The Lonely Mom
That’s me. A lonely mom.
As a stay at home mother of two (2.5 years and 14 months…oh and pregnant with the 3rd but no one knows yet), I’m technically almost never actually alone but very often I find myself truly deeply lonely.
I kind of wanted to start a blog or at least write stuff down, for company if nothing else, but every time I go to do it my mind goes blank. I think it’s because I keep trying to write like I feel I ‘should’ write. Like trying to mirror or copy the voice and tone of other people I’ve read. But sure you can’t write about your feelings in someone else’s tone of voice.
So I decided today to just go for it and to just let the stream of consciousness pour out. Its not like I’m going for a Pulitzer prize or something. Sure what do I care if someone read it and said: ‘Jesus, your one can’t write for sh*t.’
I’m not a writer.
I’m a woman who has to talk to the computer, via the keyboard, for company!
I read on The M Word a post on being a Long Distance Mother. That’s me.
I live in Italy but my friends and family live in Ireland. I haven’t lived in Ireland for years. I miss it all the time but I cant explain why. I just do. Maybe I just miss the ease of living in a place you are actually from. So you don’t have to do the whole explanation thing of where you’re from and why you live here and do you miss it and of course I fecking do what to you think?!
Actually you know I do have a good example of what I miss. A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of my husband who lives in the town he grew up in. He travelled a bit when he was younger but he came back and settled at home. Anyway, he was showing me a photo, in outrage, of the cable car train in the town that vandals had covered in graffiti. I was kind of surprised because practically everything in Italy is covered in graffiti so whats the big deal about the cable car? He went on explaining that its the oldest cable car in Italy or something like that.
But it occurred to me that he’s so invested in that town.
He knows so many people and so many people know him. He knows the town gossip, he knows the ins and outs of why the swimming pool that they started to build 10 years ago still isn't finished, he knows that the mayor had an affair with an escort and left his wife, he knows loads of stuff.
I know nothing about where I live. And no one knows me.
It’s true I’ve only been here for 9 months but still. Before this I lived in Brussels for 8 years and I was definitely not invested in that city. I couldn’t get out of it fast enough.
I want things to be different this time.
I’ve made 3 friends but they’re all foreign so they all left for the summer. Now September is here. My 2.5 year old has started playschool and I’m determined to make a go of things, invest myself in this place, in the hope of throwing off this cloak of loneliness.
Wish me luck.
