I read something this week that really resonated.

‘You can’t force someone to fall in love with you’

That is, I think, what I have been trying to do with my baby daddy.  Because, without sounding arrogant, I just couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t want to at least try to make a go of a relationship with me.  But maybe, just maybe, in this instance he is wiser than me because he knows he could never love me.

I feel like this realisation has set me free.

I will always have a kind of love for him, despite his failings, simply because we have made the most beautiful little person together and it is far easier and healthier to just accept that than it is to keep trying to hate him.

So onwards. Upwards. Forward and twirling in the springtime.

I am slowly getting back to my yoga routines.  As my stomach muscles have rejoined, I am able to lift into Bakasana (crow) for a few seconds and I can almost chaturanga (plank) all the way to the floor.  My head is a long way from resting on my knees in paschimottanasana (seated forward fold) and somehow, despite pushing a baby out through my pelvis, my hips are as tight as ever! Kapotasana (pigeon pose) is still a long way off being a pretty bird and the full expression into mermaid even further away. But, just breathing through my whole body, saying my mantra and feeling an awareness return to my muscles is bringing life back into that corner of my soul.

And I have a date! An actual date. To be fair it is with someone I slept with about a decade ago, so not a complete leap into the unknown. He is still my only ever one night stand. I mean, I’ve had naked cuddles with a few guys for one night only but I never usually fucked them.  Anyway, thanks to the joys of tinder (more on that another time!), we have arranged to meet up this week. And I’m excited about it. I’m trying to not do the usual projecting my life fantasy land onto him before we’ve even met…is it normal to still imagine how your last names would work together when you’re this old?! Anyway, I’m putting that down to being a girl. At least I’m not scrawling it on my notebooks, or a bus stop for that matter!

I’ve told him I’m not just looking for a fuck, he says he isn’t either, although some would say he’s sort of duty bound to say that in response. I’m not that cynical. We’ve spoken on the phone a couple of times and it’s easy, he’s good company, funny and engaging so at the very least we’ll have a good time. It will take a wee while for me to feel physically ready to have sex again though. I’m doing my pelvic floor exercises as I type!

The attention of a man makes you feel a certain kind of beautiful. I feel so beautiful on the inside at the moment. And when I see myself in the mirror holding my baby girl, I have the glow of love radiating from me and I feel beautiful in a very grounded, earth mother way. But to feel desirable is a different thing altogether. And to feel desired by someone that you have an attraction towards makes you feel beautiful in a more existential way. The ideal, I guess, is to have all three kinds at once. Love for yourself, love for your child and love from another. I’m using the words love and beauty somewhat interchangeably because at the very least, in their truest senses, they are two sides to the same coin.

There is an interview in the Guardian magazine this weekend with a woman who had acid thrown in her face by her partner.  She suffered horribly. But at the end of the piece, she writes;

‘But the one thing he was trying to destroy – my beauty – had nothing to do with my face. You can’t burn integrity, character or courage. What he thought he would destroy, he never even touched.’

Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that love?

I’m typing this in bed next to my daughter who is farting loudly in her sleep and making me giggle a lot.

Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that love?