I’m not complaining; it’s just hard

Sometimes I get misunderstood. I’m luckier than most. I have a husband who deals with stuff with a smile on his face. A gentle sociopath with big teeth and a positive attitude, he rolls with the punches, and doesn’t ignore me when I cry. Sometimes I think he facilitates me, when, at 3 am I ask him to get me a cup of tea coz I can’t sleep. When he lets me sleep till noon because I’ve had insomnia all week. When I or one of the kids is ill and he looks after us like newborn chicks, pouring medicine and home-made soup down our throats. Mostly, I think he’s a hero. He takes me as he finds me, red in tooth and claw, and loves me nonetheless. I think he admires my passion, because deep inside he feels very little. He admits it too, so we kinda fit.

I married for the wrong reasons, but then again who doesn’t?; We had  Jonah by then and Tom was nicer to me than many, but 18 months out of work will put a strain on any relationship. It wasn’t till afterwards that the strain really started to show.

We got through it: baking our own bread, making soup out of cauliflower leaves, sewing, darning, making Christmas gifts out of fabric flowers and jam jars. It was okay really – we’d go to the cinema at lunchtimes on Orange Wednesdays when both kids went to school and it was the highlight of our week.

It was tough, but then, with two under five, who doesn’t have it hard? You’ve got to be around, working around them, so it almost made it easier being tight on a budget of job seekers’ allowance. The time he was off began to drag and by the time both of us were working again, we were both a bit wrung out from being financially insecure for so long..

I was, for a time, thrilled to get my job. I’d childminded to get by, although the state would probably arrest me if they knew, and God, I earned my money doing that! Jonah yelling his head off about god knows what, while looking after an impassive  ‘outwardly ‘good’ child who wouldn’t eat, soiled his trousers day in, day out, who would pinch baby Ava behind my back and coldly watch her scream. When his father begrudged me my minimum wage, I laughed to myself – he couldn’t hack it, that’s for sure. I’m not sure, with hindsight that I could either.

Finally doing a proper job meant the world to me. I’m good at what I do. I work hard and I want success. But the other stuff doesn’t come easy. The office politics and what not. I’m not good at it. I say what I see – it’s what makes me a good copywriter, but it doesn’t go down so well with people who have got their own agenda. I’ve always struggled in groups, so I’m prepared to admit the half the problem is mine. But only half the problem. I’m very unmean, whatever people may think about me. I probably don’t care enough about other people to be mean –  it seems like such an effort.

And the money thing – it’s paying childcare, innit? And I wouldn’t begrudge them what I pay them either. But I knew that living by my pen, or the fast, four fingered typing I do to earn me a wage would never make me rich unless that bestseller manages to drop out of me some day. It’s hard, though, when nearly half of what I earn goes on the kids. And before anyone says I should of thought about that, all I will say is: if the government didn’t foresee the financial crisis, how the hell was I supposed to? Okay, rant over… I’m going back to bed….