Before Everything Changed

For a long time, I thought I knew what my life was.

Not that it was perfect. Fuck me, it wasn’t.

But it was mine.

I was a mum. A wife. A daughter. A sister. A friend.

I worked. I raised my children. I worried about money, remembered birthdays, sorted dinners, dealt with school stuff, listened to everybody else's problems and somehow kept all the plates spinning.

You know. Life.

The ordinary kind.

The kind you complain about while you're living it, without realising that one day you'd give almost anything to have ordinary back.

I didn't wake up every morning thinking about who I was.

I didn't analyse my relationships.

I didn't wonder whether I was happy enough, strong enough or whether I'd somehow lost myself along the way.

I just got on with it.

And if somebody had asked me back then what I thought my future looked like, I probably would have given them a fairly boring answer.

My children growing up.

Getting older.

Family Christmases.

Arguments over stupid things.

Holidays if we could afford them.

Grandchildren one day, maybe.

The people I loved still being there.

Me still being me.

I thought life would change gradually.

I knew there would be difficult years. Of course there would. Everybody has them.

But somewhere underneath all of that was this quiet assumption that the foundations would stay where I'd left them.

That family was family.

That love meant something.

That the people who said they loved you wouldn't deliberately destroy you.

That home was supposed to be the place where you were safe.

I know how naïve that sounds now.

But that's the thing about hindsight.

You can look backwards and see every fucking crack.

While you're living it, you call them something else.

Stress.

A rough patch.

Bad timing.

A misunderstanding.

Something that will blow over.

You make excuses because the alternative is admitting that something is seriously wrong.

And sometimes admitting that would mean questioning your entire life.

So you don't.

You carry on.

You make dinner.

You answer messages.

You go to work.

You smile when you're supposed to smile.

You tell people you're fine.

And slowly, without even noticing it happening, your definition of normal starts changing.

Things you once would have said were unacceptable become things you tolerate.

Things that hurt you become things you explain away.

You become so busy keeping everything together that you don't stop to ask why you're the one holding all the fucking pieces.

I didn't know then where any of it was heading.

I didn't know how much I was going to lose.

I didn't know there would come a point when I'd look at my own life and barely recognise it.

And I definitely didn't know that one day I'd be sitting here writing about it.

Back then, I still thought I knew how my story went.

I had no idea the ground underneath me had already started moving.