Queen of Nothing

It's strange, but since I've stopped working, I've found myself increasingly defined by my past, by the things I used to do.
" This is Becky," people say when they introduce me, " she's..um...she used to run a Children's Centre," or " she used to work for  that charity PACSO." or " Do you remember Just Write for Kids Club, she used to run that?"
And it's fine.  I don't mind.  .
But there is a little bit of the : " she-used-to-be-someone," about it.
It's almost as though people are embarrassed for you, ashamed for you that you don't go out to work or have a "proper," job.
" Is it really boring being at home?" people ask, "What do you do all day?" .... and when I think about it, I'm not sure what exactly it is I do but I know that I'm never bored.
I know that since I stopped working, my life has become much simpler and in a strange way, much more meaningful. 
And that's what's hard to explain.
it's easy to give a value to work that is paid.
Easy to believe that if you have a job with a title and a job description, you must be doing something useful and important.

it's harder to believe in the importance of what  you are doing when your days are spent hanging out the washing, unsuccessfully matching socks,overloading the dishwasher and generally failing to be the domestic goddess you thought you were. 

But truthfully, I've never felt so fulfilled.
When i worry, it is about things that are important to me or my family and friends. I no longer have to worry about a budget that isn't mine or targets imposed upon me by people I will never meet who care little or nothing for the services they are asking us to provide.
I'll let my MP and local councillors worry about those while I worry about what to cook for dinner,  how to convince our son that revision is important if you want to pass exams ("what's the point, they're just mocks, I'll have forgotten it all by May") or our daughter that she really doesn't need to buy anymore clothes or another pair of shoes ("you don't understand mum,I can't wear the same outfit twice,")...
They are all things that  I used to worry about when I remembered, but only in a half-hearted, " I know they should matter but there isn't really time," sort of way. 
I couldn't even worry properly. 
I couldn't do anything properly: not my job, not being a parent, not tidying the house, not cooking the right food..and so I used to feel constantly guilty.
Being able to concentrate on one thing is amazing.
 Sometimes I even feel that I'm doing it, if not well, than at least to the best of my ability.
And that's such a relief.
It feels as though slowly, very slowly, I'm reclaiming my life, remembering who I am and what's really important to me.
Instead of bombarding our son with unwanted questions the moment I walk through the door, I wait for him to volunteer information. And In spontaneous, erratic moments of closeness, he is beginning to talk to me again. 
Instead of listening with half an ear to our 17 year old daughter, Mia,  while I'm making dinner and mentally responding to work emails, we sit down together and talk when she comes home from school.
Evenings are not spent in collapsed exhaustion gazing helplessly past the television at the growing piles of untidy chaos that surround us and thinking: I'll deal with it all tomorrow.
" I hear there's much less shouting in your house since you stopped working" says my mother-in-law when I speak to her on the phone
" Do you?" I say, surprised, "who told you that?".
" Mia ," she laughs, "when she was here last week."
And thinking about it, I realise it's true. 
I can't remember the last time we had a full blown argument, the kind where you worry the neighbours are going to report you to social services. A consequence, I suppose,  of the fact that, when I was working, I was in a state of perpetual slight irritation with work, with my family, with my life and took it out on whoever was closest to me.
" I couldn't do it," said one of my oldest and most treasured friends this weekend,  " I couldn't stay at home, I'd just sit on the sofa, eating and watching telly all day. I'm too sociable, I need people to talk to."
She has a point the temptation of chocolate and day time TV are a definite downside but not the lack of conversation.  
Of course I miss the people I worked most closely with but I still see them and now they are friends instead of work colleagues. And there are lots of unpleasant conversations I'm glad I will never have again. 
And then there's the friends I almost lost because I never had time to meet up, the friends who drop in for an hour for a cup of tea and a chat, the mornings spent sitting round the fire in our living room, talking about things that matter to us instead of things that matter to someone else, sharing the hopes and dreams that come with trust and friendship.
And I know I'm very lucky.
I know it's a privilege  to have been given this chance to rediscover what is truly important to me.
I know it is not forever but just for now.
And just for now I'm loving it.
Loving being here when the kids get home from school.
Loving being here to catch them when they fall.
Loving having no deadlines or time limits.
Loving baking cheese muffins and making vegetable soup that no one eats.
Loving laughing with friends and really listening to what they say.
Loving almost touching my dreams.
Loving being "Queen of Nothing," and "Mistress of Everything That Matters To Me."
So the next time somebody introduces me, I'm going to say:
"I'm Becky, I used to be someone else, but now I'm me."