I used to have chaos to talk about. Now I have substance. It just doesn’t sound as sexy over beach snacks.

We met at the beach.

I brought a gazebo.

Which, if you knew me before, is already hilarious.

I set it up because I was worried about their now-Irish skin in the Cape Town sun – I now manage shade. Like some kind of capable suburban beach mother. I left my friends on the beach with my husband and my kiddo, ran into the water for twenty minutes. 

Weeeeelll. To be fair, Not a surf, exactly. I’m still learning, more a knee-board moment, my core isn’t as strong as it should be after some guy slashed it with a light saber. It was a cold-water reset that I had been looking forward to, I came back. Sat down. Ready to chat.

After the first few how is your holiday, what’s happening moments, I started talking about the kiddo, her accomplishments, her personality and how sweet she was.

Cue my kid asked for a donut, on repeat until I gave in, and even though I wasn’t with other moms, the reflex kicked in and I started saying how even though she’s having donuts now, I swear she is balanced. And okay she’s not eating most green veg any more, but is still eating other vegetables and how much she loves fruit. And then, I started listing them. Her favourites, Apples. Bananas…

I heard myself mid-sentence and looked at my friend, “omg this is so boring.”

And realised I had absolutely nothing interesting to say.

Not nothing. Just nothing that sounded interesting – considering the company. 

She’s one of the few friends I still keep in contact with from my old life.

Not just old life. That life. Late nights. Too much drinking. Drugs. Music festivals. Wine festivals. Finishing shifts absolutely wired, then somehow still finding the energy to go out and keep going till four in the morning.

That version of me always had a story.

Something had always happened, chaotic, funny, mildly regrettable.  Life seemed full. Or maybe it just looked full from the outside.

So sitting on a beach, under a gazebo I had responsibly erected for sun protection, hearing myself talk about apples and bananas to someone who knew that version of me too… I am just grateful I didn’t start talking about pooh. I can wax lyrical on that topic. 

But I regress, the truth is, I wasn’t exactly sparkling, I was recovering from a week of toddler-brought school germs. Kiddo hadn’t been sleeping properly. Which meant I hadn’t been sleeping properly.

So I was in that special kind of presentable zombie mode where you look mostly normal, but internally being held together by sheer will and the fact that  I don’t have time for a full collapse.

I’m also building a new business. So whatever brain cells have survived parenting are currently on another shift. Which means, to be fair, maybe beach banter was never going to be my strongest performance that day.

But still.

The feeling was real.

That sharp little panic of, wait.

Is this me now?

I think what got me was the contrast, the familiarity of a trouble buddy and a life where I actually enjoy sewing. That old life looked interesting. And parts of it were. There was freedom in it. Spontaneity. Movement. The kind of life that hands you stories to fill every gap in conversation. 

It wasn’t all magic though. I remember the morning it all changed, where I woke up with coke crusted to my nose, head pounding, feeling gross and thought, there has to be more to life than this.

Not in some huge dramatic movie-scene way. Just a quiet crack in the whole thing. A little moment where the glamour fell off and you could see the emptiness underneath. (I don’t want to over romanticise who I was just because she had better dinner-party material. She was louder. Messier. Easier to summarise. Less responsibility, not automatically happier).

Another turning point was when I was living in Qatar. I had the chance to go to the Maldives. Went solo. It was an awesome adventure. I met a Sri lankan labour broker, who I debated the merits of what is, honestly, modern slavery. 

I ended up hanging around with ex-army guys, drinking black coffee strong enough for a spoon to stand in it smoking endless cigarettes listening to their stories, waiting for groups of far richer tourists to arrive so I could hitch a ride on the boat and go diving.

It was definitely an adventure. My jet ski stalled and I was surrounded by a school of dolphins while I waited for the engine to come back to life. The whole trip was amazing. But then I got home, walked into my place and the cup of coffee I’d left before I rushed out the door was still sitting there in the same place. Just a little dusty. No one had touched anything, nothing had moved. I wasn’t lonely exactly, I had lots of friends, it was something else, a sort of soul-searching realisation that there was a part of life I was missing.

Not long after that, I rescued a kitten. Which felt like a small choice at the time. I don’t think I’ve slept through the night regularly since. A whole new journey has happened and the beach with my wonderful friends, just brought it into focus.

Once they had left, I was having a moment on my loo when I started laughing hysterically that I had had a conversion where I was talking about bananas. Kiddo came running to find out what was so funny, (by now I have zero sense of bathroom privacy) and I just kissed her head, and said that I was so glad she was here. 

I really am happy 

I used to have chaos to talk about. Now I have substance. It just doesn’t sound as sexy over beach snacks.