I’ve told you ‘my story’ of how I came to be a mum in my 40’s in a nutshell but there’s something more specific I have to tell you:

You see I am a dreamer. I am also realistic. Well that’s just doesn’t make sense I hear you say. Yes they are polar opposites and hence how I end up conflicted, in almost every decision I ever make. I dream big but cut my chances off at the knees- often.

I knew from a very young age that the ‘…and they lived happily ever after…’ ending in Golden Books stories were actually fables. I remember as a kid in my parent’s car, about to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge, calling out from the backseat as they collected their coins to pay the toll back in the 80’s.....’how can you meet the ‘one’ if they don’t live in your suburb? or your City or even in your Country’ – what then? What if your destined ‘one’ is in India/ Nepal/ Timbuktu? Then what? How do you know you need to get a one way flight and meet this ‘one’ person for your happily ever after?

Not a regular kids thinking but then no one has ever accused me of being ‘regular’. It’s always conflicted me though, as I did somehow buy into the ‘one’ dream with its confusing logistics on some level. I believed that it would all just come together one day in the future and I would just ‘know’. Isn’t that what people say ‘oh you just KNOW when you’ve met the right person’!

But do you just know? I’ve had two big relationships. One in my early 20’s and one till my mid 30’s. Love was definitely involved. So was pain, confusion, constant battles, hormones, pheromones and a lot of hurt. Buckets load of it. That’s how I knew I loved. By how much it hurt. Oh…that’s not really healthy is it?!

But it is called growth!- that I can look back over my past relationships, see all of its faults and the ugly pus filled blisters and acknowledge where I sat in all that. I didn’t learn that lesson the easy way though.

I became single at 35 and thought that was it. My life was over. I really and truly thought that it was the end of not just my relationship but those dreams. You see as much as my ex and I could never seem to get our shit together and we were always one beat off…one step away from the other, I never saw a future with anyone else. I had once again cut myself off at the knees.

Here comes the hard part…We had known each other since we were 18. From the moment we met, unbeknown to us, a pattern was formed and we would become like passing ships across the globe for the following 4 years. He lived abroad, I was home. I would move abroad, he would be home. Then there was a very brief time we were both in the same place – then it was back to more crossing jet paths for another 5 years, as we separately travelled different ends of the world.

By the time we seriously got together, it had been a decade of missed opportunities and short dalliances before a chess piece moved one of us in the other direction. Yet amongst all this, there seemed to be an imaginary piece of string holding us together, however tenuously.

Once finally together this chess game started to become less of a dalliance and more of an emotional pull with huge rushes together and apart that we’re no longer of our doing but that of an external force playing cruel games. After 10 years (yes a decade) of moving chess pieces, we finally got together.

I actually first became aware of him at 15. His best friend lived at the end of my street and I used to watch him ride his bike down my street. It was what David Attenborough would call ‘animal magnetism’ - an unknown attraction. He had my interest the first time he whirred past me on his bike. I knew his name and used to write it on my pencil case. That was enough for me to know I was infatuated with him at 15 years of age and that’s how it was until we officially met at 18.

I won’t go into the full story, it’s long, complicated and confusing for me and anyone else who would try to keep up. It also makes no sense for 90% of the time. But as much as I hated it, I think I thrived on the drama of it. I lost male friends over the long saga. They would see me go back to the same situation over and over (the definition of crazy yeah?) only to come home crying the next time he didn’t call, was with someone else or said a careless thing.

Once together properly there was some great moments, funny, happy, hilarious times where we just jelled together and only needed each other and $10 to be happy. But as with anything, things change and those moments couldn’t and didn’t last.

When I was 30 (about 3-4 years into the ‘real’ relationship) I got this unusual feeling hit me for the first time. It was more than a feeling, it was an internal yearning. An overpowering universal pull to have a child. It was like I had been drugged and for the first time in my life I understood what the definition of a ‘clicking biological clock’ calling loudly from your ovaries was. It was like I drank the cool aid and it came on like a wash over me. I woke up one morning and said ‘I want a child by the time I’m 32’ out of nowhere. This was as much as a shock to me as it was to him. He said ‘but what about your career?’ ‘It’s always been about your career, I’ve never heard you talk of anything else’. And maybe he hadn’t but that morning, I knew more than anything in my life I wanted a baby and soon.

