Indefinite leave

Published ghost writer

abandons dreams to become

unmade, unreal. oh!

Starlings On Sunday

 The darkest cloud swells and subsides again and again. It has become a welcome speckled sight against these usually still skies. The flock is as punctual as only nature in her timelessness knows how to be, arriving in our patch of grey at around 5.20 every evening. I spend the next few minutes watching a grand and ancient waltz that I imagine must continue to swirl forever over other roofs in other towns long after my curtains have closed and the streetlights flicker on. 

 If my son is with me at this time, I point the flock out to him and he stands by the window in as much awe as me, asking the same two questions over and over again: "Mummy, what are they doing? Mummy, where are they going?" For those few minutes and beyond I do not know whether or how to answer him, because the lightness of some mysteries are so sacred that I'd rather not weigh them down with a simple search and a simpler answer. Some days I decide to tell him they are dancing, I tell him they are going wherever the wind takes them, and he tells me that sounds fun. I silently agree.

Today we watch the birds swell, subside and swirl. As I watch, I'm listening to an old playlist of sentimental songs I never intend on letting go, singing along heartily and missing all the top notes, swaying with my baby girl, watching my not-so-baby boy run from my side to reimmerse himself into his play, smelling the food my husband is preparing for our dinner, feeling my way ever so slowly through this home, this family, this expanded heart with all of its stretch marks. This rugged life of mine. And this? It is the writing and recording of moments of it all, it is the cherry atop my healing Sunday filled with starlings on grey skies. It is a necessary ritual for my body and blood to feel good in themselves again. Just for today, I feel good inside myself again. I hope that this is more than enough to see me through.

Testing testing

 Don’t be deceived by the deafening digital silence. I’ve been writing copiously, usually on the most sleepless of nights. Pixelated reams of nonsense or otherwise obfuscatory metaphors have come bursting out of me like the shit out of my precious daughter’s nappies. And it’s all been just that: the yellowest of shit. I know you’ll understand how I’ve been too scared to publish most of it, for fear of being completely seen through. Or, worse yet, seen and believed that is all there is to it. To me. Shallow shallow language for a shallow little girl, not even deep enough to tickle a babe’s chubby ankles. This is some of what I’ve felt and, having put the sum of it out here, I feel a bit too exposed and cold (but you know what we say about the cold).

 I’ve been thinking maybe anger becomes overrated past a certain point. Sometimes it hits like foul flatulence released noisily into a crowded gathering, making everyone a little annoyed and uncomfortable until it disperses and only awkwardness lingers. I feel like I’m getting everything so wrong this time around. For once I don’t know what else to say - life has become something besides my own, which makes it all the more difficult for this long-time naval-gazer to examine it properly and report back on. If I had a mentor to turn to right now I’m sure she’d ask one question over and over and over again: what exactly are you trying to say? 

Then say it.

The Grace of God has come down from on high to sit right next to me, just like I’ve been pleading for so long. I, in turn, sit here behaving as though she is a stranger I have never seen before. What am I to say to her this time? What am I not to say? Something better left off these bare white pages either way. I don’t know what I’m becoming and I’d rather not explain whatever it is as I am unfurling & discovering. 

MAMA HOLDS ANGER

 The torrents of Anger that wept down when I rose to greet my first pregnancy took us all by surprise, shock and horror. When it drenched us again during my second pregnancy, we were doubly astounded. Anger is not an emotion typically associated with motherhood, let alone ‘good’ motherhood. I think I shocked myself the most, because I had always believed & often declared myself to be a fairly peaceful, conflict-avoiding citizen. I’m known to my colleagues as Zen Seun, to my family and close friends as The Mediator, always sticking my oar in to diffuse and placate wherever high emotions and injustices arise.

But the first nine-month period of Undoing and Growing and Becoming Anew apparently let loose long-bound fastenings. Things that I had not been allowed or given myself space to feel for a very very long time, if ever, had their great escape and it was equal parts ugly, painful and exhilerating. There was anger, yes, but fiercer things still we were met with: desire, passion, terror, disappointment, sheer joy, unbridled faith and hope and fear and so many others whose names I did not even know.

