This Wasn’t How My Story Was Supposed to Go

There are probably easier ways to deal with your life falling apart than sitting down and writing about every questionable decision you've made since you were eighteen. Therapy, maybe. Yoga. Meditation. One of those wee journals where you're supposed to write three things you're grateful for every morning. Instead, apparently, I'm writing a blog. And if I'm going to do this, I'm doing it properly. Not the Facebook version. Not the version people have heard from somebody else.

If I'm going to tell this story properly, then I have to start with the first serious relationship. The one that gave me the best title I've ever had. Mum. I was eighteen. Which obviously meant I knew absolutely everything about life. Because don't we all at eighteen? I met a guy. We fell in love. Or at least, we fell into what I understood love to be at that age. I was young. He was young. And at that age you don't necessarily think about where a relationship is going in ten

So there I was. Back living with Mum and Dad. I had my daughter. I was starting to go out again. Starting to remember that underneath being somebody's mum and somebody's ex, there was still actually a person in there. And that person loved cars. I'd been going to Strathy since I was about fifteen. Cars. Friends. Sunday-night cruises. That was my thing. So once I was back home, I started going again. Sometimes my daughter even came with me. I was still Mum. Always. But I was a