Something had changed overnight. I couldn’t walk past a baby without the urge to take it with me. All of the sudden I oohhed and ahhhed over little bundles of joy and it was a knowing like none other. This feeling was here to stay, I couldn’t shake it. I wonder if this is what it is like for other women?

But the life map didn’t work out that way. Instead I went to radio school, then moved to Noosa for my first job in radio. A stunning paradise and a romantic place for two, couples walking hand in hand down the beach, sharing ice creams and stealing chips from each other’s plate. Yet not a place for a single 30 year old women who wants to start her radio career. We broke up whilst I was there. Well I should say, he broke up with me. I had spent my savings to fly down every time I could, to keep the relationship going, yet he broke it off.

After a year and a half I packed up and moved back to Sydney with a less ambitious dream. Instead of yearning to be a radio announcer, I yearned to come back to Sydney, get a job behind the scenes of radio and work on this plan to have a family.

The plan didn’t work.

After some serious hustling for a full time job, I landed my newly revised, dream role in radio in my dream company. I was older than everyone else in my team and in my eyes, I had a lot of ‘catching up’ to do in order to play with these young, hip, mid 20 year old’s I was working with.

Around that time my ex started to contact me again. He wanted a fresh start and it was like music to my sad, mourning ears. It was like Mozart had walked into the room playing an amazing concerto and danced in front of me on ecstasy. In hindsight it was more likely I was dancing with the devil but he drew pictures of how he could see our life together, he was drawing blueprints in my mind of how it would all work out and me being a goal setter and a lover a good list, my eyes lit up and bang, it was all back on again with a renewed passion, love and this time - shared goals!

Then six months later, after everyone started assuming there was a wedding around the corner, he told me he was moving interstate. To be fair, this wasn’t a move he had a lot of say on. Family was calling on his help and he obliged. But it didn’t make it any easier, I had just moved back to make it work, only for him to move to where I had just left (where he had never visited me once)!

Oh stop it- the irony hurts my head, even now!

So here we were – back to moving Chess pieces…this time the Rook was moving away, in a cruel turn of events and I just watched as someone, somewhere said ‘check mate’.What happened next was yet another chapter in our ‘long distance’ relationship saga.

I’ve actually lost count of time we spent together versus time apart in those 7 years but looking back it feels like it was more of the later.

This should have been a warning sign in. In fact the on-again, off-again should have been a warning sign. Along with the confusing explanations and twists and turns that I won’t go into now - it involves too much energy, too much draining on memories that I don’t care for and an emotional headache that doesn’t serve me any purpose now.

I even read the popular book ‘He’s Just Not That into You’ when things were getting dire and he ticked seven out of nine warning signs…annnnnnd I still thought, ‘well this book is a piece of shit’ and threw it to someone else who was questioning their relationship.

About six months after he left, I got offered a job promotion near to where he had relocated. This would be my third move in as many years and had been the third time we had been living long distance in those same years.

Yet he sounded less than thrilled when I told him the news, I mean after drafting a blue print, what should have there been for him to question? But question he did and he didn’t seem excited to start a new life together. Saying that, we moved in together and things felt a little exciting....but the dead horse had already been flogged - and this chess move was the final flogging, before it all fell over after a year of living together.

It turns out, our happy moments proved they weren’t the foundation of a lifelong relationship but at the time we couldn’t let go of the history, to move forward. We had always had each other in our lives and we weren’t sure how to untie all those knots we had sewn together.

It was messy and the unpicking was the most unpleasant moments of my life. After 20 years of chess moves plus the 3 years of having his initials on my pencil case, it was so very very over. But it was a tapestry that had grown some ugly threads and to look at, it was warped, messy and a tangled heap that was beyond description. It wasn’t pretty to be in and it wasn’t pretty to watch.

I don’t want to go into the list of things that were wrong, if you’ve been in a relationship like this, you can probably work it out for yourself. Or at least have fun trying. Everyone will tell their version of events to protect themselves.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her book Committed: “every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimate secrets of your marriage.”…. “If you start to throw open a window where there really ought to be a solid, weight bearing wall and you find yourself spilling your secret heart with someone other than your partner…soon you start to build a wall where there should be a window”. Paraphrasing now but if you change the foundations of your relationship without sharing these secrets with your partner, your whole house that you spent all this time building, will collapse around you.. as you wonder how this once stable house crumbled.

