I’m a quitter.
That’s not really how I think of myself, and I don’t think it’s how other people would describe me, either. I’m stubborn, I’m determined, I will often find a way to make almost impossible things work and, when I want to do something, I will push myself to do it.
But I also run away. Often. My instinct, when things get tough, is to find a new job, move to a new place, end the relationship, throw it all up in the air and change everything. It’s an in-built pattern, having spent most of my childhood moving and changing. I don’t know how to settle and see how it pans out.
Yet now, as a mother, I’m learning that there are some things you can’t run away from.
When it all gets too much
It’s been a tough few weeks.
When we made the decision to take our eldest child out of school in March and begin home education, one of the assumptions our plans rested on was that my mother would be able to look after my daughter two days a week so that I could have some focused work time. That’s how it went for the first month, and it was working well. Then my mum started experiencing some severe pains, which eventually landed her in A&E. She’s been in and out of hospital since then, and is currently awaiting a referral to a cardiologist. We’re optimistic that everything will be positively resolved (although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried), but we have come to the realisation that she probably won’t be able to take on much childcare again. (When I say “we”, I am referring to myself and my husband. My mother has come to no such realisation, and is adamant she can carry on as before. Even though she’s still experiencing pain, breathlessness and dizziness, she announced the other day that she’d had enough “of all this” and just needed to get back to normal. Nothing I can say will convince her that this is not how it works.)
So, aside from trying not to stress about my mum’s health, I’m now trying to home educate and run a business at the same time. I’m not sure it’s going very well. I’m deeply grateful for my awesome business partner and incredible team who have been able to pick up some of the slack while I’m failing to pull my weight. But that’s not a sustainable situation. Nor is feeling constantly exhausted from trying to cram work and home ed and general parenting and keeping the house in a halfway decent state and assorted life admin into a single day, and coming up short on absolutely all of it.
The obvious answer is to give up. To send my daughter back to school. It’s been suggested. We’ve got as far as looking at schools. The thought of it hurts my heart, and I know the idea terrifies my daughter, but I don’t know if we can keep going like this.
But then, I wonder if this is just another example of me running away.
Unrooted
I’ve spent more time than is strictly healthy recently browsing Rightmove (for non-UK readers, this is a real estate website, where I indulge my fantasies of moving somewhere new and starting again). I’ve suggested several times to my husband over the past few months that the answer to all our troubles might be to relocate, until he gently pointed out that this is always my answer to any troubles.
It’s true. When things get tough, I usually move. I’ve already bounced him from London to Brighton and now to the West Sussex coast. Now he’s onto me and my obsession with property websites. When faced with a problem, why is my instinct always to change my surroundings?
It’s learned behaviour, I guess. In my 40 years on this planet, I’ve lived in, I think, 24 homes. I’d been through at least eight of these by the time I turned 13 - my dad’s job moved us around the UK frequently. I never knew what it meant to be settled in a place, to feel part of the scenery, to feel truly at home there. I got comfortable with always being on the move - that’s what feels familiar to me.
When we bought this house, we talked a lot about wanting to put down roots. Not just for us, but for our children - we would build lives that were embedded in this place. It sounded beautiful, and I wanted it so badly. But it’s easier said than done. I don’t know how to put down roots - I never grew any. I’ve been planted in a shallow pot my whole life, constantly shifted from place to place, and I simply don’t think I have it in me to bed down into the soil now. I wouldn’t know how to begin.
There’s a chance that I’m right that a more rural setting, with a huge garden (if we were able to afford such a place!) might make home schooling easier - that the children might be willing to be turfed outdoors for a couple of hours each day to give me time to work. Our kids (who are always happier when running free in nature) might be more relaxed and less demanding in such a setting. Or it might be that reducing our overheads dramatically by living on a houseboat or in a campervan (two recent fantasies that I’ve had absolutely zero luck in encouraging my husband to even vaguely consider) could mean that I no longer needed to bring in so much income and would be free to focus on home schooling and writing. But most of this is unfounded speculation, with some pretty hefty rose-tinted glasses on. The grass is always greener on the pages of Rightmove, but the reality of your life - of who you and your family are as people, of the dynamics between you and the needs that beg to be fulfilled - don’t change just because the view outside your window does. Moving hasn’t solved all my problems yet, and it’s unlikely to do so this time. It just distracts you from them for a bit while you settle in to your new adventure. Technically it is possible to postpone ever having to deal with your problems by keeping constantly moving, but it’s not a healthy solution, and not one that results in meaningful happiness.
No escape
Here’s the hard truth that I’m scared to admit - parenting is hard right now. My children need a lot from me. One of them is three, which is a big deal in itself. The other is going through assessment for autism and ADHD, has just stepped out of the familiar paradigm of school to find a whole new way of doing things, and is coming to that age that I (as someone who is also autistic and ADHD) remember so well where you start to realise that you’re not quite like other people but you don’t understand why. I don’t know how to hold space for that. I don’t know how to guide her. I only recently learned about my own neurodivergence, and I’m still trying to understand it and learn how to manage it. I feel inadequate that I don’t have any wisdom to offer her. She’s so like me - we’re practically the same person - so surely I should be able to tell her how to make it all feel ok?! But I can’t because I never learned.
I don’t want her to run away too.
All of this means that parenting in this season involves a lot of anger, frustration and tantrums. A lot of need for control, regular refusal to listen or cooperate and frequent fighting. There is shouting and tears most days, several times a day, and it isn’t always just from the kids.
