Once again, it’s been a while. Do I honestly know where the time went? No.

Where it always does I guess, between school uniforms and reading books and baths and playdates and after school clubs. I’m OK with that. It’s just life. Normal.

Except, I have to accept that I don’t actually know what normal is for me. Normal just means all the things we’re willing to accept. Now I go to great pains to tell my girls that words like “normal” & “perfect” are concepts, not achieveable states of being, to save them tormenting themselves as I have done.

Next week, I will be having surgery on my weaker, left foot. The bones have been misaligning my entire life, thanks to cerebral palsy and walking is now agonising.

I finally saw my consultant on the NHS in February. He was in the room just moments, because that was all he needed to look at my x-rays and say: “Yes, you need your big toe fusing. I’ll put you on the waiting list today, but it is over a year.”

Given that I had waited over a year to even sit in that room, my wonderful Kev quickly suggested going private. The NHS is a wonderful institution, but it is clearly overworked and I knew I could not bear this pain anymore. By the end of the week, we had found the same consultant working privately and made an appointment with him.

When we went, we weren’t even through the door before he called and said: “I saw you recently didn’t I? Let’s not waste time with another appointment. How is March 19th for surgery?”

I had spent all day worrying about how long the wait might be.

As it is, I am currently living under a self imposed lockdown to save the pain in my feet. I can’t even make it the four streets over to the school gates without being in tears. I am finally too diminished as a mum, a wife, a woman. I can’t go anywhere without being given a lift and a hand to hold. God bless my beautiful little girls for always being willing to be those hands, I am so grateful.

So, surgery will be one week from today. I’m facing three weeks of no weight bearing while the realigned bones in my foot heal, which means I am being relegated to bed for the duration. I worry about being a burden to my family. I don’t think any of them have ever seen me so vulnerable. But I know I am loved and that they will rally. I’ll be in bed, reading and writing, so actually, it stands to be a productive time for me.

I am scared of the pain. But Kev encouraged me to return to blogging, so that others can be aware of how hard our bodies work, how in this endeavour, they can become misplaced and painful and, most importantly, how we all deserve more than just to put up with it. He gave me the idea to scroll back through these posts, looking for my own words to tell me how long the pain in my foot has been playing on my mind, impacting my life.

A cursory glance tells me a minimum of 18 months. I felt so sad, because if I had been reading someone else’s words, I would have wanted them to want more for themselves. But this outcome wasn’t necessarily bound to how I felt about myself, as it would have been even just 3 years ago.

I know why I didn’t seek out surgery before now. I’m scared of the vulnerability as I said above, I am worried about the impact the recovery will have on my family’s life. I was told by another consultant 5 or 6 years ago not to put myself through it all while I had young children. At that time, I only had Immy Squidge and I knew I wanted another child. So I carried on. Pain is pain, it has been a companion of mine, wanted or not, most of my life so on I went.

Then life happened. Lockdown happened. Gabby happened. Redundancy happened. Bereavements happened. Mental health happened.

When would have been the right time?

Gabby was always going to be my last baby. I wanted to cherish her, be by her side for all of her little years, having fun in the way that Immy Squidge and I had; swimming, gym class, playgroups. After all, I had the absolute gift of not needing to work. So these years were for my last little baby. I do not regret a second of that time spent. I so wish it hadn’t existed within the seemingly never ending fog of my depression but she was a light in my life when light was exactly what the daily darkness needed. So I am grateful, even for the pain. Those years only come once and I was there. That’s enough. It’s all I wanted.

Only now, my last little baby is a baby no more, thriving in full time school. This time is for me and I have never really been afforded, nor afforded myself that privilege. So I cannot allow myself to waste it. I finally feel like I am finding my way. I’ve joined a reading group, I’ve started regular aqua classes. I’m losing weight, being much more mindful about how to fuel my body and I am proud of it all. I feel more whole, more like the me I want to be.

Except now, my body needs my care and attention. It feels as though the second that private healthcare became an option, my foot, my ability to walk just gave up, because they need me to know the time is now.

I have taken care of my mental health diligently for the last couple of years and I feel so much better for it. Lifelong held beliefs about my worth, or more specifically, my lack thereof, are beginning to clear. I know I deserve not to be in pain. And I know this because if it was anyone I loved, I couldn’t have moved quicker to remedy it for them. I deserve to be someone I love and care for, otherwise what example do I set for my precious girls?

So, after a lifetime of pain, and more years than I have faced up to of this affecting the quality of both mine and my beloved family’s life, I am prioritising me. A new life awaits, free of pain. I don’t even know how to comprehend that, I’ve been in pain my whole life. It’s normal. But I don’t accept its normalcy anymore. I want different. I deserve different.

One wonderful friend has let me vent continuously at him about my fears and anger surrounding this whole process and I appreciate him endlessly. because he just gets it. I told him recently, I feel like I’ve wasted a large portion of my life given over to this pain.

He asked what I had been doing with my life that meant I hadn’t been able to remedy it sooner.

I tapped out a chronological list in response. “Moved house. Needed to work. Got married. Had my girls. Completed my university degree. Lost family.”

I managed to delete it before I sent the reply. But the exercise had done what it needed to. It had shown me there had in fact not been a good time in the last 15 years to commit to this surgery, because I had been busy building my life and I didn’t need to regret that. I am grateful.

I told my big sister that I’ll be having surgery, having finally used the money left to me by my mum to help pay the deposit for surgery. It has gone untouched in the 4 years since she died, because nothing I could buy felt worthy of using up her last gift. But this does. Improving the life I can live. What more can a mother want for her child? It’s comforting.

My sister told me: “That’s lovely, using Mum’s money that way. She’s helping you move into the next chapter of your life.”

She went on to describe the concept of numerology; adding up the digits in a year to a single digit.

2+0+2+5 = 9, which signifies the end of a chapter.

2+0+2+6 = 1+0 = 1, a new chapter.

I love this. It tells me I can use this year to physically heal, to put the pain I have lived with for decades now into my past and enjoy next year as my new beginning. On feet that will carry me painlessly wherever I want to go.

Wish me luck. I cannot wait.