her husband by poisoning him a tiny bit each day. I secretly felt envious that they still had the will to even bother – I didn’t think Pete and I could be bothered to murder one another unfortunately.

I hadn’t said anything to Pete about my weird headache/dizziness. If I had said something then it might have gone something like this:

Me: I feel like my head is coming off sometimes and then it floats off somewhere and comes back again.

Pete: You need to get more sleep perhaps?

Me: No I think it might be something else. Maybe a panic attack?

Pete: What have you got to panic about?

Me: What are you looking at now (gesturing to iPad)?

Pete: Why do you bug me about what I’m looking at ALL THE TIME? I never ask you what you’re doing on your phone and you’re on it constantly.

Argument moves onto my phone addiction, Pete’s need to chill out with his iPad after a long day, how I justify being on my phone and say it’s ‘work’ but how it isn’t because he knows I’m looking on ASOS at dungarees.

This was the problem. We were locked into a pattern. One said this and the other that. We were two store mannequins frozen into specific poses, unable to break out. There were rarely any surprises. It had been a long time since anything unexpected had happened. We were parents, we were tired.

I thought back to the miscarriages I’d had after Bella. Each one had been relatively early (before twelve weeks) but they’d taken their toll. We’d also had to do a lot of baby-making sex. I’d used ovulation tests and special lube that promised to ‘nurture and support sperm on their special journey’. After the first miscarriage, I’d been eager to try again, almost as if getting pregnant would erase what had happened. When it happened a second time I felt a distance grow between us (apparently I was miscarrying because my eggs weren’t top notch – the doctor said miscarriages were much more prevalent in women my age). Pete continued to be supportive, we entered a third phase of trying.

It felt like it was something we were toiling through together, like a fairground ride that we’d paid for but hated (but it was too late to get off).

‘Can we just stop now?’ he’d said as I told him it was a super fertile time again and I wanted us to have a quick bunk up upstairs.

‘I want to give it one more try,’ I said.

‘But Rebecca, it’s so depressing, look what it’s doing to our relationship!’

‘We’re okay. We’re okay aren’t we?’

He made a face like ‘no, we certainly weren’t’ but to his credit, we had sex that night, then the three nights after that (the more the better in that forty-eight hour window according to my online research). I couldn’t seem to let it lie. I was trying to prove a point – I could get something I wanted out of sheer determination. When I miscarried again at ten weeks, it felt as if both of us had shut quite a lot of feelings away. We put the idea to bed (he did this more quickly and I resented how he seemed to be capable of moving on). I also felt like Pete was great in an emergency, could make cups of tea, rush to the shops get supplies, make a hot water bottle, but didn’t know what to do when life rolled along without having to visit the ‘Early Pregnancy Unit’ for scans. Or have your partner bleeding in the middle of the night and call an ambulance, and the neighbours coming outside to watch her screaming as she was wheeled into the back.

Was that how it was in relationships? Did you just hunker down and endure?

We were both fascinated with our screens. Screens were so much easier to interact with. I wanted to scroll across Pete’s face and see a different expression. I wanted to type ‘interesting conversation that is not TV related,’ onto his forehead. He probably wanted to type ‘find girl that doesn’t complain about work and not having a second child’.

By the time I’d brushed my teeth, and rubbed expensive cream into my face, Pete was asleep; his mouth making a strange flapping noise like a fish out of water. I’d read that many couples liked to have separate bedrooms nowadays – it was a nice thought but it worried me that I thought it was a nice thought. At least when we were in bed together our bodies touched now and then (even if was usually an accident and we moved away again as soon as it happened). Separate rooms also amplified the idea that you didn’t want to be around the other person. You could argue that it kept the mystery alive or some such but the reality was that they just got on your nerves too badly.

Something was bubbling away inside of me – something not right. Tomorrow I would schedule a visit to my parents. I would start the day positively and not tell myself negative things as soon as I woke up.

Tomorrow would be more good moments, more moments of happiness than bad, sad, anxious, worrying moments.

I put my headphones on and listened to a positive thinking visualization. I tried to hide my phone under the covers so it wouldn’t wake Pete up. He grunted at me to put it away, and I hunkered down under the duvet.

Just me and my little phone friend. Being mindful and positive together.

I am excited about my new future.

I am excited to embrace my new life.

I am going to be more positive.

I am open to new and different things.

Four (#u4b54af73-a544-5de0-8358-0d6ca3987936)

THE THING ABOUT BEING ‘in your forties’ is that you feel like you haven’t much to look forward to. For a start, appearance-wise things go to hell in a hand-bucket. I was pretty much invisible to the opposite sex now. A couple of younger female colleagues had told me that it was rare to get chatted up these days so maybe it was society that was changing.

But there were simple truths that you couldn’t escape.

• I could never be an ‘enfant terrible’.

• I would never own my own swimming pool

• I wouldn’t be able to get beads plaited into my hair on holiday, without looking like one of those old women that gets beads plaited into their hair on holiday.

• I would always be referred to as ‘good for my age.’

• If I got a tattoo, it would be seen as symptomatic of a mid-life crisis.

• A hangover lasted a week

Age wasn’t just a number. We all wanted to be pumped up, youthful, dewy, glowing, energetic, sexy and dynamic. It was exhausting. My body wanted to age. My face wanted to be left alone to slide and sag. I sometimes thought ageing was easier when we just threw on a moth-eaten cardigan, collected stray cats and collected coupons from the back of Woman’s Own.

Okay maybe I was still attractive. Two months ago I’d been eyed up by a man in his sixties on the tube but this kind of event didn’t make me feel better. Old men were not ideal. I made a list in my head of exciting, dynamic and sexy older women who still got plenty of male attention.

