Zero Fuks

I am 42 years old and the saddest part of my life is not the fact that I am a single parent or that I have good days or bad days, or that being a parent is stressful and often fills you with anxiety and worry, because that is part and parcel of being a parent regardless of whether there are one or two parents, it is just an unwritten rule that should totally be written on the side of the baby as they hand it to you, “WARNING THIS WILL CAUSE STRESS, ANXIETY, WORRY, A LACK OF MONEY AND GREY HAIR” No, none of that constitutes a sad life. But what does, is that it took me well into my mid-to-late 30’s to realise that I should not care what others think about me or my life or my circumstances. The reality is that we have all been through the best and the worst of our lives and each day is either an uphill struggle or a walk in the park. Life can knock you down or lift you up, and it is not what you have to experience or endure that defines you as a person, although these experiences help to mold you into that person.But rather how you have walked your path and come out the other side. It is not the material things we possess that define us but rather the content of our character. My main goal in life is to be a better version of myself today than I was the day before. I compete in my own race and I am my only competition, because it is about beating the self I was yesterday. So many people are in competition with their friends, family and anyone they follow on social media, they get absorbed in competing for who has the best in life and use the hashtag #livingmybestlife. It makes me laugh as I often wonder if people that post these pictures are actually living their best life or is it just for the sake of social media? What constitutes living your best life? If I wake up every day and my children are happy and healthy is that considered my best life or is it only if I travel, eat in the best places, take pictures with ALL of my many, many friends and show how in love I am with my partner? My instagram for example, I think of all the 3,920 posts on there you will be lucky if 200 of those posts are actual, real life pictures of me with anyone. I like to keep my private life private but does this make me a weirdo by today’s standards? See this is what I mean, I give zero fucks if people think I am living this amazing life, the reality is if I want you to know anything about me I would pick up the phone and call you, but my REAL friends know me well enough to know that will never happen as I hate calls, most know they are lucky if I even reply to texts, but my phone is certainly not there for the purpose of answering calls…..that’s just crazy.

Nobody can judge you or me because they truly have not lived our lives, done what we have done or experienced what we have experienced. They say you can’t judge someone till you have walked in their shoes, but realistically even if I put on your shoes the likelihood of them fitting perfectly and me experiencing your life in the same fashion as you is impossible. We all interpret things differently, we all approach things differently and we all end up with different results. It's similar to maths, we all have the same equation given to us at birth z x _ = y. We all start with z (birth/life) and end with y (death) but no two people will multiply their z with the same in order to get y. That’s why none of us will ever experience things in the same way. So different people end up on different ends of the scale, whilst others are somewhere in between. For some, raising a child is the scariest, most unnatural thing in the world and therefore they avoid this experience, while someone else will embrace motherhood and become this couscous producing, kale juicing, earth mother than feeds off the joys of being a mother (for me that joy has yet to set in, being a mum is not easy and I hate couscous and kale, so you can see where I am on the spectrum). Instead of kale and couscous I have raised my boys on a strict diet of sarcasm and chicken and they seem to have turned out alright so far. Anyway, I digress, what I am trying to say in a very long winded fashion, is that no two people will ever have the same feelings, emotions and memory of the same experience as we are all affecte

d completely different by the world around us. What I have found difficult, others have flourished at. For example, one of my dearest friends is a singer, she gets on that stage and sings her heart out and you can literally see and feel her love for singing and the feeling of adrenaline that runs through every inch of her body. To watch her come to life on that stage is truly a magnificent sight. That is where she feels at home. For me, as an introvert that seems to be the scariest place to ever be. Having so many people watch you, but that is one of the things that makes each one of us unique. I could never do what she does without making peoples ears bleed, causing cats to attack and probably have some sort of heart attack from the sheer fear of everyone watching me, but by the same token I am able to do things that others probably could never imagine doing. It is also true of hardships, what one person endures in their lifetime may make them stronger whilst someone else could literally be destroyed by such an experience (One man's trash is another man's treasure, after all right?). We are all very unique and individual. We are all perfectly imperfect and that is why we are all so interesting. For this reason I can’t allow myself to be judged by anyone, they have no idea and if I was to share some stuff (and anyone that knows me knows I DON’T share) some would wonder how I came out the other side reasonably sane, whilst others may think I have had it easy, It is and always has been irrelevant what others think. The only opinion that matters is mine. I spent too many years wondering if friends really cared, men really fancied me (FYI they totes always did……not really, I was always the funny fat friend), did people think I was funny, or kind or likeable and for what???? The majority of people that have been in my life have all at different times and for different reasons moved on so did their opinion really matter, was their acceptance worth such a large amount of thought and stress! The answer is NO and it is sad that I wasted so many years without this wisdom. I watch my sons and it would seem that both of them, despite their respect for others and how polite and well-mannered they are, they care little for what people think of them or how they are perceived and I so badly want them to hold on to this and don’t want this part of their personality to be diminished or killed, it took me 30 years to learn what they have instinctively grasped at such an early age that I admire and also envy them.