I am not Wonder Woman

To be honest, that title could just be the blog. Done. There’s not much else to say really. But for someone who spent years saying to her daughter “have you ever seen me and Wonder Woman in the same room? How do you know I’m not her then?” to finally be admitting I’m not takes a heck of a lot. Especially given three months ago I asked to be portrayed as her in a caricature!

But now, at the age of 41, two and half years to the day after being widowed, I will finally admit it. I am not Wonder Woman.

I’ve always had a fairly crazy and hectic life. For years, we had this life together. Mr C and I would often be like passing ships in the night, I worked full time, he worked full time, he was a part-time photographer, he was in two bands, we had a child etc, etc… So many people would say to us “I don’t know how you do it” and I feel like I now know what I’d say to them.

Having been without him for what feels like forever, it’s funny (or ironic really) looking back. The amount of times that I would say to him that I’d just like it if he did more, that I’d appreciate more help and that I was sick of doing everything by myself. But the simple reality is that he did way more than I think I ever gave him credit for. And now, two and half years after his death and with the world pretty much back to a pre-pandemic state, I totally appreciate that. I feel so sad that I didn’t really see it and value it when he was here. That I never said “thank you” enough.

It’s taken such a long time for me to have to worry about and manage living again. I was shielded after he first fell ill and died because the world was shut down. We didn’t have to worry about a social life, we didn’t really have to worry about living. We were just essentially surviving. We 100% needed to do this, it was the only way for us to begin to process what had happened to us. To adjust to life just the two of us. We became insular because the world made us that way. And in many ways, I’m so incredibly grateful for that. We only really had to focus on each other, we had no choice but to learn to live without him in our lives, we couldn’t hide from it because it was so bloody obvious and apparent he wasn’t there. He was gone, never ever coming back and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

But over the course of 2021, I realised that was never going to be sustainable. I realised we couldn’t avoid life forever. I spent a lot of last year saying that 2022 was going to be our year. The year we’d start living again. We’d spent a long time in shock. We’d spent a long time with life on hold. We’d spent a long time keeping him ever present in our lives. We’ll always do that, but I knew we’d need to find a way to keep him ever present while moving forwards. Not moving on, I don’t like that phrase, but moving forwards.

Yet what I’ve come to realise more than ever this year is that everyday life is hard work. Being a mother is hard work. Being a widow is hard work. Being a person trying to forge a future is hard work. Wanting a career is hard work. I’m exhausted most of the time trying to juggle everything. My entire life feels like a military mission. Spontaneity is not a word that ever really enters my vocabulary. At the start of September, I sat down and worked out all the days I wanted to go into the office between then and Christmas. Then I had to check that my doggy daycare lady could have my dog on those days. Then I had to check my mum was available to help with my daughter and pick the dog up on some of those days. My poor mum and stepdad now have a column on their organiser calendar just for us. Without them I’d really struggle. To go to the office. To have a social life. To live. I completely took this for granted before I was widowed. I’d just let Mr C know if I’d made plans and he’d be the one at home with our daughter instead. And vice versa. I just went to work. Simple really. I’d be up and out of the house before either Mr C or our daughter got up, he’d then get her ready in the morning and drop her at her childminder. This was our life; I didn’t have to think about it. But now, I have to ask for help simply to go to work. Crazy really. It’s the little things that you take for granted.

It’s one of the reasons that I feel quite passionately that I am not a single parent. I have friends who are single parents and they’re all blinking amazing. But I’m not. Yes, it might sound like semantics to someone not in my position, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m a solo parent. It’s bloody relentless. My daughter is, and always will be my priority, but it’s relentless. I can’t take it for granted that I can go out when invited, because if I don’t have a babysitter, it doesn’t happen. Every decision about her, every financial aspect of her life, all the running around, the organising, the arguments, the good times are all down to me. I can’t play good cop, bad cop with someone else when it comes to disciplining her anymore because I’m literally the only cop in the house! I miss co-parenting, I miss having someone to sanity check decisions about her with, I miss having someone that was my equal when it came to her. I reckon I always will. No matter how old she is.

But it’s not just parenting where I miss an equal. It’s in the day to day running of a house. Absolutely everything falls to me. I’ve said before about wanting to borrow my friend’s husband on a Tuesday because that’s my busiest night of the week and this really came to the fore earlier this year. I’d been to see Ronan Keating with my sister on a Tuesday, I got home at 12:45am and promptly realised I needed to put the bins out. Because my mum had picked my daughter up from school, they’d got the dog from daycare and then stayed at my mum’s, they’d had no need to go back to my house. And given no-one else is there, there simply was no-one to put the bins out except me. Reality of being a widow 101. You can go out, have a brilliant day and evening, and then come home to be brutally reminded that you are on your own and have to do everything. It sucks. No other way about it. Coming home and being able to just go to bed without having to sort anything out first rarely ever happens now.

