My ex-boyfriend had a baby and I think I want to cry

Paul and I had the least acrimonious break up in the whole world. We lived together as flatmates, even when my soon-to-be husband first moved in. I know for a fact he snogged a mate of mine who presented even then as a lesbian, and I’m fairly sure he might have had a brief flirtation with my sister.

We were never meant to be, but we loved each other and still do, in the sense that we see each other less than once a year at best, at the now dwindling weddings and annual get-togethers that make up my increasingly sparse social life. Of course, I went to his wedding, his wife, the first girlfriend he had after me, is eminently suitable: calm, tolerant, clever and sweet – and I suspect, secretly saucy. I know Paul too well to know he’d never have it any other way.

He was my university boyfriend. Picked up on Freshers Fortnight, he was in the year above me, but I’d taken year out, where I’d traveled the world with a sense of panic and had my heart broken enough to know better next time. Part of a consolidated group of old hands, Paul showed me around this strange new city, dive bars and drum ‘n’bass nights, old man pubs and wine bars, occasionally champagne tastings, our social life revolved around alcohol, while my own set of friends in the first year were much more into their drugs. With his shared flat, he became a safe place I could go to get away from the chaos of halls, where my rambunctious flatmates had stained the walls green. He introduced me to hip hop and I dyed his hair red, before swiftly shaving it off.

Together for three of my wildest, most unsettled, but in many ways happiest years, he was a rock during a tumultuous time and he kept me grounded enough to succeed at university where I might have given up. He didn’t mind that I worked as a lapdancer to pay my way. He was actually rather proud of it, and was sweet to me where others were intimidated. Once, on Valentine’s Day he left a trail of clues across the city that to me to Bath on the train where he met me on the platform with a bunch of yellow roses and took me to the pump room for a candlelit dinner.

A slightly nerdy science undergrad with a pretty face and a practical soul and I was already lost. Studying English with little direction but handing my essays in on time, I didn’t want to think beyond the end of term to the yawning gulf of life ahead of me with no sense of what to do with it.

Mostly it was a golden time, where everything still felt possible, but the weight of possibilities fell on my shoulders like lead. In truth I was terrified of leaving education, with its timetables and terms, and becoming adrift in the wide world where my life was not governed by weekly deadlines (except, of course, it inevitably is, but now I don’t get good marks).

I never really knew what I wanted to do, except write, and so I joined the student newspaper with no particular ambition and followed up moving to London with a journalism course so I didn’t have to negotiate the scary and rejecting world of internships on my own.

At that time, much of life from before university was in free fall. I’d been estranged from my dad for years, and he’d remarried, moving his new wife and her two children over from Korea, in the process dislocating the stepmother who had brought me up from a child. My mum had a new boyfriend who I’d met for the first time on a family holiday to which Paul had come along. We both agreed he was a bit of an idiot, in the mold of my step-dad before him, a boor who liked the sound of their own voice.

By contrast, Paul’s family was warm and welcoming. Salt of the earth, grounded, yet twinkly eyed and mischievous,  they were everything my parents were not: solid and sensible rather than flash or dramatic,. With four kids and a sensible car, a rambling, scruffy home and another one in the French wine region where they indulged their love of quality booze, they lived in stark contrast to my own upbringing characterised by brittle élan. I went there once, still in the first flush of our relationship, probably embarrassing them all with our youthful abandon on squeaky beds. They got me drunk on eau de vie and red wine, and I ended up under the table with my head in the vegetable basket, hiding from their good-natured teasing. They all laughed at me the next day, and his mum came to see me shortly after my son was born.

Tom and I went back together with the group from uni, but heavily pregnant and with a toddler in tow, I was living a very different life from the others. Now perhaps they understand how tired I was.

We traveled to South East Asia, but by the end of the trip, and as my uni days came to a close, I fell into a state of deep anxiety about my future. He continued to be supportive, even as our relationship petered out.  With my parents both wrapped up in their new lives, I was in uncharted waters – keeping myself afloat in London on my own not knowing the foggiest how to get a job that would pay the bills without  taking my kit off, let alone doing something I loved. I took the first internship that came my way – sorting out the post at Dazed & Confused, which at least had a bit of cachee, for all it was unpaid. I had a succession of bad relationships fueled by alcohol, sex and fear.

In the meantime, Paul had taken a work placement at a blue chip pharmaceutical, out of town in an uninspiring little backwater in Kent from where I’d long since fled. It was no place for me. Back then, I liked to wear designer heels and feign an interest in fashion. I needed to find my feet in London, precarious though that felt.

We kept in touch, but when he finally got  job in London I was relieved, and he moved in as my flatmate, though we ended up back in bed once or twice. He was my link to my recent past and the friends who till recently gave me a fleeting sense of stability as the rest of my old life was uprooting. In the end, I got a bursary and went back to school.

Yet, something was nagging me to get a move on with my life. By then I’d met my husband to be – a punter who I started dating because he had a steady job and would put me in taxis when I got too drunk. When his wife kicked him out – they were on the rocks already – he moved in with me, and soon enough Paul moved out. But it felt more romantic than that at the time.

Paced and sensible, Paul moved away from the capital with his new girlfriend, a girl from his home town who would become his wife, and the mother of his child, started his own business, bought a house and paid of the mortgage in no time. In the meantime, I had two children, had tasted the high life, and then the lowlife after Tom lost his job in finance, and eventually grew up to expect a reasonably happy medium. I found my feet both as a mother, lost my way a bit as a wife, and then found it again when times got less challenging.

One way or another, we all found our way through those tricky years of early adulthood, each coming up against our own challenges and discovering our strengths and weaknesses, but I did it with two children in tow, the anchor that both grounded and weighted me, kept me going and drove me close to giving up.

Now just as I regain my freedom, my uni friends, one by one, are giving up theirs. They have all that joy and trauma and juggling to come. But I’m daunted by my  life unhampered by routine, mealtimes and play dates, drop offs and pick ups although now, I’m much better at being on my own. But I feel adrift again as my kids grow up, and once again, I’m at odds with what my friends are doing, as I was for most of my twenties; if not, if I’m honest, for my whole life.