Loneliness

It always strikes me as funny…how I can spend my entire day surrounded by other people, always with a toddler hanging off my leg chattering away about this or that, always with a cooing baby on my hip, always with my partner just there by my side….

But yet….I still so often feel that familiar pang of loneliness.

You find your ways of getting by of course….

I have a group of mummy friends online who I started chatting when I was 8 weeks pregnant with Tyne, all of whom were due within weeks of each other with our first babies, and those girls to this day are my little support network…I don’t know what I’d do without them!

I have some blogger friends that I’m incredibly close with who I can chat to on social media when I feel like it, and I’ve come to consider them to be true friends.

But these people are spread across the globe…and sometimes, you just crave that kind of friendship with other mothers more local to you.

I’m not the most sociable person in the world, and I have my anxiety issues…but sometimes I’d just really like to have a friend around who understands those days when the kids are just too much and  you just need to get out of the house…

Who understands those days when your partner just isn’t the person you want to offload onto and you just want some female company for a girly natter over a cuppa and some biscuits.

Is it just me?!

Despite having a partner who I consider to be my best friend, despite the fact that sometimes I just like my own space, despite the fact that my kids entertain me most of the time…does anybody else just sometimes feel really lonely?

This might sound a bit bigheaded of me so forgive the self-indulgence but on the whole…I think I do pretty ok at this Motherhood malarkey.

Ok so I’m not into crafting or home baking, but  I like to think that I make up for my lack of interest in those things in other areas – I have a pretty decent fuse temper-wise and have only really shouted at Tyne once that I recall (I worked a lot with young kids before having them so I think my patience has been tested enough that it lasts quite a while now!), I’m pretty fun and I come up with lots of ideas for family days out and adventures we can have, I’m pretty easy-going but I can be strict when I need to be, we’ve got ourselves into a swing that suits us and the stress levels in our house are generally pretty low most of the time…I feel like I’m almost winning at this Motherhood thing most days! But then there’s this one MAJOR flaw in all of it….

My big motherhood failure…

That no matter how confident I am within my own four walls, when it comes down to it…I still feel like that same awkward schoolgirl when it comes to making friends.

I don’t know what to say to people, I don’t know how to approach them, I don’t know what to talk about, I worry that things I find funny aren’t funny to anybody else, I worry that I’m going to say something really stupid and everyone will think I’m a weirdo….

So it’s just easier to keep myself to myself and not try….but it’s lonely. And I know it’s not the right thing to do.

I don’t want to be the lonely Mum.

I don’t want to be the one at the edge of the playground at school pick up time not joining in with the chit chat…

I don’t want to be the Mum nobody asks to help out with jumble sale or the school play coz they don’t really know her…

I don’t want to be the loner.

And I don’t want my children to pick up on my social awkwardness or realise that Mummy doesn’t have any other Mummy friends.

As much as I love chatting away to Tyne about all kinds of everything and as great a conversationalist as he is for a 2 year old, he has zero interest in gossiping about Celebrity Big Brother with me and sometimes I need that!

So tell me…am I the only one who feels this way?!

Does my loneliness make me a failure?

Because it can’t be anybody elses fault but my own.

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