a few things

in my brain right now

Hubba Bubba and Juicy Fruit. I built a mountain of it next to my teenage bed. I’m grateful I didn’t choke to death. Luck?

I don’t like it when it’s said somebody has star quality. Everyone has star quality.

Empowerment.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt truly “empowered”. I must have felt a glimmer when or after giving birth. Definitely not the first birth, maybe the second, definitely not the third and I shit myself the fourth.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced self-love either. To be honest, I dislike the term. Do I like myself? Not really… so how could I love myself? Forgive yourself and your flaws, embrace imperfection, be kinder to your body: all that stuff… I wish I could, but euggghhhhh. I live each day like I’m being closely monitored by CCTV, watching my every move, sip, kiss, bite. I am braced for some voice to boom into the room and say you’re doing it wrong, that’s disgusting etc.

I would like to know why I’m like this and have always been like this, but I can’t afford the time for therapy or the money for therapy. And I think I’m slightly icked out by The Quintessential Therapist in general, in the same way as I was allergic to the netball girls at school: I just know they won’t get me.

Sometimes I wonder if I had had a Taurus therapist, I would have stuck it out.

The only way I can combat my low omnipresent self-loathing is by getting on the treadmill. I enjoy going to the gym, not only for the endorphins, but for freaking people out as they walk past seeing my long hair in long plaits slapping my back as I sprint. Sometimes I cry on the treadmill and don’t realise I’ve been crying until my quotidian 5k is up. I listen to music completely at odds with my stage of life and domesticity: young women singing about boys not texting them back, complaining about their boyfriend smoking weed or being late, getting it all out on the dancefloor.

I’m scared of people who say let’s get cocktails.

No one takes photos of me anymore; I don’t even take selfies because I’m worried that lack of sleep due to two toddlers in the bed has rendered my face unpublishable, unpostable, unbroadcastable. When you’re a mum, suddenly the only photos of you are the ones of you as the supporting act to your child centre frame, and that’s if you have a recent photo of you in your camera roll at all.

Dads, friends, relatives: take more photos of mums! Make them feel seen when they’re brushing the bouncing child’s hair or putting their little shoes on and it’s taking twenty minutes and you’re already late! Those are the moments to treasure. For we’ll inevitably forget how long it took to put on their little shoes, or how their hair moulded itself into a perfect scrappy nest overnight. What will remain are a few far and between posed photos which are lies.

I don’t dream.

Everyone said don’t have another baby. Everyone said don’t write a book, focus on live shows and social media. I wanted to write but I wanted my baby more.

Grief changes people.

For a while after my brother died, all I cared about was protecting what remained of my family. My career was going it’s best, and I thought it would continue. Then the pandemic happened, and I wrote a sad book which came easily to me because I was naïve and didn’t worry about what a proper novel is. I just wrote. Before I knew it, I’d not done any comedy or acting for a while, and I was a writer who was meant to keep writing. But I wanted to be around for my kids. They are my joy; they are my job. You can’t really write in a two hour time slot, (at least I can’t). I thought I’d be able to write at night after bedtime, but after a day starting at 6.30am, getting 4 kids fed and dressed and delivered to and from multiple places….getting them all to bed anywhere between 7pm and 10pm…. Sure man!

I like watching The Traitors. I don’t like any other television at the moment. I guess Slow Horses was good. I miss Succession. TV is different now for me, I just get so bored, seeing the same faces over and over again. It’s the same actors in work, all the time.

I am afraid of growing bitter.

I don’t fit in with the working mums, I don’t fit in with the stay-at-home mums. Sometimes a child in year 4 or above will recognise me from Harry Potter and I’ll suddenly worry I look old, ugly, fat and not magical at all and I have to stop myself from saying sorry.

No emails in 8 days now. A recall perhaps on the horizon for a kids series which will pay far less than the childcare will cost. Absolutely no point, but thanks.

My first period was induced by the morning after pill, which I was given after my rape at 15.

One day I’d like to talk to other people who lost their virginity via rape. It impacted me in ways I can’t describe. I think about it every day, but in the same context as thinking about what I need to get for dinner, did I pack my book in my bag, remember my water bottle.

I’m 37. My hormones are raging, my dormant PCOS has woken up since I stopped breastfeeding and my ovaries are ‘bulky’ and I feel angry all the time. I am having pains and weird periods and I resent the FLO app for some of her fucking comments, no I don’t want to chat. I have been recently diagnosed (after months of blithe guesswork) with PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder), the symptoms of which are incredibly time consuming….

“PMDD: You spend half of the cycle destroying your life and half the cycle building it again”. I don’t know where I heard that. Maybe an episode of Married at first sight UK?

Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash