R.I.P To My Youth

Wild.

There was me before him and who I am now.

At that moment he entered the world, a part of me left and I am still trying to grasp that.

I don't think I love being a mother, but I love being his mother and I love my son, he is so beyond perfect that I can't understand how I grew him inside me. He is the most amazing but fragile thing I have created.

I bled for the first 17 weeks of my pregnancy, I had a hematoma and suspected marginal cord insertion. After 25 hours in labour he was born, he stopped breathing and wasn't crying and I can't bring myself to think of that moment, of the fear in my husband's eyes. I just knew he had to be okay because I had got him here, to this moment out in the world, he was here and he was mine.

When I had to birth his placenta I was exhausted to a point I can't describe, my cord insertion was actually a velamentous insertion, which happens in about 1% of pregnancies, it's amazing that he was born so well. But as I tried to birth my child's home of the last 9 months the chord and the membranes fell away leaving me with my placenta stuck inside and adhered to the top of my uterus.

I lost 2 litres of blood and had a transfusion, if I was alive in a different time or place or even a different hospital it could have been a different outcome. So I guess there was a brush with death and in the moment I said goodbye to who I was before and now I am learning how to be a mother, which feels unnatural but I'm trying as hard as I can to be the best that I can. In my arms I hold the the most wonderful boy in all the world and all I have to do is love him and show up for him.

Their attention won't help you to love yourself.

Older men know better, you are not more mature, you are just naive, don't let them fool you, it is cool to be young.

If anyone cares about your weight, they are just a shitty person.

Do not trust so easy, people can truly be physically dangerous.

So I'm back in my home town, in my parents house, in my childhood bedroom. I am back at my old university - working, not studying. I walk the same streets I used to before a 9 am lecture but this time I'm part of the staff. I'm back where I started, back in the life I was so driven to escape.

London ten years ago was the moment I said goodbye to four years of not feeling good enough for you. I don't know why, but fucking you was closure, I felt empowered and in control.

I liked being the instigator, I liked that I messaged and you responded, I like that I was in your city but we ended up in my bed, in my hotel. You didn't invite yourself up, just said your train wasn't leaving yet, you gave me the option, you gave me the control.

The moment we sat at opposite ends of the bed in that tiny room, we were electric. There had been something holding between us all that day. Like no time had passed, like we had never lost contact over the years, something had tied us together. I can't remember if the sex was that good but with you and me it was always magnetic, chemistry that was instant. Chemistry doesn't make for a love story, it creates lust and indifference.