40

My beloved is on the other side of the world, and yesterday I didn't manage that very well.

Every bit of relationship advice (especially for lesbians!) warns against living in each other's pockets. It says you have to have your own identities, your own interests, your own friends.

I shouldn't be so 'attached.'

I shouldn't be so 'dependent.'

I was on the verge of tears most of the day, but I had to let it happen, and examine why I felt this way.

Was it just because I was missing her? Or was it more about being alone shining light on my own insecurities and it was very, very uncomfortable?

So I worked through it.

Early on in our relationship, when it was still secret, there were a couple of times that she went off on holidays with her then partner, and the unease was palpable. It was a part of what pushed us to leave and be together. "Comfortable with you, uncomfortable without you" was how we described it.

So while Nyah is overseas working, learning, experiencing all sorts of wonderful things, I am still here doing the day to day stuff. I don't feel jealous. Not at all. I think what I feel is that she has stepped out of my world for a while, and I feel a bit lost at sea.

Nyah is a strong personality. She has a clear identity and is so very sure of who she is. And what she is doing on the other side of the world is no more than she deserves after years of hard work, and fits with her skills and aptitudes. And its food on our table. Another tension in my mind after pushing against all the patriarchal norms of being 'looked after.' I vehemently want to be an equal partner in the financial management of our household, but simply do not have the means to be.

I realised that my discomfort while she is absent isn't to do with her absence. Its to do with feeling despondent about being 40 and cobbling together three part time jobs to make enough money to pay the rent and not much else. I read just tonight that how I'm feeling at this time in my life is a symptom of Imposter Syndrome.

How many of you feel discouraged when surrounded by people with incredible accomplishments, not jealous or envious, but sad that you haven’t done much with your life? 

I read this and thought YES! YES! This is it exactly!!

I have friends who will point out the time I have spent with my children is a lot to have done with my life. And they'd be right. But as I talked about in another post, the investment, particularly the emotional investment, in spending time with small children and not being in the paid workforce, is desirable, noble, well meant. But in our world - a consumerist, capitalist society - its at odd with a society that values money making productivity over all else.

Love doesn't put food on the table.

I sit alongside children struggling with learning every day. I get paid close to minimum wage to do it. I have to tag two other jobs onto that time, because nobody gets paid to work with at risk children for longer than 16 hours a week. Its an 'honourable' job. I look into the eyes of children who's parents are disenfranchised, disengaged, disinterested, desperate, and tell them I believe in them. I love their stories. I find them something to eat when there's nothing in their cupboards. I hope with desperate hope that forming a relationship with the boy who has already pushed two of his classmates by 9:30 in the morning will be something he can carry into what seems to be a hopeless future.

Nobody gets paid much to hope, though. 

Nobody wants to pay anyone to relate to anyone else unless there's money to be made.

Nyah's training and extensive experience has given her a mixture of using the right skills, tools, and most importantly, her humanity to be able to make a difference.. It might be that she has to do that under the umbrella of a corporate overlord, but that fact remains that she knows how, and she can.

So yes...I miss Nyah dreadfully. I go through our bedtime routine of turning off the light and rolling over and the nothingness makes my heart drop. But she will be home soon, fired up with all the learning she has done and thinking about how to make that work for everyone she talks to for her job.

I want that for me, too. I want to be able to afford to house and feed my children without help. I want an identity that is outside being someone's Mum or partner or wife. And I want it to be somewhere and in something that helps others. Helps the disenfranchised, disengaged, disinterested and desperate. Maybe it has to be making money for someone else. But if I can bring hope and courage to one person, then its worth it.

All that relationship advice about not being joined at the hip is about independence. Well, whatever. I am proud to be in a relationship with someone who is constantly thinking about people's stories, people's relationships, and how they bring out the best in people.

If Nyah can work her way to a place where those things matter, and those things pay a decent wage, then so can I!

My values are firm but the next step is to make a living from them.

This is my year.

