Getting to know you Series
Letting go of the Imagined and Embracing what is Real.
My whole life I was working toward a goal, I had a clear picture in my mind of the life I would one day inhabit. When I say ‘my whole life’, this is by no means an exaggeration. Even as a child of 6 or 7 I had a very strong sense of what was right and wrong and subscribed to a very rigid framework that governed how one should live their life. I certainly had no doubt about what my life would look like, it already existed, all I had to do was stick to the plan, grow up and start living it.
I never wanted to be ridiculously wealthy, but I was never work shy, so I thought I would have no problem excelling at some career or other. As a result of my work ethic, I imagined we would be able to afford a very comfortable middle-class life. A life with no major worries about money, where if the car broke down, or I needed to travel at a moment’s notice because a relative was ill, it would not be a problem. We would simply dip into the emergency fund and I would find myself on the next BA flight to Lusaka, with hastily purchased presents for all the cousins in tow.
I would arrive looking exhausted of course, but effortlessly put together, dressed in beautifully fitting clothes with just a hint of expertly applied make up. My empathetic, charming and loving husband would have waved me off at Heathrow, looking relaxed and handsome telling me ‘he had the kids covered’ and to give his love to our extended family. Like any mother forced to be away from her family I would feel as though I had left my heart in London, and undoubtedly would spend the whole time away juggling the tasks at hand. Having to flip flop between managing simmering family tensions and fielding questions from home. Was French club on this week? Who was picking the kids up from their swimming lessons? I would constantly be firing off emails to school and various clubs whilst praying that my little girls’ braids lasted until my return. Last time their father had been drafted in the results had been cute enough for nursery but left much to be desired and would not suffice for primary school pictures.
That was the life I planned on having, a life with a husband and children, living in a beautiful home I picked and then perfectly decorated to suit my family’s needs. A house with well thought out space saving solutions and a large open kitchen at its centre. A kitchen where I would spend hours cooking delicious meals, baking sweet treats and hosting dinner parties for friends and family. It would be a home full of laughter, childish squabbles, tantrums, family film nights, legendary birthday parties, and romantic candle lit dinners while the children slept soundly upstairs. A home that oozed love and fun out onto the street.
It is all I ever wanted, even now if I close my eyes I picture the details of that kitchen, I can almost conjure the delicious smells and hear the joyful squeals and shouts of my children as they shove and fight to be the first one to climb up on the stools around the kitchen island to taste whatever has just come out of the oven. I never for one second imaged anything else. I had friends who dreamed about travelling or impacting the world by working for great life changing organisations like Doctors Without Borders. I of course supported their vision and wished them well, not at all concerned that to them my own desires seemed so small and quite frankly dated. Perhaps they were the dreams of women of by gone eras, but to me, I knew they were going to bring joy, purpose and deep fulfilment to my life. It was a knowing I couldn’t explain, I just knew it.
Therefore, as I sit here aged 36, in a rented flat, childless in the aftermath of a failed marriage, I am covered with a blanket of crushing disappointment and feel that I have failed that precocious 7-year-old. I am so far from the life she dreamt up for us and I cannot put into words the grief I feel for us both. For her the realisation that it all fell apart, the fairy tale didn’t hold up and for me now, I mourn that life. As though it did exist and somehow disappeared. To me that life was not imagined I inhabited, I knew that woman, that wife, that mother. It was all I was heading towards, every decision, every move on the chess board of my life took that future into consideration. It has felt at times as though that life is a precious loved one that has passed away, no longer accessible, crossed over into the realm where I cannot follow and where deepest desire and all the will in the world cannot revive it.
Over time, I have discovered that it is far too difficult to live with crushing disappointment and pointless to dedicate time to something that has to date been nothing more than a source of pain. I have therefore finally resolved to let it go. For my sanity I have had to allow for the possibility that my life may never look like that, and that the life in front of me is full of possibility, freedom and more importantly is of equal value. I hope that one day I can genuinely feel that way all the time but at present I often lack the courage of my convictions. At times when I am alone or unobserved, I find comfort in allowing myself to live the life I wanted; if only in my in my mind. I imagine walking through my house, blowing out the candles. I pick up various discarded objects as I go and deliver them quietly to various rooms where small sleeping figures stir under their colourful duvets, in response to my gentle kisses. I imagine getting ready for bed, making love to my husband and falling asleep with his arms around me, after our almost nightly argument about whose turn it is to switch off the hallway light.
In a perfect world, that version of life is still the version I want, but over the last few years I have learned that two or more things can be true at once. I still desire to be a wife and mother, I still long for that home but refuse to allow myself to be so consumed by my imagined life that I miss the very real life I inhabit. I want to be able to enjoy the opportunities, the twists and turns that life in the now brings me, rather than be stuck looking forlornly for a life that never existed. Like with all loss it has been and is a journey, a painstaking process of letting go of my imagined life and learning to fully, joyfully embrace life as it is today. Real life in all its real joy, heartache, trauma and beautiful mystery.
