Sometimes, I worry that I don’t feel the right way about my children.

Or at least, not the way other people do.

That I love them too violently and too all-consumingly and too hard.

The thing is, I just don’t know how else to do it.

If I’m honest, it’s one of the things that probably cost me my marriage.

We tell our kids – and maybe we tell ourselves – that love is this huge, infinite thing, or that it grows and encompasses and enfolds anyone else that comes along – that it doesn’t run out, that loving one thing a whole lot makes it easier to love other things too, not harder.

But that’s not been my experience.

I think my love diverted, and funneled into those babies. And the bond was so strong, all others felt weak by comparison. I fell so hard for my children I couldn’t see straight – for YEARS. Still.

And I couldn’t understand why my ex didn’t feel the same way, or at least feel IN the same way I did.

I’ve always been like this.

There’s a famous family story about one Christmas where my Granny Betty had made my sister and I two matching stuffed cats. They were the first presents we opened. And I loved mine so much I refused to open any more presents, and my sister had a bumper year of opening everything. But more than that – I followed her around with her cat as she was playing with double the new toys trying to make her cuddle it and love it as much as I loved mine.

That’s how I felt about my children, and my ex.

That’s how I tried to make him love them in my way, not his way…

I still have a great deal of this huge, hard, fierce, overwhelming love to give. But sometimes it bubbles over. Sometimes it burns through rationality. Sometimes it lacks perspective.

When my children first started spending time with their dad, one night a fortnight at first – I felt like my heart had been cut out. I was bereft. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t do anything but feel empty – literally hollow on the inside while on the outside my arms ached for the imprint of their little bodies, my nose caught ghosts of their scents and my ears strained to hear them in their empty beds.

I wrote about it once, and someone on this blog told me I should stop acting like they’d died.

She was right.

But that’s still what it FELT like. It was still real to me, even if it wasn’t rational.

Since then, lots of people have said to me that I’m living the dream. Getting time off from the kids! A whole weekend to yourself every other weekend! A kid-free summer holiday! Whoop!

Well my dream was to be part of a functioning, happy family… So, it’s not so much a dream, really, as a reality I have had to learn how to appreciate.

And I have.

Mostly.

I mean, intellectually I KNOW they need to be with their dad – and I KNOW I need time to be the me that isn’t only their mother.

Sometimes I crave it. There ARE Friday nights when they’ve pushed every button there is and I’m almost – ALMOST – glad to see the back of them. When I know we need the distance from each other to be healthy. When I am glad to go out, and see friends, and drink, and lie in, and read and write and play at being care-free and child-free with Boynotquiteonthenetehredge – and be the me that’s there when they are not.

I KNOW this.

And I know it does me, and them, so much good.

I know a lot of stuff in my head.

But my heart… my heart knows stuff, too. And it knows it louder; wrenchingly, gutterely, roaringly.

And despite how far I’ve come and all the perspective I’ve gained, it is still hard, sometimes, for my head to wrestle it into submission.

This last week has been one of those times.

It has been one of those times because it has been the week they have been away abroad with their dad and their ‘other’ family.

The step-mum who I’m sure is lovely but I still want to scream at for having her hands on my babies and playing the role that means the very most to me, however part-time; the grandparents-by-marriage they see more than they see my own parents; the family unit I wanted so badly; the experience I can’t give them – won’t know anything about, and can’t control.

It is the longest and the furthest I have ever been away from them.

And it has been HARD.

Don’t get me wrong, it has also been wonderful to be with the Boy, pretending not to be parents, putting that bit into a box. But the lid has kept cracking open under the pressure of what’s been locked inside…

Like those first nights without them all over again – I have been grappling with all this anxiety, and all this love that suddenly has nowhere to go, and won’t be contained.

If I’m honest, I am a bit afraid of it.

When they call, they are like other people’s children.

They are browner and blonder in the sun. They don’t speak to me normally, can’t relate to me on the phone because we’re never apart enough to call – and it is all stilted and wrong. They are wearing clothes I don’t recognise, and have done activities and have family stories and jokes I’m not part of.

They are less mine.

I am less me.

And that tiny slice above my eyebrows knows this is the way, this is right, this is proper, this is growing up – but the rest of me… Oh God the rest of me is WILD with longing for them.

I get off the phone, and I weep.

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way about their children, or about co-parenting their kids.

I don’t know if the way I love is the wrong way.

But if this is you, too, I want you to know that I KNOW how hard the summer holidays are when you’re a single parent without your kids.

Much harder than they look.

And I hope yours are back in your arms soon, too.

xxx