Wishing

Speed. Rush. Rhythm. Tears. Longing.  Ache. Reverberation. Beat. Escape. Proximity. West. Memory. Oh well.

2013

Back to the Future

Today is the anniversary of my marriage. I haven't been able to officially end it yet, so by the time I do in January, I will have been legally married for twenty years.

It is also the the date that Marty McFly arrives from the future, according to the movie Back to the Future II, released in 1989.

In 1989 I was in my first year of high school. With the benefit of hindsight, I was crushing on a girl while at the same time discussing the boy she liked with her. I probably wrote in my diary about dreams I harboured of weddings and white picket fences. I loved trashy pre-teen romance novels.

I never would have imagined that by the year 2015 I would have committed adultery, left the marriage I aspired to as a teenager, and have outed myself as the queer I denied being without saying a word, but by making it clear the woman I live with is my partner.

My view of my future was myopic. Shaped by the narrow circumstances of my life and the lives of those around me.

If I could go back to 1989, what would I tell thirteen year old me? How would I have liked the past to look like for me so that my future wasn't a gigantic roundabout where I feel like I am in the same place at nearly forty as I was when I was eighteen?

I would tell thirteen year old me that marriage and babies aren't everything. That I am smart and resourceful enough to build a future for myself before sharing it with anyone else. That in a neo-liberal economy, looking after babies at home might be honourable, and probably in children's best interests, but it leaves you financially bereft - nobody cares because its not 'productive' work. That I need time to work out what my values are. That I need exposure to different people, cultures, beliefs and lifestyles in order to figure out what will work for me. That I need to go to university, not just for the learning from study, but the learning from people. That I need to read widely. That actually I'm in love with a girl, and its ok.

But then of course the world would have had to look very different, too. In a sea of white, Anglo-Christian, heteronormative nuclear families, where would I have gotten the idea that my life could have looked different?

Part of me struggles with the concept of being married. My belief systems shifted, and so the value I placed on marriage also changed. I still carry my married name around on official documents like a kind of shackle that I can't loosen until January. I doubt I will ever marry again.

But on the other hand, the journeys we go on make up our stories. My marriage was not unhappy. My children are a blessing. But like those knarled trees that grow through the fences that contain them, my growth outstripped my surroundings and I needed a new place to grow.

We look with amusement and derision now at what the citizens of 1989 thought 2015 would look like.

My daughter's parents live apart and her mother's partner is a woman. At school she does most of her work on a computer. She asked the other day what we meant when we made a reference to Moses. She doesn't know who 'God' is. She listens to music on You Tube. She and her friend still know about fairytale princesses and happy ever afters. They might even hope for them. But they know that they are pretend.

As I head towards the end of my marriage, I feel like I'm starting over. I gained a lot over the last twenty years, but I lost so very much as well.

In another twenty years, I hope that I am settled in the authentic me.

And that my daughter is enjoying ambling down the myriad of paths that will be available to her, finding her own way.

Her own future.

New lenses

"Actually, the cheerleading sequences are one of the few things I don’t like about the film, since lesbians are far more likely to fall in love with a girl’s stray curl or delicate cheekbones than FULL-ON TITS."

This was a in a review for an old, very camp but by all accounts amusing, iconic lesbian film. This statement was affirmed in the comments section of the review,  and it was somewhat of an epiphany for me.

In figuring out if I was attracted to women, I was asking from the point of view of attractiveness as it is presented to us for MALE consumption.

I struggled with understanding the concept of sexual attraction. 

We receive lots of messages that a sexy woman equals instant arousal in a man. This is a sexist idea, really, suggesting that men are at the mercy of their erections. This moves from being unfair to being downright dangerous in the context of rape culture... that women need to guard their behaviour and and appearance because of the lack of self control of men. But I digress.

I didn't feel any kind of rumbling in my nethers for either gender, so I was confused. But when I think about all sorts of scenarios from my past, and tie it to the concept in the above quote? Then maybe I've been in love dozens of times. And that might be with an aspect of a woman's appearance, or might be her sense of humour, it might be her intelligence. It doesn't mean I instantly feel aroused and want to jump into bed with them.

