A different kind of falling ...

the things I thought were falling apart
they were just falling into place

This weekend I became a parent. Of sorts. I met the boy who is going to become my sort-of-stepson, and tumbled into love I haven't really experienced before.

I was anxious about our meeting. On thursday night I had bizarre dreams about giving birth in which nobody would make me a cup of tea and someone insisted I go bell ringing. In the dream I told my continuously morphing partner that we must give the child a name that would be good for a dog. I suppose this is the only experience I've had of any kind of parenting really - trying to bring up Ruby to be secure and well mannered. I have half succeeded.

The anxiety, I realise now, was not that he would not like me. I think that would be manageable, understandable - I half expected it, warned by all and sundry of the potential for resentment, confusion and anger that he might experience on being told that his mother was not only asking him to accept a new partner in her life, but that the partner was a woman. As it was, he was completely unperturbed, being a remarkably wise and sanguine example of a 12 year old boy, but regardless, I realised that the deep anxiety was that I might not like him.

But I did. I loved him, liked him, found him interesting and funny and easy to talk to. I am not just feeling ok about moving in with him as well as his mum, I am absolutely exploding with excitement about it.

All being well, in about 5 weeks time I will be moving, with Badger, up to a lovely little barn conversion in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. And then his mum, the most amazing person I have ever ever ever met, and gorgeous boy, will join us when they feel ready. And with 4 cats and 1 dog and a few chickens, we will be a perfect, if slightly unconventional family.

I can't believe how amazing my life is today, and how excited I am about my future. The relationship I have with my new love just blows me away. I feel lucky every time I think about it. And not because I am not worthy blah blah blah ... I do feel worthy - I feel like I am a lovely person too, loved equally by her, and just incredibly lucky to have found my soulmate midst the six billion people on the planet.

A year ago, quite frankly, everything sucked. I was about as low as you can go, and life seemed to have no purpose or plan. My partner and best friend of several years had left me. I hated myself and had few friends and felt incredibly deeply alone almost all the time. Today I have an amazing partner, a wonderful friendship with Badger as well as strong relationships with quite a few others, and am beginning the adventure of being part of a child's life as they become an adult. I know myself, understand myself, have a philosophy on life that feels coherent and I love my work. I have somehow* discarded the sense of being 'not enough'. As a result I feel able to try things without being paralysed by a need to do them brilliantly - including becoming a sort-of-ish parent. (eek!)

I feel absolutely sure that I could not have all of this richness in my life simply by tacking extensions on to the person I was a couple of years ago. The difference in foundations would have destabilised the structure, and cracks would have spread and turned to fissures. I needed to be bulldozed, dug out and flattened, so that I could start again from scratch.

I suspect this is an experience shared by the people who held me together, who smiled at the mess and the chaos and the destruction, and firmly reassured me that all sorts of things were possible. Some of those people were therapists, some were nurses or doctors, and quite a few were bloggers.

So. I shall be starting a new business shortly, peddling t-shirts and badges bearing the simple statement "Blogging changed my life". Any takers?

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*somehow = with lots of therapy and deep conversations with very wise people, face to face and online.

To absent friends ...

Jess, on the left, is Ruby's best friend. Which is only fitting, as Jess's dad is my best friend, and his mother is my mother's best friend ...

And so we are continuing the years of holidaying together as a unit, but this generation abandoning spanish villas and hotels in Lanzarote for dog-friendly caravans in bits of the UK with Big Hills. Fab.

When we first got home on Monday night, Ruby was excited to be back. Now she is depressed. She is searching and searching for her friend, going into my housemates' rooms at six this morning and crying pathetically ... and she is sad not to find her.

I wish I could explain. I wish she could understand the concepts of 'again' and 'soon'.

I went to the lakes to attend the wedding of some very dear friends. Lovely lovely people, and I would have married either of them - they are gorgeous inside and out. The sun shone and their little boys looked like a tiny mafia in their supercool suits. And it was perfect in so many ways, but glaringly imperfect in another. Another friend who should have been there, laughing in the sunshine, holding his wife's hand and smiling, because he never stopped smiling, is gone. He died suddenly just over 2 years ago, without warning, of a heart defect. He was skiing one moment, dying the next. She was there with him when he died, and as awful, as horrific and traumatic as that was, she says she knows she would never have believed it if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes.

So, there were happy tears, for those we love who are still with us, and sad tears for those who aren't. Not physically anyway. Very present in many other ways, spoken about (thankfully) and laughed about and remembered, and very much still loved.

I am doing my italian widow look she said with a smile, replacing her shades.

I know he would have enjoyed the joke.