The biggest grace I have received in my experience of becoming a mother is the opening up of a special new space (or perhaps it was always there, unnoticed on my periphery) to be exactly who I am and always have been and was always meant to be. Wholly me - good, bad, delightful and devious all present and accounted for. Not just Good Daughter, Defender of Sisterhood, Doting Wife, Loyal Friend, Mediating Presence or even simply (complexly) Mother of Any Kind. I am all and so much more - my newfound expansiveness is most fulfilling even though I have no clue into what where or whom I might continue to expand. I do now know that at the end of each blessed little battle of a day, the only person I and my children need me to be is ALL of me. Acknowledging, knowing and accepting this under all circumstances has been my most glorious feminine triumph yet and I can only rightly give that glory back to my Maker. 

The only shame I've happened to feel here is that it took this long for me to arrive at who I've always known myself to be (and I say ‘this long’ as if I’ve not only just turned 29 - some never get this close to themselves at all if we’re being real). I just feel like I’ve been holding my breath and holding myself in up until the point I knew I was to be a mother. Motherhood in all its cherished forms (biological, adoptive, spiritual, or otherwise) is by no means ‘for’ everyone for myriad complicated, mystical and human reasons, nor is it at all a necessary prerequisite of joyful self-discovery and -expression. But I know in my own body and bones as I’ve always known for as long as I can remember: that it is a very essential part of who I, Oluseun (neé Alabi) Stancombe, am. This assuredness isn’t everyone’s experience - in fact it is perhaps the opposite for many in our anxiety-riddled self-conscious world - so I also acknowledge the incredible privilege of giving myself total permission to be what I am, external expectations and consequences be damned. Again, I can only thank my Maker here.

Of course turning up to the same old party freshly hatched as oneself can cause a great deal of confusion and damage to the people around you, especially if there is a great deal of perceived negative change. To clutch at the familiarity of albeit limited/limiting titles again, going from Agreeable Yes Woman to Combative Shouty Lady for example, all in such a compressed space of time, can be jarring from the outside. What might have seemed a gradual and natural awakening to me was perhaps more like the sudden flip of a switch in the wrong direction to some others. What brought light and freedom to me, how I view myself, how I operate as purely as I can within this world, may have brought sheaths of shadow and darkness to the person others thought they knew well enough in me. While I sympathise, I hold no shame and proffer no apologies here. My only hope through all this is that my little family will be all the richer for mama showing them just how powerful and Good it can be to walk in the spaces that have been divinely held for you, and how wonderful it is to truly follow the lifelong process of knowing thyself and turning up to all those spaces as exactly who you are. There is no point in denial or repression here; more so, the feelings of guilt and shame that often dog these openings have their place and use but certainly not here. Only truth and integrity, with a healthy dose of compassion of course, are worthy pursuits for me and mine. Call it naive to make such bold, stake-driving statements at so tender an age on something as inconsequential as an online personal blog, but this is indeed how I’ve always intended to grow my life and make it as bounteous as is within my God-given power. 

Thirties approaching - a brief reflection

Nope, don't panic. I'm not 30 yet. I've only just entered the final year of my twenties (hbd2m, yay!). I simply felt obliged to offer a somwhat brief reflection on this precipice of an age because why not. Perhaps you will make sense of, and even relate to, some of it.

First I must confess: I've been looking forward to the start of my thirties ever since the first time I caught myself trying to figure out a precise formula for whatever it meant to be a happy and successful mature adult woman in the prime of her life. Second confession incoming: I started seriously pondering and then trying to work towards such grand theories from a weirdly young age. I remember ten year old Seunny watching all those 00s rom coms with their frazzled leading ladies at the ripe 'old' age of 30 and clutching at varying levels of shit-togetherness, thinking 'I wonder what I'll get right/wrong when I get there... I can't wait to get there'. 