There was Jennifer Aniston.

Kate Winslet.

Rachel Weisz.

These were all Hollywood actresses who were a different breed to ordinary middle-aged folk. I tried to imagine what it would be like to not feel quite so invisible, to still be able to arouse interest from the opposite sex, to actually make young men look at you with fresh eyes; for them to want to have rampant sex with you.

I concocted a fantasy letter in my mind to these ageless beauties.

Dear Jen, Kate and Rachel,

I love the way you’re so sassy and look like you’re in your twenties despite being well into your forties. I imagine you have good cosmetic surgeons and possibly have facials once a week and do yoga and HIIT training every morning. You may also be wearing heavy-duty support underwear but that’s cool. I just wish you could be more honest about how you look the way you do and cut the rest of us some slack.

I want men to get erections as I walk past in my red swimsuit. I want them to cross their legs as I walk past because their penises hurt. I want Bradley Cooper to be hopelessly in love with me. I want to water-ski, and not have people laugh as I fall off and plunge underwater. I want to be a ballet dancer. I want to play the drums like Dave Grohl. I want to have a hit comedy series. I want people to laugh at the prospect of my comedy series before they’ve even seen it.

I want to feel there is MORE coming my way rather than less.

Love Rebecca x

I dropped Bella at nursery. My chin felt painful, and I realized I’d been too eager that morning in plucking out my chin hairs, and now had a bad rash. Bella cried and clutched at my legs like she was a baby seal about to be clubbed. Both the nursery assistants ignored me, and I ended up walking like a zombie from side to side trying to shake her off.

‘Is there some way to turn off all the texts I keep getting each day?’ I asked one of them (the slightly less grumpy one).

‘Don’t you want to know how she’s doing each day?’

‘Yes but is there an option to shut it off if my day is particularly busy? It’s quite stress-inducing sometimes.’

They glared at me. This was the wrong thing to say. I was a bad parent.

‘You can choose to ignore the texts I suppose,’ one said.

‘No of course, forget it. I love the updates,’ I said.

I gave Bella a final squeeze and ran for my train.

As I left the building, Bella’s cries were still reverberating in my ears. The tug inside, the desire to turn back and get her was too strong. It was wrong to leave your kid with a bunch of strangers each day but work demanded it. I tried calling Mum, but she didn’t answer – she was probably at one of her classes. I needed some distraction and I also wanted to find out if Dad had improved any. I looked up at the trees and tried to remember the positive visualization from the night before.

Little moments of happiness. This was something to hold onto. Tiny fragments. This would stop my head leaving my body entirely.

I can imagine the life I want.

The office felt upbeat and people were chatting. There had just been a breakfast presentation by Darren on ‘How Meat Substitute Represents a Massive Opportunity in The Fast Food Sector.’ He was on a real high and was walking around clapping people on the back like he’d just won the lottery. His eyes looked haunted though, as if he’d put in another late night and had perhaps even slept in the office (there was a futon in one room and it was no secret that when the workload was heavy, you could sleep there for the night). I was happy to have missed this presentation, but also nervous that Darren would report back to Phoebe on my lack of initiative. Ever since the appraisal they’d kept me on the back foot.

Simon sat next to me and smiled. I asked him for some more ideas – innovative, new, fresh ideas for my fish finger proposal, and he talked to me about packaging, and how we should try and decode the packaging, and then look at the semiotic and cultural significance of fish in the wider world, and cod, how the notion of scarcity played out in society in general, and how this impacted on our perceptions of meat. I asked if he could type it all into my proposal (as I didn’t understand what he was talking about and had tuned out for most of the chat). He agreed.

There was something sweet about this chap, and I wondered again why he was bothering with an old fruit like me, but he seemed to think I was eccentric – perhaps he liked that kind of thing. Perhaps I was his ‘Helen Mirren.’ Besides, Mango-Lab was just a temporary holding pattern in his career until he spotted something more interesting. He had a myriad of options because he was young and healthy and full of beans. He was a shark, and I was a giant fish finger with my head stuck in a plastic bag.

‘Would you like to go out for a drink?’ he asked. ‘A few of us are going to the pub later and I thought maybe you’d like to come along.’

‘Hey?’ I said.

I was surprised. I couldn’t remember ever being asked to the ‘yoof’ drinks. I wasn’t in that demographic anymore. Besides on the rare occasion I was asked I usually turned it down. I needed to get back to Bella and see her for that precious hour for bed (which was usually the most fractious, stressful hour of her day, so not pleasant at all).

‘The pub is super nice and they serve this street food from Korea which is delicious so we could grab some of that perhaps?’

Korean street food? Drinks? I hadn’t been for a works drink for months – in fact the last time had been Christmas and now it was almost May. Yes, I usually raced out the door at five thirty (or a bit earlier if the coast looked clear). Then again, maybe this was exactly what I needed. Part of the reason I was no doubt failing at work, and not being strategic enough was because I didn’t hang out with these young people. I was feeling stuck in a routine – work, home, bed, work, home, bed and this would shake things up. I agreed I’d go along for a couple of drinks. I texted Pete. He said he was fine with it.

As I’ve already said, going out was extremely rare.

I spent the afternoon listening to a Spotify playlist of my favourite nineties hip-hop, and amending my fish finger proposal. I’m gonna take this itty bitty world by storm. And I’m just getting warm. I could feel the benefit of collaborating with Simon – he’d given me some fresh insights, and I was proposing a whole new digital platform whereby fish finger loyalists could upload footage of themselves and their families, and we could regularly check in and ask them questions. The head detaching from my body thing had passed and I felt better again. Things could be much worse