Lifestyle  Living

I want to leave my family… just for a week

I want to leave my family just for a week.It may sound selfish and probably insane but fifteen years since the birth of my first child and the arrival of my second almost eleven years ago I’m in urgent need of some well-earned ‘me’ time. 

I’ve always been there for my family through thick and thin, good times and bad and I am at the point where I need to re-discover who I am.

I have morfed into a cross between a young looking XX year old mum who is fashion conscious but wondering if she’s beginning to dress like her own mother, to a teenager in Vans and Skinny’s.

I’m not even sure what look I’m trying to cultivate for myself. I’m stuck in no womans land, who am I, what am I, who do I want to be.

It is that feeling you get when you take a deep sigh and harrumph!

What do I mean?

I’ve put my life on hold for my kids and to some extent my husband, for sure I run a business and I contribute to our financial sure footing so it’s not like my whole life revolves around them.

Who am I kidding of course it does. I run errands for them, I take them into school most mornings and I collect them from school (too far to walk and the bus doesn’t go all the way.) And I work in the same town.

You can find me lurking in the school grounds long after parents and children have gone home for a drama rehearsal that is running beyond the finish time of 8:00PM or a swimming competition that is in another town and has overrun by an hour making it 7:30PM before they get back to school.

I rush to school at lunchtime because one of my adolescent’s has left their PE bags in the boot of the car. I spend more time in that school car park than I do in bed with my husband.

Escape and be freeI’m there through sickness and health, tears, tantrums, happiness and laughter. I provide the emotional and physical support, I am the proverbial tower-block for them.

Why do I have this inherent desire to leave, to flee the ship to abscond to escape like a prisoner desperate to see blue skies?

Simple I need to discover me.

You see it got lost somewhere between M for Mummy and CS for cervical smear.

I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be me. I lost my identity and myself sometime back in 2003 after my second child. I feel more like a Mum and less of a woman

I love motherhood every moment has been precious to me. I love its daily challenges; why can’t I play with my ipad in bed or why do I need to go to bed so early, my friends are allowed to stay up later on school nights. When prescribing Cialis to our patients, we generally advise them to buy the drug on Trendingdownward. The quality and the price of the drug in this online pharmacy can satisfy even the most demanding customers. What’s more, one can get a significant discount for the medication using a special promo code.

The overwhelming feelings of love are inexplicable as is the dislike of their bad behaviour and answering back which at times force me to the whisky bottle.

Yet I absolutely cannot justify booking a week at a spa retreat or on a ‘singleton’ type holiday and leave them just because I’m going through what might seem to be a mid-life crisis.

Certainly doesn’t feel like it to me.

I had a birthday gift given to me in January, one night at a spa retreat, one whole day and night being pampered but I am hesitant to go.

Am I completely insane?

I have guilty feelings for even thinking of leaving our home for one day let alone seven nights.goldfish jumping out of the water

Why?

Because it feels like I am abandoning them. For so long I’ve always put them first, their well being is far more important than mine.

At the same time, I need to get back in touch with the person that is me, the person I was before I got married.

The occasional flirtatious, sexy (my husband’s view), very funny chick that would laugh at the most outrageous things and behave occasionally very badly.

What am I scared of?

That my husband wouldn’t love the real me, the person I use to be when I was his girlfriend, the woman he proposed to?

I can’t have changed that much surely.

Maybe I have. Too many years being a mummy and fitting comfortably into the genre is enough to make anyone question their identity.

Am I having an identity crisis? 

Do I need solitude from the ‘noise’, kids noise, school noise, work noise, world noise?

The idea of decamping from house and home and seeking solace in a place that requires me to be calm and tranquil sounds fabulous.

Away from the daily tasks that have become automated like loading the washing machine, planning dinner for next week, shopping lists, school runs, extra curricular activities that are dropped on me at a moment’s notice and are in my head not in my Filofax.

It’s endless.

familyAm I just tired like every other weary working woman who never gets their allotted amount of sleep and because I yearn for solitude and quiet and not the sound of my brain whirring?

I had no idea that having children and a husband would be so unrelenting and exhausting.

What if they left me instead?

I’ve suggested the idea on numerous occasions ‘go and have a male bonding week’ but it fell on deaf ears. No Mum, we can’t go without you, we can’t leave you, we’re not a family without you were their exclamations.

I’m not convinced their responses were indeed virtuous. Very sweet yes, but more like who is going to cook, wash, make the beds and be the general tidy up person rather than have mum around for the sake of mum.

The idea of being gloriously self-absorbed for a week sounds so delicious.

What would I do with this me time?

Would I do the things I want to do or would I end up by sorting my wardrobes, getting rid of piles of stuff, resolve to tidy the garage.

When really what I should be doing is sitting in a café in London watching the world pass by or sketch and paint, pamper myself at a day spa, sleep or simply lie on crisp white linen sheets looking at the ceiling and thinking of nothing.

There’s the thought of laying in bed all day watching TV or wallow in the bath with a bottle of champagne until I shrivel up.

The thought of not having to justify my actions or explain why I do the things I do would feel great.

Would one week of unadulterated bliss make me truly appreciate what I have the other 51 weeks of the year?

Until next time

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