Nobody wants to be lonely...

So, I guess I started this blog as a way to get all the frustrations of going through the process off my chest. Secondary to that was that I thought maybe it would encourage other people to adopt, specifically other single people. But, as you all know, I got my baby. We have been together for 14 weeks - that's all???? It feels like forever. It feels like we are just part of each other...I mean, that's what I feel. I've absolutely no idea whatsoever what Emilio feels. 

When he came home, it felt normal. It felt like this is what I have been waiting for my whole life: someone to love. A friend wrote on my FB that our need to love another is so strong, as humans, that she was so glad I had finally got my person. She's right, I think. Our drive to connect to another being is just pure, raw biology. Most people find a partner, right? Lots of people want to have kids - cement their love and create another being out of that love. Biology, too, right? But what about us? The ones who really do crave a love of their own, but it just didn't happen that way? The ones that know that they SUCK at romantic love but that the love they have, the love they are capable of is just bursting, straining, surging to get to another human and that human is the baby they adopt? We are a rare breed, I believe, but we do exist. And now, I'm beginning to find out what that's really like. After all the paperwork and the checking and the frustrating process...now, I am learning what it's like to Mum, Alone. 

This week has been really, really hard. My baby has come on leaps and bounds. So much so that I'm not the one to notice a lot of the time. Our village comment frequently, 'Marianne, he's a different child to the one I met a couple of months ago,' etc. I see differences, obviously, but not in the way other people do. He is happy most of the time. He wakes up singing, or shouting 'OH-OH' in the most Scottish accent you've ever heard. He cuddles, he snuggles, he laughs, he plays, he melts my heart daily. But this week, things have gone off-kilter and I don't know why. Sleep has been horrendous, he's had almighty meltdowns about napping and it's just been pretty brutal. Some plans didn't work out the way I thought they would mid week as well and this had such a massive impact on me, that I realised I wasn't quite as ok with life as I had thought. The cold, harsh reality of Single Mumming has set in. 

A couple of weeks ago I got Man-Flu. Now, we know that is just a cold with a bit of a virus. We know that we can power through such nonsense. However. When faced with a child and 2 dogs to walk and no one to help, you can end up feeling pretty sorry for yourself when you genuinely feel like CRAP. This was Cold, Harsh Reality No. 1. The only person who was able to offer to help was someone I could kiss forever for offering, but that I really couldn't inflict my 3 year old child on! 

The second was this week. I feel like crap. I am as lonely as the biggest bag of lonely things. I am desperate for some company. Our nanny is wonderful and a joy to talk to, but she is not one of my close friends. Feeling isolated and alone, in my opinion, is one of the worst things to feel and now I can't shake it. My friend who has also been on maternity leave just went back to work and I suspect this has contributed to my general crappy mood. THIS is the reality of being a single parent. I am so lucky to have the village and the support that I have, SO LUCKY, and I know it. But unless you have been a single parent, you have no idea. As my beautiful Bestest put it, you could be facing the long, long day on your own but you know that, at some point, that other person who loves you and your child is coming home. The Single People don't have that. 

I am not complaining. Just so that's out there. I am DELIGHTED with my life choices and, mother of all that is nature, I love my baby so much, I might just explode, as I've said before. I'm just telling it like it is and the reality of loneliness is brutal. The lowest point of this has made me question everything except one thing. Everything except whether I have done the right thing by adopting my baby boy. He is my Everything. It's just that, whilst I have been laughing through the shocked looks and comments about doing this myself, obviously a part of me wished I wasn't. And that has been the sucker punch this week.