And that was certainly the case with Nyah. When I reflect on the last few years, I have always been interested in her. Memories of our brief exchanges at our workplace have stuck with me in remarkable detail. And what drew us together originally was good old fashioned chemistry along with the enjoyment of intelligent conversation,  shared values and mutual understanding of some our life experiences. I didn't look at her boobs and go "Whoar!"

That said, I experience physical desire for her that I do not remember experiencing since I was a teenager. And that wasn't and isn't about arousal. It is about a desire for physical closeness and intimacy.

And that, I suppose, is the key.

Boobs are awesome, but the heart, soul and mind are where beauty resides and true love blossoms. 

For me, to look for that in a man seems foreign.

The heart, soul, mind...and body...of a woman is where I feel at home.

Assumptions

When I first started wondering if I was a lesbian, I grappled with issues around presentation. I had read books about lesbian history, and all about the coded dressing that went on when lesbians couldn’t be out and proud… labrys earrings and pinky rings with a wink and a nudge. Stereotypes lived on with the idea in my head that most lesbians dressed like male truck drivers in steel capped boots and flannel shirts. The books I had read about middle aged women discovering their attraction to women advised that they go and mix and mingle with the ‘lesbian community.’ But…. how do you do that? For a start, I didn’t know where I’d look. And if lesbians dress like men, then how on earth would I fit in?

I read Lisa Diamond’s book about sexual fluidity, and got quite stroppy about labelling. Why have a label? I don’t need one. Plenty are doing without. I continue to be confused by all the issues around labelling and presentation, and even queer media seems to have different views.

Even in the last week, I read an article about femme invisibility being a ‘dirty secret’ of the queer community. That is, the lesbian community largely presenting as butch, and excluding and erasing women who identified as lesbian, but presented in a feminine way. You know - ‘You’re too pretty to be a lesbian.”

Then on the other hand, this piece was posted by an online magazine called ‘PRIDE’ which claims to be be a platform for queer millenials. Queer millenials seem to be throwing off labels, which then seems contrary to this piece which reinforces stereotypes about lesbians wearing boots and flannel shirts.

This is so incredibly problematic, as it is not only a community being non-inclusive, but doing so to the point of reinforcing stereotypes.

But this still happens, and I am utterly puzzled as to why. I tried joining a few lesbian Facebook groups, and the ‘exclusivity’ was annoying. I heard about a local lesbian event, and asked the administrator of one of the groups if she’d post it for member. “Oh, I’ll see what the organiser says. But its probably not necessary - its a well known event in the community.”

I see.

What if I don’t belong to ‘the community’ yet? How will I find out? Remember back at Stage One, where the books said ‘find the lesbian community?’ Well, how is that going to happen when the ‘community’ cloaks itself in some kind of exclusiveness?

I can understand discretion if you are doing something that is generally not approved of in society, but has ‘the community’ not realised that we have equality on pretty much all fronts? Any discrimination that lesbians face won’t be because they're gay - it will be because they’re women.

Other online magazines have been exploring the idea of doing away with labels, and celebrities like Miley Cyrus talk about ‘fluidity’ rather than taking on sexual identities related to attraction to any particular gender.

While I have been pondering what label to wear, I have enthusiastically posted articles about not labelling.

Then a lesbian friend said “But I don’t want people assuming I’m straight.”

She raised an excellent point, but I have explored that a bit further in my own personal context. I still don’t have a set identity. Other people label me as a lesbian, and that’s fine. I suppose I resist labelling because I think that there are more important defining things about me as a person than the gender of the person I’m in a romantic relationship with. In any case, labelling sexual identities is a relatively new phenomenon. We can thank the Victorians and their urge to catalogue and classify everything for that. 

And then I hit on it.

I don’t want people assuming I’m with a man.

I don’t want people assuming I’m married.

