Seven days of gastro have left me feeling so weak I can barely stand up. Yes, each day I'm feeling a bit better, but it knocked me for six. Being 54, I suppose I just don't bounce back as easily as I would have 15 years ago. I sound like my mum, but I digress. Actually, maybe not too much, because today's topic is mothers, women, nurturers - how we care for everyone else and spend precious little time caring for ourselves.
Let's rewind to my late 20s and early 30s. My thirties were all about ego; I was earning more money than ever before, and people were treating me like a fully-fledged adult. I'd leave the office and pop into department stores, buying perfume and clothes because there was no one else to look after but myself. I'd spend hours in coffee shops, just sitting and chatting to friends, no rush to get home, no one to clothe and feed.
Fast forward to my current reality: I'm a woman down with gastro. It's been a week, and my stomach's easing up, but I'm floored. Literally floored. In walks the love and light of my life, my eighteen-year-old son.
"You feeling better?" he asks.
I nod.
"Good," he replies, "because you need to take me to Frome for my driver's test."
I nod again. "Sure," I reply, because what else am I supposed to say?
Now, let's just establish that Frome isn't round the corner. No, it's a forty-minute drive on skinny country lanes.
I keep thinking to myself, "Okay, okay, you can do this. You just have to put your foot on the pedal and steer the car." About an hour before, I do a quick Uber search to discover that this little excursion will cost me £40. This country is honestly ridiculously expensive.
So, I do what my ultra-independent, mother, woman, nurturer self always does and soldier on. We get in the car and off we drive. I'm doing my best to concentrate on the road and my speed limit because, if you recall, I've already received a detention from the traffic department for speeding on country roads. We're just outside of Bath when the light comes on in my car, announcing that my front left tyre is losing air.
I just carry on driving. I'm pissed off but saying nothing, passive-aggressively driving on the skinny lanes at 30 bloody miles per hour.
I drop my son off and slowly drive back with the tyre losing pressure while I think about how much I do for others before myself. It's not my son's fault for assuming I'll take him to Frome because I've never refused him anything. I've spent the past two decades looking after others - bringing up my son, obliging bosses, tech misogynist male clients, looking after Dad, Mum, ex-boyfriends, the animals and then myself absolutely last.
It's no one's fault but my own because I've allowed it. I had no boundaries and just smiled and did things for others.
I'm not alone in this. Most women feel like this - this exhaustion that a good night's sleep or a week on a tropical island isn't going to cure. The fatigue is bone-deep; it's in the core. It's all of us women feeling the pain of over-giving. It's never-ending.
I want to say I'm going to be able to fix this, but right now I'm too knackered to do anything but moan. Regarding the tyre, it's still losing air, which is metaphorically exactly what I'm doing.
The fact it's Mercury retrograde doesn't surprise me one bit.
So, to all of us ultra-independent women, holding up the whole bloody world: I see you, I hear you, and I will support you. But right now, I'm going to take a nap.
Gail x
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