Friday, December 15, 2017

The 365 After You

Well, 2017… I’m going to have to break up with you. I tell you what - I’ll give you about two weeks of gardening leave to sit about, pretending you’re still a year while we assume you’re done and get cosy with our families.

I’m sorry it’s ended this way, and it’s not that I won’t look back at you with a few fond memories… we went to Rome together, we went to France, we got into Dungeons and Dragons. There’s some cool stuff that I won’t need to burn after we say goodbye.

That we’re ending on such bad terms is, I suppose, in large part my fault. When we got together I was just coming off the back of a long term thing with 2016 and I didn’t give myself time to recover before I launched myself into you.

2016 was hard on me: I can’t even begin to describe how deeply depressed I got being with 2016.  We were not a good mix… 2016 brought out the worst in my depression but at least it was also the bottom and I bounced off it into help.

But hey, it’s not cool to talk about your exes, is it? Not in a break up letter. Sorry babe.

I thought, when I met you, my shiny little new year, that perhaps things would be on the up. You know, that’s how stories go isn’t it? The baddy (2016) kidnaps the princess and then the dashing Prince (2017) arrives just in the nick of time, as the clock strikes midnight and here we are… in a new once upon a time.

Annoyingly though, I don’t think we’re in a Grimm love story, my darling. I think we might we the product of one of these dirgey new writers that has to spin everything into nine different instalments instead of wrapping it up between two, not to be judged, covers.

Our death sentence, if you think about it, is so simple… we wanted different things, didn’t we?

I suppose, what it boils down to, 2017, is that I wanted you to have my babies and you have staunchly refused every step of the way. You wanted to focus on your career and I am SO proud of you for doing that - the progress you made for feminism with the Silence Breakers - my god I am in awe of you for being the year that did. For that, you will always have my heart.

I thought we were ready us two… you are two thousand and seventeen, I am thirty one… what better time in our lives to get on with it? I thought it was the right time for a child.

For a while, I thought maybe it was the commitment you weren’t into… perhaps you’re just not the children type. But then I saw you having kids with so many other people, I mean… as far as my raging hormones are telling me it’s absolutely every person in every advert ever made and every woman on the street and internet. You gave them all a baby! But not me.

So, I’m going.

I’ve heard about this new idea… it’s called 2018 and I’ve dug out its number and given it a call. It’s up for some team work, this new new year… it wants to work with me on lifting the silence around infertility and trying for a baby.

2018 is promising me something; it’s not going to be quiet and sad. I’m not going to feel ashamed. We’ve got a podcast coming out, and a show and everything else we can type and write that will help people, like me, who’ve had a bastard of a time making a family.

Our mission, me and old 2018, is to track down every incarnation of the urban legend that tells you “it’s the trying for a baby that stops you falling” and crushing it with our iron fists of fury. We’re going to find them all and say, “No one should be made to feel ashamed of wanting children so shove your cousin’s sister’s yoga teacher who tried for 3 years and then fell pregnant the second she stopped trying, shove her up your ClearBlue advert because we’re not interested.”



So, thank you for everything 2017… you’ve got a lovely side… but you’re not for me any more. I’m moving on.