I don’t want people assuming I’m coupled at all.

I don’t want those things for anyone, actually.

Perhaps it was not so much that I don't want assumptions made about who I'm attracted to or romantically involved with or deeply in love with or having sex with. Because that's kind of personal, right? But more that I don't want about assumptions made about which societal box I fit into. As the writer of the article in DIVA said, In fact, by self-labelling as gay, my real intended meaning is that I don't fit the heteronormative category.

I remember when I was a newlywed nineteen year old I took a bit of pleasure in subverting people’s ideas about what I should be. So I suppose that’s an example in and of itself. 

Don’t assume that a nineteen year old isn't married, and don’t assume a nearly forty year old is.

And don’t assume all lesbians wear flannel.

Still looking

While I was at university, I took advantage of having access to an academic library for my own self- development and exploration. There I discovered the writing of Tamsin Wilton, a lesbian academic from the UK. I had mostly read books written by and about Americans, so it was refreshing to read from a different cultural point of view. I enjoyed Ms Wilton's acerbic style, and wanted to seek out more of her books. Funnily enough, I cannot now find even the name the book I originally read of her's, and was also to find that getting hold of her other books was going to be no easy task. I managed to source two of her books in the UK via an obscure online seller.  

Finger-licking Good: The Ins and Outs of Lesbian Sex. 
1996.

Not as titillating as it sounds, this one was very political. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless.A book nearly twenty years old and written from a UK perspective was going to offer a view of a different world to twenty first century New Zealand. This book examined the patriarchal undermining of women's sexuality - both identities and activities - and how feminism and lesbianism intersected. Living in a world where people are increasingly choosing not to label themselves, the idea of the 'political lesbian' was an interesting one. One to read once, and I have since donated this one to The Charlotte Museum Trust.



Unexpected Pleasures: Leaving Heterosexuality for a Lesbian Life. 
2002
Always eager to read other people's stories, this was the book I really wanted to get my hands on. Ms Wilton did not write this book as an academic piece, but as a collection of stories supporting her own experience as someone who had lived a heterosexual life, and had not come out as a lesbian until her 30s. Of course there were many other stories I had read about the very same thing, but most were very old and very American. But one of the distinguishing features of Ms Wilton's point of view was that women make a choice. That it isn't necessarily a case of "Well, I always knew...but.." That they initially had enjoyable heterosexual relationships but later developed a lesbian identity.


I also stumbled across this one on Kindle. I was surprised that I hadn't found it earlier, but very glad I finally had.

Lesbian Epiphanies: Women coming out in later life. 
Karol L. Jensen, MPH, PhD. 
Routledge 1999

This book wasn't just about women's own stories, but also examined the society that kept them on the route of heteronormative marriage and family life. From the foreword by Paula Rust, 

"In great detail, she explores the ways in which females are socialized into ignoring their own experiences of self, particularly their own sexual desires, in favour of socially encouraged concepts of womanhood."

This book was important for me because of its exploration of many aspects of identity, and illustrates the power of our society's heterosexist and misogynist norms to shape our lives and experiences.


It seems a long time ago that I started searching for answers, but sometimes starting a journey of exploration throws up more questions than you thought to ask to begin with. I think we always seek to find validation in other people's experiences, because they make us feel less alone. It has been useful to absorb the stories of more women like me - like me not just because they were set on a journey of questioning their sexuality, but their whole identity. Its been good to discover that although it would be nice to look up a book or do an internet search to find an answer to my questions, that actually the journey is important. It teaches you things. It reinforces that you can't put people in boxes and that although we have things in common, that we are all individuals with our own paths to walk and discoveries to make.

Everything and nothing

Back in 2001, at the age of 25, I had a career crisis. I was working as a Training Manager for a large retailer, and they had recently introduced new systems for training staff through a structured programme. I was working with this programme day in and day out and was thoroughly versed in its application and use. Then head office invited applications for someone to run this programme nationwide. Perhaps naively, I applied for the job. I had no tertiary education, and was relying on my extensive experience to make me the best person for the job. But I wasn't. When I spoke to someone at the Human Resources department they told me that were looking for someone with a degree in Industrial Psychology. I was upset. Frustrated. Annoyed. And then I decided I needed to take action.

