Fairies and sister lives

They say you shouldn’t write when you’re too emotional. Actually, I don’t really know if they say that but it sounded like a cool way to start a post.

Some days I realise how witty I can be. And cute and funny, smart as a tack and entertaining. On such days, I love my own company. I could be in a sitcom. I brighten up people’s lives. I hand out love and support in neat little envelopes to everyone I meet.

And then there are days when I lie around like a pile of unwashed laundry. Hopeless, listless, weary. I hope to not be contacted, because then I have to act like I’m fine. I have to smile, talk, pretend I care when all I really want to do is cry. When I barely have enough energy to operate.

In the midst of this reality, I have to make an impossible decision: whether to be a mother. I want it and I don’t want it. I have a lot of love to give, but also not enough. I want the cuddles and the laughter, but I also want freedom and peace.

I envy people who just know. Being in this strange in-between space can be agonising. And I can’t wait for a magical fairy to come and whisper the answer in my ear. I have to decide on my own. And I’m someone who can’t decide what to order off a menu without regretting it five minutes later.

Someone told me motherhood is the highest of highs and lowest of lows. My life is already like that. You should meet my hormones, they’d regale you with tales of how they have bullied me to either celebrate life or loathe it. There are no in-betweens.

I’m a lot. I’m intense, and messy and not at all poised to be a mother. Practically, there’s no good reason why I should do this. But you know how the biggest decisions in life are based on emotions and instincts? Most intelligent species, my ass.

In Cheryl Strayed’s book Tiny, Beautiful Things, she talks about how when we make a big decision, the path we don’t choose is like a “sister life.” We can’t ever know what our sister lives are like, because we didn’t live them and there’s no way of knowing. But they’re also… around.

“We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

When the time comes, I hope I’m able to salute this sister life from a distance and accept my decision with grace and dignity. I hope I don’t long for it. And while I swing on this nauseating pendulum, I still hope my magical fairy just tells me what my damn decision should be.

Except my fairy isn’t like a fairy at all. She’s a bitter old agony aunt who complains too much, mixes rum in her tea and talks of the good old days. God, help me.