I’m basically always on 99% of the time. Trying to do everything I’ve always done. Trying to work. Trying to be the organiser. Trying to have a social life. Trying to be there for everyone. Trying to give my daughter the same life she had before Mr C died. Over the last 10 days I’ve spoken at the UK Commission of Bereavement report launch, been to the office four times, helped at an event I’ve been involved with since 2004, seen Jason in Grease twice (crazy even by my standards!), been to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour and dealt with the usual juggling. I used to be a pro at a life like this, but looking at the photos, I can see how tired I look. These photos show me I’m not the same person as I used to be. Yet I know I’ve spent a heck of a lot of 2022 attempting to prove I am. Trying to prove I can do this. Prove I can do it all. We’ve done countless theatre trips (a number of which were rearranged from 2020 and 2021) and days out, we’ve been to Florida, we’ve been to Disneyland Paris, we’re going to New York. All of which are beyond bittersweet because we can only do them because of his death, but we’ve done them.

And more than this, since he fell ill and died, I’ve had so many people comment on how much I’ve done to keep his memory alive and honour him. The funeral, the memorial service, the charity event, the memorial bench, the podcasts, the newspaper and magazine articles, the blog, the charity calendar, becoming an Ambassador for Widowed and Young… I always retort with “but this is what anyone would do” but now I’m not so sure. Now, I suspect I’ve done it all because I’m simply terrified of him being forgotten, of what I will do with my life if I’m not desperately trying to keep his memory alive. And above all else. Now I wonder if I was doing it, as I did with the dating app, to prove that I could.

But, who the heck am I trying to prove anything to? Nobody puts any pressure or expectation on me. Expect one person. Me.

I’ve clung desperately to try to be the wonder woman I was before he died. Because to admit I’m not and I can’t do it all without him makes me feel like a failure. I’m a strong, independent woman who can do this by herself, why shouldn’t I have the life I’ve always had? Why shouldn’t I be able to give our daughter the life she’s always had? To adjust our lives, to accept I can’t do it all, to accept that running a house, managing the finances, working, raising a child, having a social life, buying all the presents, planning and everything else that goes with being a grown up means I have to accept that my emotional resilience has been irrevocably altered by his death. It means I have to accept I’m not who I was before. But that’s the reality. My life can’t be the same as it was before. Because I am 100% not who I was before. I can’t be two people and do everything two people did. The simple, hard-hitting truth is that our lives are different. I just wasn’t given a choice as to whether I wanted them to be.

Recently, very good friends of mine (the sort of friends you’ll allow to be brutally honest with you) have started asking me to slow down. They’ve told me that they’re exhausted just watching me. That they’re worried about me and what I’m trying to hide from by keeping continually busy. But I can honestly say that I don’t think I’m hiding from anything. I simply think I’m someone who is still struggling to find her way as a widow. To know where she fits in this world now. To get the balance right. To learn how to be an adult by herself. To feel confident in raising a child by herself.

Don’t tell them, but they’re right. I know and I feel that I need to slow down. I’ve proven that I can have a manic life like I had before. The reality is though that I don’t want it. I find it insanely hard work. I started this blog by saying I can respond to the phrase “I don’t know how you do it” and it’s simple. It’s taken the world opening up again to help me see it, it’s taken two and a half years since becoming a widow to see it, it’s taken the sheer exhaustion of life to help me see it. I could do it because I was part of a team, there were two of us, we shared responsibility for our daughter, we shared responsibility for everything. I could pretend to be Wonder Woman because I had my own superhero that meant I had a shot at achieving it.

So, while it pains me to admit it, this is my first step in pausing, breathing, slowing down and not trying to be a wonder woman and do it all. I realise now that not all superheroes wear capes. It doesn’t mean I’m a failure. It means I’m simply human. It means I have the greatest superpower of them all. Vulnerability. Couple that with the superhero and guardian angel who will always have my back, and who knows where that’s going to take me. Changes need to happen. Changes are coming. I am not Wonder Woman, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve, and can’t live a wonderful life that’s fulfilling but less hectic. It’s time to reprioritise. It’s time to refocus. It’s time to take control of me and my new life.

I owe it to our daughter. I owe it to Mr C. But most importantly. I owe it to me.