My husband and I were still renting our house, and the overwhelming societal message was that we should be buying. I wasn't sure how that was going to happen while I was still in a relatively low paid retail job. I was smart and knew that I needed to keep growing and learning so I wouldn't stagnate.  So I decided that I would look into doing some part time education in the Human Resources sector, get a better job and buy a home within the next ten years.

And then I unexpectedly fell pregnant.

We were surprised, but not unhappy. Children were always on the agenda, but the timing caught us off guard because our financial situation was not secure in the modern sense of the word. We didn't own a house.

Of course the model that my husband and I had both grown up with was with a stay-at-home mother, and the idea of going back to work with a small baby was unthinkable. At that time there was no paid parental leave anyway, but I did what most mothers did at that time, and that was to apply for and take the one year's unpaid leave. It turned out that in that time my role was phased out, so I would have had no job to return to anyway.

Pregnancy was easy, but I had a difficult and very, very long labour. I didn't sleep for over 48 hours, and after that I had a newborn who needed feeding every few hours. I remember feeling stressed by the relentlessness of his needs when I was so, so tired. Breastfeeding didn't come easily, and in the second week I was expressing milk because my nipples were so damaged. My son was bringing back milk with blood in it when it was at its worst.

I struggled with adjusting from full time work to full time motherhood, and to ease this transition I worked part time on the weekends from when our son was four months old. At first, I worked at my previous employer, and a few months later I found a better paying job somewhere else.

When our son was thirteen months old I found out I was pregnant again. In early 2003 I resigned from my job, and did not work outside the home again until 2008.

But what was I doing in all that time?  I became occupied with child and community oriented jobs. I joined a local Playcentre, helped as a session supervisor and participated in training in order to hold a qualification that enabled the centre to retain its license. I helped run a mother-to-mother support group, offering support and empowerment to other mothers.  I researched early childhood options for our son as he approached his third birthday. I had no car some days of the week, so I walked my son to kindergarten and back three afternoons a week. I breastfed the baby, I planned meals, I researched and prepared healthy food options for my family. I cleaned the house. Money was tight, so I made meals from scratch and researched how to make money go further. I took the children to Plunket and the doctor.

In 2004 the old societal guilt trip about not owning a house reared its head again, so I started applying for jobs and researching daycare. I was offered a job by a former colleague from my retail days, but I remember standing in the middle of the local fruit shop with my then eleven month old and realising that I couldn't in good conscience put him in daycare at that age and so I turned the job down. The house would have to wait. Or not happen at all.

In 2006 we moved to a whole new suburb, and not long after, our daughter arrived. With a four year old and a two year old, I researched local early childhood centres, visited the local kindergarten to get a feel for it, did all the paperwork so that our son could transfer from one kindergarten to the new one. As he approached his fifth birthday, I accompanied him on school visits. I enrolled him at school. I took my son to school and home again, as well as taking his brother to kindergarten and caring for a new baby, who mostly just fit in with whatever was going on. I took on many jobs within my volunteer mother-to-mother organisation, which enabled me to be involved in community service without compromising my children's care while they were small.  I worked part time as a homebased daycare educarer, which meant I could earn myself a bit of pocket money, but again, not compromise the needs of a baby and preschooler.

In 2008 I found a job outside the home, and decided to apply for it. It was in a public library, and it was the best job I have ever had. I found it encompassed all the things I enjoyed about retail, yet none of the negatives. I could be of service to the community, but didn't have to aggressively sell anything. My husband looked after the children so we didn't need to utilise daycare.

