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When Time Went By Real Slow

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Before I had my daughter time seemed to move relatively slowly. Weekends stretched out into infinity – Saturdays spent doing a spot of mooching about the shops, perhaps going to the gym and followed by a heavy night out. Sunday was spent recovering on the sofa watching a glut of TV and eating as many carbs as humanly possible. A lot of time was spent sleeping. When I think of all that sleep back then, it makes me want to weep a bit.

When you become a parent, your relationship with time shifts. Days are broken into fragments – each fragment has a

SelfishMother.com
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certain routine feel. In actuality the days are long (well they are if you’re up at five thirty) but they have a similar flavour. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between one day and the next. When you get the odd hour of ’free time’, you race to do something MEANINGFUL with it. To write something. Instagram something. Text something. Tidy something.

The truth is I took time for granted. I allowed the clock to tick by and languished carefree in my shabby dressing gown, my body slowly dissolving into the bed. I was like a Salvador Dali

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3
painting sliding into a lovely pool of melting clocks. There was no guilt attached to this wasteful behaviour. What did it matter if I lay in bed another hour? It wasn’t unusual to sit in the bath and have to refill it several times because it kept growing cold. There were SO many hours. I spent a lot of time (when not asleep) feeling bored and wishing things would hurry the hell up.

I’m reading a book at the moment by Kate Bolick called ’Spinster’. It’s all about our relationship with women who choose to remain single and not to have

SelfishMother.com
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kids (it’s great and I’d strongly recommend it). She describes time like this:

’When you’re coupled and especially if you’re parents, time is a precious commodity, or a contested territory under constant renegotiation…you savour your briefly expanded plot of land as best you can…when you’re single, you are often buried in time, your mouth and ears stuffed with it.’

I love the idea of being ’stuffed’ with time because that’s exactly how it felt. I clearly remember Sunday evenings, when my boyfriend would leave the house I shared

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with three other people in Ladbroke Grove, and how the evening then became interminably long. I stood on that crummy, decrepit balcony overlooking a gang of moody teenagers. I smoked. I contemplated where my relationship was headed (nowhere at that point). I picked at spots. I ran another bath. I often felt depressed that there was nothing to eat because I’d only emerged from my bed at three and so had not managed to catch the supermarket before it closed (back in the day when they closed at four on Sundays).

Everything feels more frenetic now.

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Time is propelled forward and I can’t slow it down. My daughter will turn three but she was only two a couple of months back. Her body is changing and she’s pushing me away because she doesn’t want to cuddle. I keep telling myself to cherish THIS moment but I can’t stop each one. Added to this, there’s an underlying sense of panic (even whilst I write this I know my daughter will wake up).

Some of this speeding up is societal (for a start I didn’t have a smartphone or social media back then and it wasn’t the norm to be online and in demand

SelfishMother.com
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all hours of the day). But some of it is me and the pressure I put on myself to DO STUFF and ENGAGE WITH STUFF ALL THE DAMNED TIME.

Yet I can still remember that feeling of time slowing down. The cold tap dripping on my toe. The sound of my flatmate grilling muffins and singing Craig David to herself (she was always eating muffins and nothing much else) and the depressing theme tune to Songs of Praise. I remember pulling on my dressing gown and calling my best friend to talk to her for an hour. I was just thankful that another hour had been filled

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up with something.

And I wonder… can that slow time feeling ever come back?

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- 15 Jun 16

Before I had my daughter time seemed to move relatively slowly. Weekends stretched out into infinity – Saturdays spent doing a spot of mooching about the shops, perhaps going to the gym and followed by a heavy night out. Sunday was spent recovering on the sofa watching a glut of TV and eating as many carbs as humanly possible. A lot of time was spent sleeping. When I think of all that sleep back then, it makes me want to weep a bit.

When you become a parent, your relationship with time shifts. Days are broken into fragments – each fragment has a certain routine feel. In actuality the days are long (well they are if you’re up at five thirty) but they have a similar flavour. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between one day and the next. When you get the odd hour of ‘free time’, you race to do something MEANINGFUL with it. To write something. Instagram something. Text something. Tidy something.

The truth is I took time for granted. I allowed the clock to tick by and languished carefree in my shabby dressing gown, my body slowly dissolving into the bed. I was like a Salvador Dali painting sliding into a lovely pool of melting clocks. There was no guilt attached to this wasteful behaviour. What did it matter if I lay in bed another hour? It wasn’t unusual to sit in the bath and have to refill it several times because it kept growing cold. There were SO many hours. I spent a lot of time (when not asleep) feeling bored and wishing things would hurry the hell up.

I’m reading a book at the moment by Kate Bolick called ‘Spinster’. It’s all about our relationship with women who choose to remain single and not to have kids (it’s great and I’d strongly recommend it). She describes time like this:

‘When you’re coupled and especially if you’re parents, time is a precious commodity, or a contested territory under constant renegotiation…you savour your briefly expanded plot of land as best you can…when you’re single, you are often buried in time, your mouth and ears stuffed with it.’

I love the idea of being ‘stuffed’ with time because that’s exactly how it felt. I clearly remember Sunday evenings, when my boyfriend would leave the house I shared with three other people in Ladbroke Grove, and how the evening then became interminably long. I stood on that crummy, decrepit balcony overlooking a gang of moody teenagers. I smoked. I contemplated where my relationship was headed (nowhere at that point). I picked at spots. I ran another bath. I often felt depressed that there was nothing to eat because I’d only emerged from my bed at three and so had not managed to catch the supermarket before it closed (back in the day when they closed at four on Sundays).

Everything feels more frenetic now. Time is propelled forward and I can’t slow it down. My daughter will turn three but she was only two a couple of months back. Her body is changing and she’s pushing me away because she doesn’t want to cuddle. I keep telling myself to cherish THIS moment but I can’t stop each one. Added to this, there’s an underlying sense of panic (even whilst I write this I know my daughter will wake up).

Some of this speeding up is societal (for a start I didn’t have a smartphone or social media back then and it wasn’t the norm to be online and in demand all hours of the day). But some of it is me and the pressure I put on myself to DO STUFF and ENGAGE WITH STUFF ALL THE DAMNED TIME.

Yet I can still remember that feeling of time slowing down. The cold tap dripping on my toe. The sound of my flatmate grilling muffins and singing Craig David to herself (she was always eating muffins and nothing much else) and the depressing theme tune to Songs of Praise. I remember pulling on my dressing gown and calling my best friend to talk to her for an hour. I was just thankful that another hour had been filled up with something.

And I wonder… can that slow time feeling ever come back?

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I'm Super Editor here at SelfishMother.com and love reading all your fantastic posts and mulling over all the complexities of modern parenting. We have a fantastic and supportive community of writers here and I've learnt just how transformative and therapeutic writing can me. If you've had a bad day then write about it. If you've had a good day- do the same! You'll feel better just airing your thoughts and realising that no one has a master plan. I'm Mum to a daughter who's 3 and my passions are writing, reading and doing yoga (I love saying that but to be honest I'm no yogi).

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