Gilbert wrote this book as she was making her decision to marry for a second time (to her dreamboat Bali lover from Eat Pray Love). This was after swearing she wouldn’t marry again.  She did end up marrying him. I don’t think she’s written the book about divorcing him yet? I know I wasn’t married but it rings true for any long term relationship and is a great read if you are unsure about getting married and/or having kids in the future. Gilbert suggests that you shouldn’t marry or have kids under the age of 30 as you are not as equipped to make it work when younger. Kind of refreshing to hear.

Anyhow, I digress.

Now back to my story and let me do the maths on my messed up relationship for a second. After a 3 year school girl crush then meeting him at 18 then 4 years of once a year catch ups, followed by crossing paths when travelling occasionally then a seven year relationship, this totals to twenty years! Twenty years took me to thirty five years old. Which was my whole adult life when it was finally over.

The end was like someone taking me off life support, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know how to function without this drama filled relationship in my life. This relationship had coursed through my veins on some level for eighteen years. What do you do with all the toxic waste and fall out? Where does it go? What do you do? There was no one to catch me, I free fell all the way down. I was lucky I was surrounded by some of the most amazing people at the time, who softened the blow to the bottom.

It was not an easy ‘over’. It wasn’t a black and white ending and it took a long time to recover.
A long Long time.

Damage was done.

The ashes are still simmering somewhere back there....but the smoke and fire has well and truly gone. Dust to dust. These relationships make you who you are today. Whether you’re a survivor from a broken heart or something much more sinister, they leave a scar and change you to become the person you are today.

For me, I was 35 and questioning where did all those youthful years go?

And how did I end up alone? With time comes choices and without time I felt I had none.

No choices.

I had always been young and carefree and all of the sudden I felt like I wasn’t either of these.

My one wish is if you’re reading this right now and one or more elements are resonating with you, then it’s time to face your fear in the eye. Tell whoever it is that is wasting your time (whether it is a person, it could be yourself, a job or some other relationship) that you’ve had enough of this shit and you’re going to declare this deadbeat relationship dead.

Look at the destruction and see it for what it is. It’s a time waster. You’re spending your most romantic, beautiful, fertile years, to someone who is wasting your time. It could be they’re unsure. It could be they’re hedging their bets on someone else, it could be that they just don’t value you high enough. Or maybe themselves that much....they know you’re too good for them? But from my experience, once you meet someone who does value you, who values both your heart and your mind and they see a future with you- nothing will stop them from wanting to spend time with you. Nothing.

It’s time to have a grown up relationship. With yourself and with someone who is not a time waster. You don’t want to be dating someone after 5 years of meeting and still not have any discussions of ‘where this is going?’ What if it is you holding yourself back, not taking a risk in a direction you know you need to go? Unless you don’t want kids and that’s fine if you don’t but as this is the main premises of my blog, let’s go with the idea that you do want that in the future. Time to face fears of being hurt or rejected and tell them how you feel. The only time you’re wasting, by being in a jerk relationship, is your own.

And my biggest regret in life, is that I didn’t have that life lesson until it was too late. Way too late. I was 35 and if I knew the upward battle ahead...I would’ve owned my fear and let go of that rip cord a lot earlier. Somewhere along the line, we were no longer on the same page and I should’ve faced those facts and been ballsy about it.

Of course I tried at times but I let the invisible umbilical cord we had, prevent me from going through with it. Next time you don’t want to cut that cord against your own warnings - just ‘do it’.

It will hurt. And a band aid won’t fix the cut. It needs a good element of grit (or Finnish ‘Sisu’ – look at my Instagram for more on this) to move on but I promise you this… you will get back your time.

Time is not an outsourced commodity. You can’t buy it back. It’s a finite resource. If you’re already stressing about your future with this person, then it’s time to wave him/ her goodbye. You can thank your future self later.

I say this with total love and compassion to you and your future self. Buy back your lost time by waving them good bye, lick your wounds and then do not ever look or go back.