It got me thinking about how things change. Gone are the days I used to spend my days off dossing about the house, playing videogames and pissing about online. Nowadays my day off consists of dossing about the house, playing videogames, pissing about online and taking the time to read a newsletter. Wow, life really is crazy.
But although that may be one relatively small change, things really have changed. Originally I was going to make this first proper blog about how me becoming a NotDad all started, but then I realised the starting point wasn't as straightforward as that. Maybe the starting point for some people is straightforward. You meet someone, they have a child and eventually you make the decision whether or not to rise to the challenge of being there for that child.
Things were different for us though because me and My Lady were already in each other's lives before we were together. Now that's not such an unusual, best friends falling in love is something that happens. Why wouldn't it? Your best friend is potentially the person you are closest to and trust the most. It's perfectly understandable that would make the ideal foundation for a relationship - it did for me. However there will always be a transition period when a relationship changes. It's not necessarily a bad period, it's just the time you take to work out what's different and what's the same.
My relationship with My Lady wasn't the only one which changed though, because being best friends with her also meant I was already part of the MiniMosher's life too. My standing in his life used to much different though. As friend of the family I wasn't responsible for his care, it wasn't me that had to discipline him and I certainly didn't go to the effort of reading the newsletter his school sent. I was the guy who showed up once every so often to amuse and entertain him. It was all play on the times I saw him. This afforded me a position where I was the fun guy at all times; of course you can't do that when taking on a parental role, not all the time anyway. So over the last year I've seen lots of little changes in my relationship with the MiniMosher and in the way I live my life.
I've seen changes in the way I feel too. Falling in love with your best friend is a big deal, but falling in love with their kid to point you feel they are yours despite there being no genetic link can really take you by surprise. And all those little changes I've made? Well, I really only notice them retrospectively. I see them when I look back and see how things used to be. When it came down actually making those changes they were just made, they had to be because it was for something important to me. There is still a lot I've got to learn and things I haven't encountered, so maybe in some ways the transitional period is still going. Or maybe life is always in transition and we only really take stock of those changes we make during the big moments like moving somewhere new, starting a new relationship, births, deaths, marriages and so forth.
All I know is that when I look back to where I was year ago I see how dramatically things have changed. I used to live on my own, I used to take each day as it came, I had a best friend who lived 200 miles away, and I thought the world of her little boy. Now I live with my best friend, my best friend is also My Lady, I'm responsible for her and her little boy and instead of living day-to-day I look forward to the future. Ultimately I feel like I'm part of a family and, what's more, I think of that family as my family.
And on top of all that ...I read school newsletters. Like I said, life really is crazy.
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