In 2009 our last child arrived. But this time the country had moved on, and I was able to take advantage of four months of paid parental leave. Most of it was lost in a blur of worry and stress over a baby that would not feed properly and not put on weight. I was able to go back to work on reduced hours, and ease myself back into my usual two full days a week by the time our son was six months old. I was working on my husband's days off so that we didn't have to utilise daycare, and our small baby could still be in parental care. Eventually the strain of one of us always being at work, alongside growing boys' weekend sports commitments meant it was time to move on to a weekday job. As it happened, my children's school had a vacancy for a library assistant, so I approached the school principal about taking the role, and she agreed to me taking it.

I was devastated about leaving the public library job, and hoped that I might be able to return to that sector one day, but right now this was a choice I needed to make for my family.

Due to my youngest son's age, an in-home nanny seemed to be the best option for his care. I searched and interviewed until I found the right person.  I spent a greater part of my wages on the nanny, but figured this would pay off in the longer term because I had secured a job, and soon I could access government subsidies for childcare once our son was old enough. My knowledge of child development meant that I had an awareness of what he would be able to manage in terms of non-parental care, so in time he moved on from the nanny in our home to being cared for in someone else's, and then, after more research, to a small, friendly daycare centre, and finally, to the kindergarten that his siblings had attended.

In the meantime, both my parents died, and my life was turned upside down. I began re-evaluating my entire life. As I have already written about, I went to therapy to help deal with anxiety and panic, but the therapist uncovered much more - I had experienced a loss of autonomy. I had lost myself. At the time this was uncovered, it was all I could do just to manage the immediate problem of my anxiety and panic. But it wasn't going to go away.

By that time I had spent eleven years in service to my family and community. My community work was for my own benefit as well, as it kept my mind engaged in things outside child rearing, but it was still child-centred. I was able to sit on a board of a non-profit organisation, but I was still on 24 hour mother duty as I breastfed a baby at the board table. I grew a social media site for my volunteer organisation around cooking dinner, vacuuming the floor and taking children to swimming lessons.

The day before I left my husband and family home in 2014, I also saw a therapist. I wanted to address two things. Questions about my sexuality, and my child rearing burnout.

I was tired. So tired. The therapist agreed I was burned out.

I probably should have stayed and worked through those feelings, but there were so many feelings, and they were so overwhelming, I ended up needing to take action. I needed to run.

People refer to the analogy of the airplane emergency procedure where you are told to put your oxygen mask on before you attend to anyone else.

I had spent years keeping everyone else's oxygen going, and although I tried to secure my own mask, now I was suffocating.

Even though I ran, I still saw and cared for my children every day. But I needed to hunker down and take care of myself, too. Weekends away weren't cutting it. They just meant I had to go home again and I didn't want to. Having more money thanks to an inheritance didn't help. What I needed was space.

A year on I have worked out what was suffocating me. I have learned how to put in place boundaries for children that ensure that they still feel cared for but I don't end up emotionally exhausted.

Back in 2001 my husband and I made the choice based in our shared values that I would stay at home to help look after our family. At university I have learned that what we were doing was market and non-market work. Because we believed in the value of a primary caregiver being a constant in a baby and young child's life, it mostly fell to me, as the stay at home parent, to do the other non-market work as well.

Since making those choices, it seems there has been a shift in society where I am expected to provide for my children equally. As a feminist, I think this is great. However, there are huge problems for women who have bought into the ideal of the 'bring home the bacon' husband while they stay at home with the babies. Many made those choices years ago, before society moved on, and now they are trapped and suffocating too.

I have no education because I gave it up ... twice. Firstly for a man. Secondly for my children. I tried very hard last year to finally have a third chance, but it was too financially and logistically difficult.

I have spent more than a decade putting my children first. I am desperately trying to balance putting my children first, but doing it without losing myself again. I have worked in my children's school for five years, and am still known by many not as 'Dania from the library,' but as 'Jacob's Mum' or 'Freya's Mum.' I can't provide for anyone beyond myself because I am not qualified enough for anything beyond minimum wage employment. I work in my children's school because it means that I can see two of them every day, and that I don't have to work late nights and weekends and have them in someone else's care when they are with me.

