Becoming, Lucy

I have a confession.

I think I’ve become bitter.

I can’t stand seeing happy couples. Families. Fathers present with their kids. I have to look away. Or I catch myself staring, feeling resentment for strangers.

And I’ll admit, I have been hesitant to write this piece, even with it constantly on my mind, because it’s an ugly truth that I have to admit about myself.

But I’m noticing the resentment too much, too often to not address it… To not dissect it. The final nail in the coffin was witnessing a random couple about my age come into the coffee shop I was sat in. They seemed happy and I saw myself in her for some reason. I found myself having thoughts like ‘I hate her for what she has’.

That isn’t me at all. I’m not a hateful person. Those thoughts terrified me. So I knew I had to stop putting this off and figure it out.

I don’t want people to lose what they have. I don’t want people to be unhappy. I want people to find their loves and spend forever and a day with them.

But why does it hurt so much to witness?

I think I’m scared. Scared that I’ll never find love again. That no one will want me again. That I’m too much or not enough. I’m scared I was never loveable in the first place.

But I also think I’m grieving too. Not the relationship – but who I was in the relationship. My role was clear: a partner, a safe place, a friend, a routine, a home. I miss being chosen. I miss being witnessed by another adult. Now that I no longer have someone else to build a life with, I’m not sure who I am.

The only role I have left is being ‘mummy’. But even that gets taken away from me sometimes.

The boys went for their first weekend at their dad’s recently and I spiralled quickly – astonishingly so. Within two hours I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was no bedtime routine, no planning for tomorrow. so I took myself for a walk (I did have to ask my best friend first if going for a walk after 6pm is a normal activity people do), I went to the shop so I had a ‘reason’. The walk there was fine, the walk back… not so much. I got into my own head – convinced myself that without the boys I am nothing, I am no one, I am just a shell – whilst I walked along the canal.

But it was okay, before I could get to the extra dark thoughts, two people came up behind me and scared the living shit out of me (I had my headphones on). They were just running right next to me half way through my thought of ‘what is the poi–‘ “SHIT!” They got a good giggle from me shouting shit at them whilst they continued running, and I was just standing there having heart palpitations (yes, I saw you have to stop running from laughing so hard if you see this). I did apologise for shouting ‘shit’ in their faces too (only because the man looked mortified), but they had no idea they had just stopped one of the darkest spirals I’ve had in months. They dragged me back to the real world.

It has become evidently clearer as time has gone on that I don’t know who I am or what my purpose is. I envy the collective of people who believe we don’t have a purpose as humans and that frees us from trying to fulfil a destiny or live a life we think was made for us. But as much as I want to believe that humans are just humans and live freely from the shackles of life, I can’t.

I need a reason.

Whether that’s the people pleaser in me or the anxiety-ridden woman clinging onto something – hope, maybe – I don’t know.

The spiral did surprise me when it arrived, not because it was the first time the questions of purpose had arisen, but because I thought I was part of the collective that was happy just living as a human with no destiny or some wild prophecy to fulfil. When I had a free day previously, I had thought about my purpose but I had felt relief rather than panic. I could breathe for a moment, I could just be present. That moment was freeing… So why a week later did I spiral into loss of purpose and identity?

I think that is exactly what it is – a loss of identity. Although I have done work to figure out who I am away from the boys – I’m still not convinced I’m on the right track. I still believe I am a scam, that everything I think is fake and not my actual thoughts. It’s funny I can think my ‘positive’ thoughts about myself are a scam but I can’t think my ‘negative’ thoughts are fake… lol.

I feel like a shell playing a part I didn’t realise I was scripted for… Does that make any sense?

I am not quite sure how I have ended up here, I thought I was writing about relationships and how I have suddenly begun to hate people. Apparently not.

I wrote about hope… I think secretly I do have hope of being loved again – it’s just buried under a lot of grief and loss of identity at the moment. But I know it’s there because I keep making up little false realities in my brain. The glances to the single dad on the school run that seem to be shared, or maybe just my imagination, the sexual tension between me and the builder working across from where I drop my youngest off at nursery.

There is something so fun and innocent about having a crush. I’m not ready to commit to someone again, I’m still surviving my life – I’m still learning how to live it – but crushing and coming up with fake little scenarios in my head is one of the things keeping me going at the moment… Hope.

I’ve somehow gone in one massive circle from bitterness, to relationships, to grief, to purpose and identity to talking about damn crushes…

I think this is just my journey into discovering who I am away from no longer having another adult to witness my becoming, no longer having someone to share those moments with.

I am discovering what it means to be me after the future I had planned went up in flames.