All I never wanted

It's 10 years this week since I met the man who is now my husband. Taking a walk down memory lane, I've realised that meeting that ginger fecker was the event that set me off on the road to my unbalanced life, and actually put me into counselling.

Prior to our meeting I was single and career driven. I'd just sold my flat in Edinburgh and moved to a grown up house with a garden and a drive. I was proud of myself - of my independence, and that I didn't need a bloody man. My friends were getting married and having children and disappearing off the planet to a world I neither understood nor cared for. Who in the hell wanted that traditional, boring happily ever after. I wanted my independence, adventure and definitely no kids.

Then... I took a trip 'home' to Manchester to go bridesmaids' dress shopping with a couple of friends (there was an actual wedding, we're not weird). We went back to her house and I donned my new underwear bought to go with the dress. Walking into the kitchen I announced, "Look at my tits in this!", only to be greeted by the crooked smile of an unexpected ginger bloke.

Time will tell that this meeting was apparently set up, though clearly not the discussion about my tits.

I know it's ridiculous, but I just knew. I knew that night that something significant was happening. I won't say love at first sight, because it certainly wasn't love that first struck me, it was embarrassment. And a desire to shift attention away from my fun bags. Even if they were beautifully presented in my new well-structured scaffolding - fate occasionally does play us a nice card.

Suddenly we had a summer of love mapped out, travelling up and down the M6 and being each other's Plus 1 at a ridiculous amount of weddings.


And even more suddenly (it seemed) my whole outlook on life changed. I don't know if it was the excitement of a long distance relationship, the constant drip of 'happiness' from those weddings or just the fact that he was ginger, but now I wanted to be like Cinderella. I wanted that happily ever after. With him. I wanted his Ginger Babies.

That was the real beginning. As soon as I said that out loud, whilst drunk at yet another wedding, it started. We were looking for a house, I was resigning from my job and saying goodbye to my career-woman life in Scotland.

Writing it down now, and with the benefit of Captain Hindsight, I can see how significant that was. But at the time I couldn't understand why I was so emotionally drained and feeling sad. I was soooo happy. I had found a man who was worth changing everything for. I'd managed to transfer my job to work from Manchester and I was back living in my old stomping ground near my family and friends who I'd always stayed close to. What the hell was wrong with me. Why did I keep crying?

I know now that I was mourning my old 'attitude'. It wasn't the physical things that were changing that bothered me, but my mental approach to life - the whole self-sufficient 'I don't belong to anyone' confidence that I'd built up over the previous decade.

The idea of marriage and changing my name had always felt so old fashioned and ridiculous. But now I wanted it. I wanted to be his family.

The idea of having kids and being with them all the fricking time, except maybe a monthly, 'yes I'll come, but I'll have to leave by ten-thirty, and I'll probably drive' night out, had horrified me. But now I wanted it. I was ready to move on from my old existence, to give it all up.

I felt that I had betrayed... Me.

(Bizarrely, at the very moment I wrote that sentence, Simply Red just came on the radio singing "I'd give it all up for you". That's really freaked me out!)

And so off to the doctors I trotted and he referred me to a wonderful woman called Susan who helped me to understand it all.

Understand it.
Embrace it.
Live it.

Of course I didn't change completely and become a 1950's wife, cleaning house while whistling a Disney tune. Although I do sometimes wish that the birds from my garden would fly in and help me tie bows around my curtains - and I don't even have curtains!

I'm still me. I'm still fiesty. I'm still fiercely independent in my views. But with room beside me for my new family. They define part of me, but not the whole me. I'm proud to be a wife and a mother - labels that previously made me shudder. Now I wear them with pride alongside my many other labels assigned to me.

So looking back on the last 10 years, a lot has changed. They say everyone hates change, but it's usually physical change. I managed to make a mental one and I'm a bit proud of myself. If I hadn't I wouldn't have the life I do now. Yes, it's unbalanced. Yes it's tiring. But I couldn't imagine what life would be otherwise - if I didn't meet that unexpected ginger man with the crooked smile, or had my beautiful ginger boy with.... well there's a million things that are wonderful about him.

Having All-I-Never-Wanted is the happiest I've ever been.

Thank you for the last 10 year darling. You rocked my world - and you still do.
(sick buckets allowed).

Xxx

(I have cried all the way through writing this!)