It sounds terrible, and it feels horrible to say, but if this was any other job, I’d probably have quit by now. I’d have run away from the demands and the feeling of failure and the constant pressure. I’d have just abandoned ship. But I can’t run away from being a parent. Well, I suppose I could. Some people do. I could secretly pack a bag and disappear in the night. In theory, I could. But in reality, I couldn’t. I do love the little fuckers, more than my own life, and I couldn’t bear to be separated from them. Plus the thought of doing anything that would cause them so much distress makes me feel physically sick. Even if sometimes I do believe they’d be better off without me.
I can’t run away from my kids. Anywhere I’m going, I’m taking them with me. And anywhere I go, they need to have a say in, because it’s not just about me anymore - it’s their lives too. Which also means that I can’t simply run away from home school, if that’s really what’s best for my daughter.
Going back to normal
The problem with living in an unconventional way, in not following the path society has laid out for you, is that, when the experience becomes hard, it’s tempting to assume your choices were wrong. If you’d stuck to the thing that you were told you were supposed to do, everything would have been ok. The impulse to dispatch my daughter back to school, even though I know she’d be deeply miserable, is strong right now. There have also been many times over the last six years of self-employment that I’ve been tempted to run back into the secure, if somewhat abusive, arms of a corporate job to escape the pressure and uncertainty of building something that I believe in. By now, I’ve made peace with the fact that there’s no going back - I’m unemployable now. There’s no way that I could go back to following someone else’s orders, working to someone else’s schedule, making someone else’s money. I know the world of conventional jobs is closed to me now, but it doesn’t stop me beating myself up from time to time for leaving it in the first place. If I hadn’t stepped through the portal, if I hadn’t lingered so long in this other realm of freedom and possibility but also responsibility and no safety net, then the door might not have been sealed shut behind me permanently. I could be working a regular 9 to 5 right now, taking home a reliable salary, knowing what money I’d have coming in 6, 12, 24 months from now. I’d have a decent pension - good lord, a pension! Would I be happy? Not really. But life would be easier. Doesn’t easy = happy, or even a little bit happier?
The thing is, though, if we are sitting neatly within the parameters of society’s expectations, when things get difficult we still blame ourselves. We’ve done what we were supposed to, but we’re not happy, not fulfilled, not comfortable and brimming with inner peace, so we must be doing it wrong. We try a few different jobs, we try self-development work, we take up yoga, we do all the leadership skills courses… but somehow life still isn’t signing, so we think we’re failing and we get depressed. We feel defeated, and shuffle through life thinking that this is just how it is.
But the problem isn’t you. It’s not the life choices you made. It’s the society we’re trying to exist in. It’s living in a system that treats people as resources to be used up instead of individuals to be nurtured. It’s under-resourced, under-funded education that wants to churn out obedient worker bees for the capitalist hive and has no capacity or enthusiasm for unique skills or viewpoints. It’s workplaces that demand that we give our all and leave our lives and senses of self at the door, but that offer very little (either in security and financial compensation or in respect and emotional support) in return. It’s health and social care that is virtually impossible to access until it’s too late, it’s a society that sees free time and relaxation as a luxury that should be paid for, it’s a media that demonises whichever groups of people suit its agenda and does its best to make us all hate everything about ourselves. It’s a society that is forcing us to live in greater and greater isolation, removing any sense of community that would provide support, connection and encouragement, and perhaps opportunities to reduce the amount we need to consume and therefore our reliance on the system (because god forbid that should happen!).
I could give up on my dreams of home educating my children and giving them a little space outside this system, and of building a business for myself that makes a meaningful impact in the world, but I wouldn’t be any happier, and I’d just be at the mercy of the powers that be with no control over my own destiny.
Where does that leave me? I can’t go back, and I’m struggling to find a way forward. I don’t have the answers right now, but maybe that’s ok. Maybe it’s ok to take some time to figure it out. What I do know, though, is that the solution doesn’t lie in surface level adjustments. A change in wallpaper won’t solve cracks in the foundations. As much as it’s true that a move might offer benefits, being truly happy means learning how I - how we can all - be happy right now, where we are.
Getting to a place where we feel truly settled and fulfilled means going down to the roots - understanding the essence of who everyone in our family is, and what they really need. It’s difficult, demanding work, that will involve some tough truths and a willingness to adapt.
But I know, this time, that’s not something I want to run away from.
I too am a serial runner. On my 31st house now (after 57 years). A bit of unsolicited advice you are free to ignore. Children spend so much less time in school actually learning than we think (ex teacher here) in primary school they worked out it was around 45 mins of quality teaching each child got per DAY. This was due to breaks, moving around the school, assemblies, teaching that wasn’t at the child’s level as you have 30 kids to cater for, waiting for the teacher to help or explain and on and on. 45 mins only. I’m not sure if a study was ever done at secondary level but it’s a little more but not much. I suppose what I’m trying to say is you don’t need to fill every minute of a typical ‘school’ day with formal learning. Please ignore if this isn’t wanted.
You are speaking to my soul and heart today with your words. The running feeling has been deeply present in me lately, for all sorts of reasons, but a big one is choosing to do things different, be home with our child, and not do what may be deemed easier because in reality we are trying to build the life we want for our son. It’s hard,it’s so hard, and it’s not us, it’s not you. It’s the system and how we are utterly set up to fail and to go back into ways they are telling us life should be. I have more thoughts but a toddler appeared and is demanding to help me type.