SWING by Ashleigh Renard

Author:Ashleigh Renard [Renard, Ashleigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781736596890
Publisher: MW Books

Chapter 15

We had an alarm system installed in our new house a few weeks after we moved in. Jack and Luke were little, and I had a friend over with her son, who was the same age as Luke. When the alarm technician arrived, I answered the door and apologized for taking a while.

“Crazy house, a lot going on here,” I said with a tired smile, sighing and gesturing toward the children, mumbling something about little kids.

He looked into the house, with the 3:2 ratio of child to parent and said, “Oh, I get it … we have twelve kids.”

I felt like an idiot. Hoping for praise or recognition, I was acting more overwhelmed than I actually was. Wearing my busyness as a badge of honor, hoping someone would notice. And I continued this plea for attention for years, adding, “Plus, I homeschool,” if anyone commented on how I appeared to be so busy or I was managing so much—feeling foolish, yet unable not to say it.

Now I wished I could go back and relive that embarrassment. I had traded fake overwhelm for real overwhelm. I had too many balls in the air. I was trying to manage Jess’s jealousy while navigating my own. I texted Brad all day and encouraged Manny to text Jess. Meanwhile, I snooped through Manny’s phone every time he turned his back to see if he had any contact with Amber. And I felt annoyed that if he continued to message her from work, I’d have no way of knowing.

When we were out for dinner, I had asked Jess what I could do to help out, to make her feel more comfortable. She asked that I refrain from texting Brad early in the morning or late at night. I agreed. I had worked non-stop through high school and university, usually with two jobs at a time, but I had never had an office job or a 9-5 schedule. In that moment, being a texting girlfriend officially became my first job with regular business hours.

Generally, my conversations with my brilliant friends were worthy of recording and putting, unedited, on Super Soul Sunday. But I had not gone to any of them about this. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to them. It was that I was scared to. Monogamy and fidelity are loaded subjects, and I was no dummy. I worried some of them would retreat from our friendship because of insecurities and paranoia that I was interested in their partners.

Unfortunately, I had previously experienced the awkward realization that most women evaluate me first as a threat before considering me as a friend. In our old neighborhood, I walked with Jack in the stroller and hung out at the playground often, as we had no yard of our own in our townhouse. More than once we met a dad with his little one, and the children had a great time playing. Then, the mom would come home from work or errands and meet her family at the playground.

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