did you lose the old you? i like the person i used to be.....and i want her back.

[queenrollo]

went for a night out last week and it has made me really think about the old me. i used to be adventurous in how i dressed, had my hair outrageous colours.....i was a social butterfly, all over the pub/club.....would go up to complete strangers and be friends with them by the end of the night. i also used to feel sexy.....would flirt all night and had a wonderful sex life with dp as a result because i felt so bloody wonderful about myself.
it wasn't motherhood that changed me, it was work and paying the bills and my social life dying a death because the local music scene fell on it's arse (we used to go out to see bands all the time).....but having my ds has made me realise i'm in danger of falling into that trap of becoming a mummy/housekeeper and when i hit 40 i'll have totally lost any trace of ME.....

anyone feel like this or is it just me? i really want to feel good about myself again....i want to give a damn about my appearance.....i want to feel ALIVE again.

I don't believe in the 'old' and 'new' me, because I see life as a progression.

I wouldn't want to be how I was when I was 26. I'm not 26 anymore. I'm 36.

I like to think I learned something over those past 10 years and paid attention to all those experiences in between and they've had an impact on me.

Who I am has changed over time. Of course! And good!

Noodle, I can totally relate to your posts - in fact - I have just today been having a bit of a crisis...a need to drive around aimlessly alone and not need to BE ANYWHERE..almost like I was out looking for and trying to find myself and remember what it was to just be able to answer only to yourself.

I do think a lot of this boils down to the weight of responsibility and also accountability.

Like you my dh is not unkind to me and and looks after us - but he also controls and tries to temper me down - to the point that my personality - the bubbliness that draw him to me (his words) has been removed piece by piece. Like you, I also wonder if I can hang in til my daughter has grown up and then re-claim my life - the life I feel I'm missing out on - but then I think - what a waste... I dont know what to do about it either.

This is so sad, but I think a fact of life of being a mother. Since my children have grown a little (4 & 2) I am now able to reclaim a little more of who I am, and I have realised that the person I was 10 years ago has changed. I am now far more focused and confident in what I want. I have recently started doing exercise dvd's at home and therefore my figure is coming back and I am doing a PhD, which can be really hard but makes me use my brain. Don't give up hope, slowly you must chnage things - it is not going to happen overnight, but hang in there, it does get better.

Blinkle - I think you and I are in the same boat. It is more that just having a night out with the girls or seeing a band - it's everything that I defined myself by that has gone.

I have been back at college this year PT but had very little support from home. I had to give up my OU course because I had so little support (plus it was quite hard!)

Am also at college re-training. I'm not lacking confidence really, in fact I probably have more associates and friends than now than I ever did, but it's just this nagging feeling that I'm in the wrong place IYSWIM and that in a way I've got what I thought I wanted - settled, no money worries, lovely daughter, nice house etc - but actually, did I really want it? It just doesnt seem to 'fit' me somehow...

I dont know....., it's a mystery isnt it!!

At college I am a very different person to the one at home. At college I seem to create a lot of laughter (sometimes too much and distract the class!) and someone who is always asked for opinion on work but also to the pub etc. At home I really do feel just like a housekeeper.

This morning I could not remember when my DH last took me out for a date that he had organised. He bought tickets for a concert but when I really wanted to see something at the theatre he said we couldn't afford it. And although he has bought the tickets I will be the one sorting the babysitting etc.

We have had an ongoing saga about me going back to work which started from him saying he thought we could do with more money - to which I said fine - until I realised that he was looking to buy a new boat. I worked out that the money I would earn in the type of job I can do to fit around kids etc was just about the same as the new boat...so not exactly strapped for cash then I think.

I am just so fed up with DH at the moment. When we first lived together he did his own ironing - now he is happy to sprawl infront of the TV whilst I iron all his work shirts. So much has changed since we were first together and I look at us now and wonder where we are going?

In my mind I am planning for 9 years time when DC will have left home. I can leave him, move to the area of the country I have always wanted to live (but we can't now because of his business), get a job doing what I used to be really good at, and get a little house of my own which I will furnish MY way and live in it MY way.

Am crying to much.

I know exactly where you are coming from Noodle - sometimes it seems so pointless just hanging about in the same unhappy situation - dont know about you - but I know for a fact that if we didnt have a child, the relationship would not be tolerated as it is by me or even him perhaps. But you have to think do I want to bring my child up in this household (and sacrifice the rest of my life in this limbo) or do I want to bring them up in a 'broken home' type scenario...it's very very hard to decipher your own personal feelings on this I think.

Also, I feel the a lot of blokes feel that once they're settled they've effectively chosen their surrogate mother who'll pander to them and look after them as their mother did - might no be your situation, but it's mine and I'm afraid he's picked the wrong girl as I only want to be mother to my dd not my husband!! And so it goes on..and on....

Dont tell anyone but sometimes I wish he'd find someone else and make it easy for me to make the break - and sometimes I know that would be nightmarish for everyone..

By the way, your comment about the boat tickled me!! Different priorites or what!!! My dh also has a boat - perhaps it is one and the same person and he has a double life!!

Binkle I so know what you mean in your last paragraph - it is almost like a legitimate escape route because just being unhappy somehow does not seem enough.

I don't know if I still love him anymore. He is the father of my children but would I marry him now? And I am not sure he would marry me now either.

But it goes on - as you say - and my dream for 9 years time is light at the end of the tunnel. It's almost like a prison sentence in a way - only 9 years to go. DC are my life and just too precious - I could not leave them.

I have lost the will to argue - he is an extremely clever man and has an answer for everything and is very adept at pulling something around to his point of view. it all becomes pointless. So I will continue - make the best of it I can and hold onto my dream.

Just read your last comment - bloody sailors!

Listen, once you've finished college and got the job you want or whatever and back into the workplace, you'll start scraping little pieces of yourself back together and then you'll begin to value yourself in your home again once more and then he may well sit up and take notice..

It's not about confidence - like you say your charismatic at college as am I - its like having little bursts of the real you again - but it's about remembering you're still an individual, even in that home setting if you get what I mean..

I think that you're really brave to think it through so lucidly and I think it's a choice many women make - stick in potentially the wrong relationship then break free when the kids are grown and more independent, whereas blokes will just sit about letting any women cater for them until something better comes along. I think it's a choice a mother makes for her children.

But like I say, after college and everything I'm hoping that I will start to feel like a legitimate member of society again and therefore my cache should go up - instead some sort of surrendered wife!

I totally get where you're coming from and it's nice to know that it's not just you I think

Txs Binkle.

A choice for the children - you are absolutely right.

Am relieved I am not the only one..