I knew it would come to this. The tipping point of having neither the energy nor the resources to get through.
Newsflash! Children are hard work. REALLY hard work. I’d heard it, I’d read it, but now it was all too real, and to be honest with myself, I was losing the battle.
How did this happen? Well, most of it was self-inflicted, I was getting lazy and putting on weight, so the foundation wasn’t there to begin with. Then there were the daily stresses of money and work, further gumming up my gears. Maybe I’d thought things would get easier after the move? I was wrong.
And so, already heavily hampered, we come to the most important job of all, being a Dad, and I was failing, badly. The negatives were winning, digging me further and further into a deeper hole of spiralling huffs. I became progressively less resistant to the tantrums, the demands, the noise. Life used to be such a breeze, I could destroy problems with a full strength smile, and be back in time for breakfast. Now it seems, even the most pathetically simple of tasks was proving to be embarrassingly hard work. I just had too many distractions.
But that got me thinking. Before this, I didn’t really have a life. I had no responsibilities, no pressure. No-one cared. Sure, it was easier, but on the flip-side, there was no reward either. Under my own advice, all I needed was a slight tweak to change my whole perspective, to hit the reset button. I got back on the bike to work, to rid some of the mounting baggage, physical and mental, but the odds were still stacked up, a bank holiday weekend with two of our three covered in chicken pox, no working TVs and all the usual band-dramas in full swing.
With renewed vigour, I set about problem-solving. Replace the TV’s, sort out our ailing lawn, review our family ‘budget’, but I was still hemmed into the daily head-battering rigmarole. We desperately needed to get outside, but not with the girl’s chicken pox.
Finally, on Easter Monday, we headed to the Northumberland coast, always the tonic, but again I began to fall into the trap of same old same old. The Amble Fish n Chips were fantastic, but I still needed that shift, that unexpected discovery.
On the way back we stumbled across just that: Druridge Bay Country Park. We’d driven around it so many times before, just to have a gander. It looked desolate, even in the summer months, when I needed mental stimulation. But not today!
Mrs H was hesitant, it was getting late and she knew we’d have the kid’s pre-school tea/bath shit-storm to deal with on our return, but we’d hit gold. We still had hours of sunlight, a huge playground, all the conveniences we’d need, and, best of all, the beach just over the road. A mini-holiday condensed into two hours.
And at that moment, I remembered how much fun being a Dad can be. Life is tough if you let it beat you down, which I had. What I’d forgotten, of course, is that life is what you make it. If you choose to be happy and have fun, you’ll be happy and have fun, regardless.
I know that sound’s preachy, but trust me, I’m not religious in any way, I’m a realist, a logical thinker. The way I see it, it’s unrealistic and illogical to believe the odds are stacked or the world is against you. You can’t account for luck or factors outside of your control, but you CAN influence the lion’s share, which is everything else.
The brighter people in this world figured that out a lot earlier than I did.
“Get up! I didn’t hear no bell!!!”
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