Sunday was one of those days where I found myself questioning the path I’ve taken. That happens pretty much every day, though not to this degree. I would imagine this is normal for most of us as time marches on and the knees start to click when we get out of bed. I think though that there were one or more triggers for me yesterday that led to the day becoming a long and introspective one.
I’m still not recovered from this second winter bug and that recovery really is dragging on. The plan is to head out for a run around 11am this morning. ‘M’ wrecked my morning at THE café on Friday, talking to me for over an hour, so today I won’t be heading there until after lunch. I’ll see if only my second run of the year can help banish these blues. Mornings and nights are currently tricky. I’m fine during the day but getting up and going to bed seems to trigger whatever’s left of this bug.
Another trigger was Friday’s news concerning one of my family and cancer’s return. Also, in the last week, I now have the first friends in my circle to become grandparents. I can’t believe I’m now at that stage of my life where people I’ve grown up with are becoming grandparents. These guys, two of my oldest friends, were young parents themselves and will probably concede they didn’t expect to be grandparents this early on, but its’s another moment in my life that leads me questioning what I’ve done with my own. This has probably been the biggest trigger for me.
Now, I’ve touched on it here before; I don’t think being a parent is the be-all and end-all. There are other things you can do with your life, other paths to follow, and as a working class creator who didn’t have heating or their own bedroom, or bath, or running hot water until they were 26, factors that I’m sure warped my world-view, I always thought my curious origins meant maintaining a toe-hold in the media industry were heavily stacked against me without me adding to that by becoming a dad. I just don’t think it’s something that ever interested me long enough for it to be realistic. Sometimes I wonder if that’s just a conclusion I’ve reached to protect myself against the disappointment of not becoming a dad, but I don’t think it is.
I can look back at my life, and while it’s not one I’ve enjoyed, I can’t see any point of my adult life where I think, ‘I would’ve been better off being a parent’. It’s unlikely the relationship with the kid’s mum would’ve survived, based on the pattern of my relationships. I’m just someone that enjoys having as much time as possible to themselves, whether that’s selfish or not, and quite frankly, straying into borderline eugenics here, I don’t think family lines should continue indefinitely. If I look back at my lines, particularly my paternal line, wrapping things up is no bad thing. There’ve been no success stories on my dad’s side. Just a lot of disappointment, heartbreak and too much further education. With no cousins on that side, I will be bringing that side of the family to a definite end. I’m okay with that.
Writing, anything creative I suppose, makes you self-absorbed. With a more moneyed background, I suppose having kids would’ve been less of an issue. It might’ve been easier to support my career while juggling being a parent, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, I look back and working on the assumption I would’ve been picking my kid(s) up every other weekend from their mum’s, can I say with any real conviction that I would’ve been able to provide financially for that kid? I’m not so sure. I suspect the CSA would’ve been hunting me down at some point. And with kids, I would’ve read far fewer books. How would I feel about that? Almost every book I read, I feel it improves me in some way.
Is this cold? Maybe it is. Maybe those factors, that unusual way of growing up, broke something in me, turned me into a robot. I would accept that there might be something in that. But normally I can move forward, despite all those questions regularly circling my mind. But yesterday was different, and it was because of those aforementioned triggers I suppose.
There is a huge advantage of course to having children young. I have a few friends now whose kids are in their twenties, and these friends are still only in their late forties or fifties. These kids will have their parents around for far longer than I did. And that’s great. But I’m sure if those friends are honest and were to look back, they would accept there was a trade-off. They lost a chunk of their youth. While their peers were out partying or in my case, unconvincingly trying to enjoy partying, they were a little old before their time, changing nappies and saddled with the heavy responsibility of being parents when they’d only recently become adults themselves. The upside of that is they have kids, and if those kids are decent, who can look after them in old age.
While I can look back at the last thirty years and know I’ve pretty much done as I pleased with my life, misguided or not, that decision will be called in during the next few decades, assuming that premonition I had when I was 8 that I would live until 2053, is borne out.
For instance, the errands I run for my elderly aunt and uncle, I’m the only relative here in London. I can do that for them. But if I make it to their age, there’s no one to do it for me. I do not have a close relationship with any of the next generation in the family and of course, they’ve grown up in a different culture to the one I grew up in. I don’t think the elderly are highly regarded in the UK.
So what am I going to do? I don’t drive. I’m not doing the shopping trolley thing, because it’s an appalling look for any guy, regardless of gender, usually a clear indicator a man still lives at home with an elderly mum. I’m screwed basically. But that comes with the territory. I’ve lived an underwhelming life free of the usual responsibilities, but it means I’ve ended up alone. Most of the time I can deal with that. Yesterday though, it played on my mind a lot. Last week’s situation, compounded by my current banking issues, where for 24 hours I had no medication to combat my illness and no one to call on, until my sibling rode to the rescue from the other side of the world, was a formative experience.
I think of my friends becoming grandparents just last week and there’s been a few moments where I scratch my head and think, “Blimey, they’re now grandparents. Me? I didn’t even have kids. How did that happen?”
Of course, while it’s too late for kids, if I did end up with someone who has kids (unlikely) and those kids had children, then I might find myself in the situation of being a faux grandparent. It doesn’t really count but I’d have to quietly go along with it. It would be weird to have got to that point without having had kids.
Hopefully I snap out of this kind of thinking today.
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Definitely also have these thoughts. When I was in a family (or possibly more accurately an appendage), there wasn't the time to think about stuff like this. Maybe that's the big advantage of family life?