It wasn't the glamorous depictions of frazzledness or getting-of-shit-together that necessarily appealed to me, but the privilege of making one's own life choices and the freedom to be gloriously, imperfectly oneself along the way. It's funny because, looking at how my life in the run-up to this slightly arbitrary age milestone has actually panned out so far, my reality and my ideals might seem more than a bit incongruous from the outside. It would seem that I've made all the 'sensible' (or 'conventional', 'prescribed') life choices, chased a narrow and socially acceptable view of 'perfection' and, maybe to some, it may also seem like I've attained a level of it especially when compared to those rom com leading ladies (really I'm just looking at the problematic icon that is Bridget Jones here - also don't ask why I was allowed to watch these movies at ten years old, let's just accept the 00s were a problematic decade for everyone involved and move swiftly on). 

Last month I wrote an embarrassingly shallow and patronising blog post. It waxed on about how the most apt metaphor for Life wasn't a sprint or even a marathon, but actually a banquet at which we should all simply enjoy whatever random dish was placed in front of us, however extravagant or plain, and do so with gratitude and humility instead of an envious or anxious eye on whatever our fellow guests were served. Even for my own standards it was pretty awful stuff. But I do think that blog post was my attempt to put to words a few of the bigger insecurities I've held close while approaching thirty like the most determined steamroller you've ever seen. It all just unfortunately spilled out under the form of some pretentious thought-piece thinly masking the fact that, while I've always wanted (and still very much want) this outwardly postcard-picture ‘conventional’ life of mine, I wasn't actually expecting to have any of this by this age and sometimes have doubts about it or just completely take it for granted. Like any normal human I suppose. And while I'm generally the most fulfilled and content I've ever felt in this little life thus far, the farther along I go, the more I realise my youthful self-assuredness and all the confidence I've stored up to get me through adulthood will inevitably unravel in the face of what true maturity and wisdom probably is: a total, headlong, eyes-open dive into all that which we can never fully know or understand, both within and outside of ourselves. Such lofty things, I’ve quickly come to learn, are not governed by arbitrary age milestones…

Don't get it twisted, I fear the mess and upheaval this utterly chaotic process of unravelling must surely bring, and I certainly don't think I'll get to that level of maturely embracing the deep dive any time soon. I sure hope I will, but I'm presently clinging onto way too much and have far more to work through as I peel through the layers of my formative years while pressing on with my future ones (I'm doing the work, as they say). And yes, there are now two (soon to be three) other beautiful, magnificent, complicated, frustrating humans at the centre of my life whose personal growth I need and want to prioritise while I try to work on myself as well. There really isn't as much time for my favourite pastime of angsty naval-gazing as I'd like these days, she says with a sigh... 

I do also find that the privilege and freedom and self-embracing imperfection I once enshrined as successful markers of healthy early-middle-agedom look a whole lot more complex up close now, and will probably look even more so in another decade. All the privilege I've earned thus far now centres on being able to literally and emotionally afford to continue living comfortably with my life choices regardless of whether they turn out to be 'good' or 'bad' or 'meh' ones. My freedom to choose the life I want is there for the taking on paper as it has always been but, as I have already said, this now rarely extends beyond those who are just as if not more important to me than myself. There is little room on deck for self-centred choices if I truly want the ultimate good of everyone aboard my little boat. These days my imperfections are very much allowed full exposure, sometimes on centre stage even, but they're not so ridiculously self-conscious as to think they exist alone under a spotlight - they interact within a messy performance of many other egos and imperfections that have every right as mine to be there, and they must navigate this play with great care as they proceed.

I'm afraid I've come to the end of all the pondering I can muster on the subject of my ageing. I genuinely don't know if any of what I've written has made an ounce of sense, even to me, but I've enjoyed sitting down to write it all the same. I'm looking forward to thirty next year, but let me now recline further back and enjoy twenty-nine while I still have it in sight, stretching before me with all its heady promise of love and mess and hope and wondrous growth.