Identity Crisis
Extract from Stronger Every Mile
I started feeling like I was the only one who didn’t get to do what I wanted. I thought about everyone else and made sure they were happy, but no one thought about me. I was ‘Mum,’ not ‘Libby,’ and I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to be that anymore because at this moment in time, it wasn’t making me happy.
I knew that I had signed up for it, but with all sorts of insecurities going on in my head, sleep deprivation, my hormones being on a roller coaster and my emotions running high, I just wasn’t able to deal with it all.
Where had Libby disappeared to? What about Libby? I didn’t know how much longer I could go on feeling like this. The kids were my life. There is nothing that I wouldn’t have done for them. They came top of my list. They were my proudest and greatest achievement to date. But I was there to serve a purpose—which, although completely normal and understandable, was soul-destroying. I was at the bottom of their list.
I suddenly understood what my mum must have felt like. It made me grasp that as kids, you are so busy thinking about your own lives that you don’t think your parents need you. But I know now. They do. Back then, it was not something that ever occurred to me and I feel bad about it now. I found it hard not to be a significant part of my children’s lives anymore.
Milo, my youngest, had pulled away from the cherished bike rides, climbing trees in the woods, playing tennis, going to the local café and going to the cinema. That was the side of parenting I had loved. He now wanted to spend time with his friends and lived in his bedroom on the Xbox, so I felt like I had lost my buddy, my last child. This, I knew, was to be expected and was completely understandable. As a child, I had done the same.
Chris and I coexisted and survived well in the family unit, but we had forgotten what it was like to spend time with each other. We hadn’t done that since before having kids. We lived very separate lives and communicated on a need-to-know basis. Although this is something I knew lots of parents suffered from, these felt like dark days.