Do you know who yours are? For real? What would it be like without them?
There's nothing quite like the feeling of being hungover. A feeling which I find myself feeling a lot these days. I sat down for a minute this morning calculating how many glasses of wine I had yesterday. Thinking about it didn't make me feel much better but turns out it must have only been about 5, if that. And that didn't make me feel much better either. How can I feel this rough after only 5 glasses of wine? Something must be wrong.
I wonder today if its because I'm feeling slightly rough, reflective and tired that William seems more irritating than ever. Johnny Drama woke up from his day time nap and has said 'I want somesing Mommy' about fifty times in the past 5 minutes. He's been sent to his room twice, had two seriously stern looks, one raised arm and a couple threats to his backside. God, still 4 hours till bedtime.
I have been worringly more reflective this past week. I guess with moving and leaving the familiar behind I have started to think back to when I first arrived in Singapore and what it was like moving somewhere where I didn't know anyone. Back then I didn't have kids so making friends was left to boozy nights out with work colleagues and meet ups with similar expats from social networking groups, usually also quite boozy. I made some great friends, some of which I still consider great friends, others not. Once William arrived and then Emma I met more and more people but then came the realisation that maybe some girls were only my friends because of our circumstances. We shared stories of midnight feeding, the size and consitency of poo and the joys of living an expat life in Singapore but that was it. No one talked much about life pre kids or a life we'd like with kids but without our kids, if you get what I mean.
I speak of William being Johnny Drama, being emotional and incredibly high maintenance but I forget that up until March this year Emma was exactly the same, if not worse. I had her three weeks early and I'm still convinced it was payback for taking her out my nice big comfy belly that made her the horrible little baby she was. And I say that because I can. I love her but she was pretty awful. So, after five tough months of not sleeping and generally being fussy it was no surpirse that I became a moody, short tempered, sleep deprived bitch. I didn't want to go on playdates, I never wanted to socialise and for a few weeks there were even days when getting out of bed was just too much effort. I cried all the time, I hated my life and I remember wondering what I'd done to deserve this. I know its classic post natal depression but I never wanted to admit to it. I never wanted to admit defeat. I never wanted to accept that I just couldn't cope. I hated that my 'friends' could. Why couldn't I?
And that's when I started realising who my friends were. My real friends. If I didn't call for two weeks and I ignored messages and accepted and then declined every playdate on offer, very few of my so called 'friends' stuck around.
I don't suppose I had some miracle cure but by the time Emma turned six months she started sleeping through the night, she seemed happier, we got a helper and generally life got better. The only problem I was faced with then was the lack of support. I was almost 15 friends down on Facebook.
How could I have been so close with some girls for so long and shared nearly every day of my exapt life with them only to be deleted out so quickly? I guess that's expat life for you. I now realise just because you're a mom, you have two kids that might be the same age as mine, you're from the UK or South Africa, you know someone that I know or are friends with someone I know -DOESNT MAKE YOU MY FRIEND! Proceed with caution! Makes me sound like a right bitch but I've learnt the hard way. You cant please them all.
So in two weeks time the unfamiliar starts all over again. I'm four years older with baggage and hopefully a bit more wiser when it comes to chosing who to share my poo stories with.
I'm looking forward to my new life and a world of possible new friends.
I found this really funny link to Wikihow on the internet today. How to live without friends.Just in case!
http://www.wikihow.com/Live-Without-Friends
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