Loosing Control

January

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5,4,3,2,1, Happy flippin new year! Yes I am slightly merry, I've had a few vodka and diet cokes and I've been bopping away since 9pm with my friends, at a party that's a two hours drive from my home. I used to hate New Years eve. All those wishful thoughts for a better future, the resolutions and all the promises to be better. I just accept it now, it'll be crap no matter what. Same dreadful feeling of the rut I had chosen, same amount of tears I would cry feeling sorry for myself in the bed I had chose to lie in.

But I quite like it now; New Years that is - acceptance means I can enjoy the celebrations of the great night of resolutions. Acceptance; fixes things, makes everything easier. It meant I could be out with my friends, having a good time, dancing, drinking, celebrating, would I have it any other way? Yes. Would I like to be at home? Yes. Partying with my three beautiful children, toasting the new year. Having a laugh with my husband of 16 years, giggling about how Noah's only just managed to keep his eyes open for the countdown. Sharing with my loved one that kiss, that midnight kiss, the kiss that said goodbye to the past year and welcomed the new one. But that was in my pretend world, the lovely imaginative world I yearned to live in, that was before I had "accepted," before I came to terms, that the love of my life was actually just a jealous, controlling, nasty man. A man who verbally smashed any confidence I had right out of me. But acceptance that's what I had now and it was a happy flippin New Years!

I hate the drive home, the bloody car, driving me back to reality, the place where Cinderella hadn't found her prince and her friends the mice hadn't helped to do her housework. The real world of mess and dispute, anger and hatred. Sometimes I wished the car would just break down, maybe we would run out of petrol, or the exhaust could fall off, anything to hold me back from having to walk through that front door. That lovely red front door, the door I had chosen, red represents love, hearts and well all that crap back in my fantasy life. But I had to go back, confront what lay behind that door because I have, accepted it now. Using my own key, I was relieved when I heard the locks in the door turn, that noise meant I could get in, that the threat was meaningless, empty like a lot of the others. As I waved bye to my friends, I wished they would invite me back to theirs, maybe an all night session, I was hopeful it wouldn't be too long until we were out again, until I was rescued from my accepting life. As I stepped inside, the car, that flippin reliable not breaking down car drives happily off up the road. The first thing I do is take off my shoes, my heels, my beautiful going out high heels, putting them on made me feel like Cinderella, because it meant that I would be going out. If I put them on, escaping, having freedom away from the house she was slave to.

I put them into the coat cupboard so that I can tip toe up the stairs, I didn't want to disturb my sleeping children. At the top of the landing, the stair gate was unlocked as usual, left open, the open gate pointed down the danger waiting stairs, waiting for my sleeping son to fall down during one of his scary night terrors. I close it behind me. I know I won't be up here for long but I wasn't risking anything. I pop my head around my youngest's bedroom door, fast asleep, I have to carefully remove his black rimmed glasses off his face, it's an almost every night routine as Noah falls asleep with a book in his hand. Next, to my girls bedroom, Emily first, lying on the edge of the bed with her covers on the floor, I tuck her in just as I hear Alice calling me from the other side of the room, "Mum?" "Yeah?" I whisper, "Happy New Year mum! We missed you" I give her a kiss and tell her I missed her too. Guilt washes over me as I leave the room, fighting back tears and I swing my leg over the closed stair gate.

The guilt was still hanging in the air as I stripped to my vest and pulled my single duvet from the puff, over me while I lay down on the three seater, my sofa, my bed for the last 2 years. I felt awful that my kids had missed me and that I wasn't here to tuck them in, but I felt it clear as I reminded myself, acceptance. The children would have been feeling a lot worse if I had of stayed home. Instead of their evening consisting of the movie I bought them and the snacks and pop that they consumed, their night would have ended early as I would have sent them to their rooms to spare them of the nasty words that would have been heard downstairs, the awful things their dad and I would say to each other. So I had to accept it was the better of the two evils, the best outcome, the only outcome.