The 2018 wash

It has become obvious that having one child means I have a clean house, a perfect child with perfect manners, perfection in every way, time for exercise, a job where I don’t have to worry or feel guilty about the ‘children’, all the time in the world to collect information and organise things for people who chose to have more than one child. End of sarcastic rant. 

If only I got to play the ‘if I had a nickel for every time someone said’ game! I would use ‘life must be so much easier with one kid’ as the tag line where I accumulate the moolah. Give me the mon-eh!!!! In 2018 I’d have finally hit my million bucks and been able to clone my ONEperfect child and have 10 of him around the house to fulfil all my dreams. Happy?! 

But really, 2018 was a wash in so many many ways. Ok yes I don’t have much to complain about but my emotional health was not the greatest. Lots of different streams of self doubt (which will not be magically cured by getting a job or becoming thin lol), heaps of loss and grief, angst about all the stupid people who constantly vie to find ways to remind me I have one child and hope to somehow make me regret that choice. I’ve had some brilliant moments of quiet thought, so all is not lost. 

These moments of quiet thought, deeper than normal thought, came on holidays (yes yes ironic are the points of privilege - ‘you can travel so much because you only have ONE child’) in wild places where nature lets you know how insignificant these people and all our conjured up problems are. Where looking at the wild grasslands and endless desert makes one understand the futility of mean thought, the minute-ness of life, the sheer stupidity and magic of our material existence amongst everything in the universe. For those brief moments I wanted to be in a philosophy class, for someone to explain the ‘Who am I/ what is my purpose?’ type of thoughts that flood the mind. Of course the thud to reality is near instant, far longer and harder. I am this person. These are my choices, made of free will. These are the people in my orbit. And these are the consequences I choose to live with. 

This blog was possibly my biggest failure in 2018. In real life I did ok. I swatted away some of the thoughts of doubt. I found peace with eliminating/ shape shifting relationships where people made me feel small/ user. I had grand holidays (with the ONE child) knocking things off my bucket list at a faster pace than I imagined. I still have the love of my life right here, present in my every day. I mastered some bits of technology that had eluded me. I opened my ears to some new music. I decided not to sweat the very small stuff, loosen control on the everyday - although that personality trait is built way deeper than I thought. 

This blog was ignored, violently almost, because every time I began to write it seemed to be a complaint, a misery, an angst, something neither nice nor kind. I’d back off pretty quickly as my 1.8 readers were not the right audience for my misplaced ire. So I wrote a lot of posts, and I mean A LOT, in my phone notes and a small Filofax journal of yore and I never posted them. But they got out of my head leaving space only for the beauty and the idiot people who keep calling me out for having just one kid. In 2019 I’m going to skadoosh those people too. And hopefully write something cheerier or certainly more palatable.