WHY REGRESSING IS GOOD FOR US

Ashling McCloy - 30 Sep 14

It’s Saturday night. It’s 2am and you’re up. Not stumbling out of a bar but pleading with your three-year-old to get back to bed. All you want is sleep.

The next morning you’re awake and guzzling coffee. The kids are fighting over the TV remote. You’re silently seething while your husband snores upstairs. You want to scream.
You long for cosy lie-ins and leisurely brunches, quiet discussions over the Sunday papers and morning telly without the cartoons…

Yep, we’ve heard it all before. Moan, moan, moan.

Well, that’s how I felt. One afternoon I heard myself complaining: the kids did that, he didn’t do that… I was picking at everything wrong in my life. Wondering… ‘Is this it?Washing, cleaning, school pick-ups, juggling work and stories at bedtime?‘

What happened to those care-free years? Leaving the house at ten to begin a night out. New handbags on payday. Running in heels. Nursing a hangover while watching the Hollyoaks omnibus. The good ol’ days.

I was bored of moaning; bored of accepting my dreary world (I’ll come back to that). I wanted fun.

So you see, I rebelled – and before anyone calls social services, it was only after I’d made sure my two blissfully ignorant little girls had eaten all their carrots and were safely tucked up in bed.

I regressed. I slipped gradually into denial.

There were a number of factors that lead to me reliving my twenties. Some might call it a mid-life crisis.That’s not what I’d call it. No way. But certainly if you put all the ‘symptoms’ on paper, yes, I had a mid-life crisis. An early one (just to clarify).

I turned 35. A weird milestone in a woman’s life – not a big birthday but a cut-off point. The end of the line for the ‘age 25-35’ check box. After 35? What then? It’s a whole new range of skincare, that’s what.

The catalyst for my regression was the day my 24-year-old sister, Jerusha, moved in – a student nurse, a party girl with a passion for TOWIE, an addiction to Topshop and looking fabulous. If that wasn’t going to shake things up nothing would. Who’s going to stay in slobs and food-splattered clothes when your little sis is tottering round the kitchen in a cloud of perfume?

It was the first time I questioned my nights in front of the telly and my cosy evenings in the pub. My wee world suddenly seemed a tad dull. In her defence, she never once made me feel anything but great. And yet, I was still outraged that she couldn’t see my life before children. It was, to her, as if I’d always been a homebody.

I had to prove myself. Not that I was responsible but that I could ‘let go’. With an eleven year age gap, I am the sensible one; the grown up. I’m a mum… but I wanted her to see that I hadn’t always been this way!

It all started relatively innocently over dinner with my friend, Amy. I poured my heart out and she listened. I felt tired, lonely and unattractive. I needed more. She took it all on board and came up with a solution: ‘let’s go dancing.’ And we did. That night I forgot my responsibilities. I felt more alive than I had in a long time.

You see, with us mums some of us fall naturally and gracefully into motherhood and some of us just don’t. Sometimes we lose ourselves and aren’t quite sure who we are anymore. We thought we’d figured it out when bam, life throws us a curve ball. For me, it felt easy to return to a time when things seemed simple and less pressured.

So the shenanigans continued.

A mum? Of two? Me? Nah. I’m young. I’m free!

I rediscovered nightclubs, drank weird coloured drinks, danced freely and may have, on the odd occasion, crawled home at five in the morning.

I’d tuck my girls in to bed and soon after find myself in a loud, dimly lit bar. It’s not like I fell in to debauchery, merely the life I had enjoyed at 24. I’d apparently bottled up years of nights out in to a few crazy blow-outs. It was brilliant.

And I revelled in this regression… until those nights (like they did back then) began to lose their lustre. Can a woman with two kids and a job maintain a partying lifestyle? The answer is yes… IF you have the energy, the childcare and the ability to conceal a hangover. And soon I had none of those.

A year on, I’ve successfully scratched an itch, so to speak. I had a lot of good times and reconnected with lovely friends. I also relived the pain of the morning after, heightened by unexpected visits from the in-laws and a smirking husband.

I now know I have the option, which I guess is the important thing.

Becoming a mum does not and should not turn you in to a saint; we can still be a little naughty. And while I’ll rarely reject a night out, I know I’m pretty darn happy watching a box-set in my pjs.

The demands of being a mother are off the scale but really, were your twenties all that perfect? At the risk of sounding like a cheesy infomercial, I can see that yes, times can be tough and fraught with children squabbling or mounting bills and budgeting but they can also be bloody amazing, too: like when your eldest hugs you in the morning or when your three-year-old farts and laughs so hard she farts again; or when your husband holds your hand or… when your little sister moves out but still offers to babysit.

Life’s not dreary. Far from it. Exhausting, maybe, but definitely not dreary.

Read more posts by Ashling McCloy

Ashling McCloy

Ashling McCloy has been a journalist for over 10 years. As well as writing for publications including Red Magazine, she is a style expert for QVC. She is mother to Gracie, 6 and Betsy, 3, and is married to Tom. They live in Balham, London. In her spare time Ashling raises funds for First Touch, the charity for the neonatal unit at St George's Hospital.

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