Sex, drugs & motherhood

There was a point in my life when I was much more into penises and drugs than vegetables. Now, that's a sentence I never thought I'd have a reason to write, but there we go. Before I became a stately wife and mother, who gets ditzy after drinking a bottle of cider, I worked in a music industry. And by worked I mean, I was drunk all the time on free alcohol, and somehow still paid for it. You know how in “Love Actually” Bill Nighy's character says “don't buy drugs, become a pop star and they give them to you for free”? Well, turns out it's enough to become that weird girl who does – well no one actually understands what exactly she does, including her, but something with social media – and yeah, you still get them for free.

Don't get me wrong, I was never a hardcore party animal. I was a damn coward to really go all the way. My friends, they could really go crazy, with all parts of their bodies flying around like there was no tomorrow. Me? I would have never had sex with someone I had just met! Unless they said “please”. Or just were there. Oh, get off your high horse, I am joking. Mostly.

And I was way too classy to take any drugs you have to inject, come on, why would you even want that if it's so easy to smoke things. I learned you can smoke almost everything. That's the education I got, although my diploma got stolen by one of these horses who are horses but also people, you know which ones, the ones you feel weird fancying, but you still do. And boy, did I talk to mythical creatures! In fact, now when we read fairy tales with my children, I often have the feeling of recognition when I look at the illustrations. “Oh hi, little green fairy, I think we had a real bad fight that one time after a particularly effective acid, you were a proper bitch to me”.

I don't regret my crazy youth (I played it safe enough to not have any lasting consequences), but I'd also never go back. One day I woke up and thought “enough” and that was it. But it's a part of me, and while these days it's a smaller part of me than, say, a mother of two, who runs around the house making organic plant-based dinners and spends hours learning about natural medicine, but it's there. And I look at my beautiful, smart children who are yet too young to ask questions, and wonder how am I going to be able to tell them stories, without either lying or encouraging them to... well, things that are potentially dangerous or outright illegal. What do I say? “Don't take drugs... unless you want to”?

I don't really worry about it that much, we will tackle it when it comes, it's not like I killed someone or burned down an orphanage. But I want them to know the best version of me – and at the same time I want them to know the real me. I have always wondered what's in my mother's head – I don't know her as a person at all. I only know her as a sadly less-than-great and sometimes emotionally abusive mother and when the time comes that she dies, this will always be the only thing I know about her. I know nothing about the stupid things she did when she was younger (well those I know of start with getting pregnant with me which destroyed her promising acting career), and I regret that I don't. Did she ever get so drunk she was thrown out of a taxi? Did she ever kiss a random guy on the street just to get rid of an unwanted suitor? Was she ever so scared and unsure of the future she would leave the house at night just to go anywhere with anyone just for something, anything, to happen and show her a way? Maybe then I could see a real person in her, maybe for the first time I could really relate.

So while I probably won't give my children advice which films are so much better to watch stoned (let's face it, all of them), I want them to know me. Of course all in the age appropriate way, so we have a long long time until these dick stories...