Story Telling

There are moments that bring us undone. And they’re usually the ones you least expect.

This morning mine was brushing her hair. She’s clutching a purple fluffy cat pillow I bought her to take to hospital when she had her tonsils out. It’s a mess of a thing. Beginning to mat and smelling vaguely of some ageing snack she’d eaten months before.

Her eyes are shut and she’s half asleep at the bathroom basin, nestled into that ridiculously vile cat pillow that’s collecting breeding invisible grossness as it leans on the porcelain that collects her toothpaste spit.

I am sad that I’ve had to carry her to the sink and brush her teeth half asleep. I am resentful that I have to wake her at 6.15 to get her to daycare at opening time so I can catch a bus to get to work on time. But mostly it’s just the guilt and shame that I chose this life for her.

The hustle and the shame it takes to keep us fed, a roof over our heads and still manage our lives so that there’s space for her to grow and learn and know her place is sometimes gargantuan. It hovers overhead endlessly like a mass of dementors ready to snatch what we have left at any moment. It’s a constant foreboding that I think is attached to any parent.

We tell ourselves this story that we are teaching and modelling resilience. That it’s good for them to see that the world is bigger than our four walls and the life we have built around them that keeps them safe and happy. But as a solo mum there’s an extra story we tell ourselves in those moments at the bathroom sink. It’s an extra layer guilt and shame that we rarely share outside of the solo mum community.

As a solo mum you tell yourself more often than you’d like to admit that it’s your fault. You chose this. You did it by yourself so you need to manage it by yourself. There was never anyone who promised to love, help and support this family in the same way you would. So at that sink this morning, that same story filtered through.

This is your fault. She is asleep at the sink while you brush her teeth because you made a choice that there would be no one else to help us. No one else who would hold either of your hands to remind you what you are doing is resilience building or just something that has to be done. There is no reminder that this looks the same in all families, no matter the parental unit. In those insular moments, all you can see is the guilt and all you can feel is that cloud of dementors circling closer overhead.

We tell ourselves this story because it’s told to us. We repeat what feels familiar to give our brains and our hearts a narrative to explain why this hurts so much. We repeat the phrases that we’ve heard. “Well, you wanted this,” “Isn’t this what you asked for?” “You knew it would be hard, it shouldn’t be a surprise” and yet somewhere in our brains we turn those words to a story that doesn’t tell, it screams, “It’s your fault there is no one here to help you, to help her.”

And in the moment, it’s devastating. You hold the tears until you get to the car by yourself, but the threat is there at any given moment. It’s only when the tears abate, and you take the time to tell the story out loud that you realise the truth. It’s just a story.

Stories are powerful. I believe that with all of my being. It is the thing that I believe holds the world together. But they are so powerful that they can also bring us undone. All of those phrases I hear are not specific to solo mums. They are heard by all parents. However, the story I tell myself around those phrases is about solo mums, the screaming is a trap that solo mums can’t help but find themselves in sometimes. It’s my fault there’s no one else to help us.

But the kicker, I can count on one hand the number of times someone has actually said that to me out loud. It has, but it is rare.

Instead, the story I tell myself should be the one that I hear most often. It should be the one that saves me from the spiral. There are people who offer to help all of the time. There are people who insist on helping even when I refuse to ask for it. And yet that is not the default story I flip to when the shame and guilt and the fear are at their strongest.

The goal for me is to be able to flip that story earlier. And how fast I can do that depends on a whole world of things. How attached I am to my centre circle at that moment, how safe I feel at work and it’s all visually represented by my lounge room floor and dining room table. And at the moment, my floor is a mess.

My resilience is low and I know it. I’m still heartbroken, I’m lost and isolated at work, my body is feeling the way I wish it did, and the only safe space I have at the moment is the one I’ve built around my home and those I’ve invited in to the pit. So leaving home this morning the way that I did, was hard. The tears were welling and the brave face was on, but she knew. She was pretending to sleep a bit longer so I didn’t have to hide it, so the cuddles would last a bit longer and the love would come first.

I pulled out of the driveway and watched her snuggle that purple puff of a cat and told myself it was ok. We could both do it. We would be fine. Then the phone rang.

My neighbour had noticed we’d left early. She’d noticed I didn’t drop her in this morning when I had to leave for work. She noticed that I hadn’t knocked on the door to ask for help. She noticed. She insisted I turn the car around and deliver my sleeping tiny human and her purple cat to her house. To her house, which looks exactly like our house, in both space and feeling.

I pulled into the driveway and was admonished for my pride. She had been waiting for me and for Sleeping Beauty. My neighbour knew that I had a big day today and she had assumed I understood when she offered to take care of the tiny human and the fluffy cat that it was a standing offer for the rest of the week.

I placed my tiny human and her snuggle cat with her hair done and her teeth brushed on their couch and watched her snuggle in lower to the couch. I watched my neighbour tuck her in and love her like I do. I threw myself in the car and cried all of the way to the bus stop. But this time for a whole bunch of different reasons.

I am still heartbroken. I am still lost at work. My body doesn’t wear it’s clothes like I want it to. My home and my circle is still the safest place in the world but the story that I tell myself… the one where it’s my fault we are all alone, it just isn’t true. It’s just a story and I am a writer. I can write a second draft and fix it whenever I want.