The Deafening Silence

It was all going so well. I suppose it didn’t really go wrong… it just kind of crash landed. It was only seven weeks long but it was the happiest I had been in 4 years. I was finally me again. Not just Mama or Mummy in a Tutu. I was Katie. A woman (I don’t think I can get away with saying girl anymore really) holding hands with a man. Getting to know him, getting to know myself again and getting to know us. It wasn’t perfect – nothing is, but I liked him. I really really liked him. Then life got in the way. I don’t think he understood or was expecting the amount of time that motherhood or my job for that matter takes up and unfortunately what I had left just wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t really anyone’s fault I suppose and it came out of nowhere. One minute we were hand in hand, falling in love and happy and the next we weren’t. In all honesty a small amount of relief flooded through me when one of the many sand bags that hangs around my next representing the pressures I feel in life was snipped off and then sadness.

Sadness for everything we wouldn’t share and that it had ended without any real warning. As someone who has unfortunately had more than her fair share of heartbreak I recognised this sad feeling. It was all too familiar and not something I was happy to be feeling again. What I wasn’t prepared for, what I had forgotten after 4 years of being single, was how used to having someone to message I had gotten. We had slipped quite naturally into messaging each other good morning, messaging on lunch breaks, popping each other a message if something happened, talking on the phone and saying goodnight. Then silence.

I sat staring at my phone. Then every minute or so I’d press the button to see if I had any notifications and nothing. Well, not nothing. There was my usual constant, demanding stream of work notifications and messages from lovely friends to check I was okay, commiserate and offer virtual hugs or reality gin. I did attempt a night of unloading at my lovely friends house but two gins and 1.5 hours in, I had to dash home as my little one was ill and there lay the reality.

This was why I was single, because no matter what I am doing be it alone or with someone else, if that phone were to ring and it was for Alyssa,  I would drop everything and go and that is how it should be. I am her mother, her primary care giver and her main source of comfort and she mine. My wonderful friend as a single mummy herself understood and I expect if we had been dating he would have too. He’d have been upset and frustrated but he would have understood.

I wish things could have been different. He was honestly a welcome breath of fresh air. It was as if someone had opened the windows and let in a breeze after 4 years of having them shut tight and the blinds pulled down. However, sometimes liking each other simply isn’t enough, you need to be able to give more and I just didn’t have anything more I could give. The worst part of it all is the deafening silence that still a fortnight on if I stop for a moment comes crashing down around me. It’s getting better, as am I but it will always feel a little bit sad.