Now, nearly at the age of 40, I am worse off financially than I was in 2001 at the age of 25. This is the price that many parents, overwhelmingly women, pay for being the non-market workers in our society. For being the child carers, the cooks, the cleaners, the taxi service, the social arranger, the thrifty shopper, the medical assistant. Sometimes juggling low paid work outside the home. Sometimes trying to run a business in the home. Sometimes volunteering in early childhood services, schools, community groups so that they can spend time with other adults. They might make this choice willingly, but I'm not sure they always understand what they are giving up. I certainly didn't.

Its sad that we live in a world where we end up being punished for nurturing. But ultimately we do. And then when we claim ourselves back we are told we are selfish.

Never again.
Not for me. Not for my daughter.
Never again.

And I still don't own a house.

Normal and ordinary

In January I literally fled my family home, with an intense need to escape my old life.  During this turbulent time of transition, I lived in a caravan park, and went to my children's house every day to get them ready for school and later in the day, to collect them.  Twice a week I would stay over, sleeping on a camp stretcher in an upstairs living area.

During this time, Nyah and I looked for a house that would tick all the boxes of being affordable, being big enough to house four children some of the time, and being close enough to access school by car or public transport.

I started university and was living in a swirl of emotions running high with tensions between myself and an understandably very angry ex-husband, trying to find and organise a new home, trying to get my head around academic life and still go to work and care for my children during the agreed time.

I naturally had to sensitively approach the fact that Nyah and I were in a romantic relationship, and to tackle how our sleeping arrangements would work.

Mr12 decided that it would be most appropriate if I slept on the couch when he and his siblings were at my house, and I readily agreed.  I wanted to be sensitive to his comfort levels, being conscious that he is an adolescent boy just beginning to make  sense of issues around sexuality and romance.

I gently probed the other children about what their feelings were about Nyah and I sleeping in the same bed.  Mr10 declared he didn't care so long as he didn't have to see it.  Miss7, who is a perceptive wee thing, said at a later time that she knew the big boys didn't like it, but she didn't mind.  Mr12 had declared that it wasn't ok, and it never will be.

So, the children started coming and I started sleeping on the couch.

Quite aside from missing Nyah, the couch is uncomfortable, and it was cold.  I managed to wrap up warmly in a sleeping bag, but I was certain the sagging frame would soon take a toll on my back.

In a moment of lucidity that snuck through around the anger, my ex had stated that maybe it would help 'give them an open mind' to live with two women some of the time.  In other words, help re-write the hetero-normative script in their heads.

As the second round of school holidays approached, the thought of nearly two weeks on the couch became a bit much.  I was thinking about how I could be sensitive to adolescent boy sensibility, but at the same time not keep the nature of our relationship hidden.

Slowly compromises were made such as sleeping with the door ajar and getting up when Mr12 did.  As time went by these concessions were no longer required, and our own household routines and systems have formed.  The kids aren't allowed in mine and Nyah's room, but they do know that if they wake in the middle of the night they only have to knock on the door (or in the case of Mr5, call out) and I will immediately get up to them.  I will still change wet pyjamas or lie with a child scared of stormy weather.

I think time has passed and trust has been re-established, and there is nothing to fear from mine and Nyah's relationship.

The last weekend the kids were here, Mr12 was playfully acting like he was going to step over the join in the carpet that marks where the lounge finishes and the bedroom starts.  I was making the bed, and pretending to growl at him.  Then we had a conversation about who sleeps on what side of the bed and why - I am on the door side because I get up first when the children are here, and because then I can easily get up in the middle of the night if I'm needed.  Its too hard to get out from the other side, I explained, because the room is so small that the other person has to climb.

As if it was some kind of mental slapstick comedy sketch, Mr12 laughed at the prospect of a grown woman scrambling over another to get out of the room.

Not just the 'ok' he swore it never would be.
It was all just normal and ordinary.