I wasn’t always such a pessimist. Like most girls, I was raised to romanticise having a family. I used to make scrapbooks about how I wanted life to turn out, filled (very optimistically) with images torn from Boden catalogues and Knight Frank brochures; a handsome father in a suit reading his broadsheet, a mother with a Tiffany engagement ring caressing the Aga, a gaggle of serene toddlers with ribbons in their hair, a golden retriever and a Burmese cat.
This trailer started to lose its Disney-sheen when my own father left and emigrated to the other side of the world. My heartbroken stay-at-home mother was cast back into the workforce and we moved from a big house into a small flat. It got worse as my brother and I entered the turmoil of our teens and wrestled with severe mental health problems. A string of terrible relationships persisted into my 20s (often with much older married men) and by the time I reached my 30s, I was convinced that my once coveted scrapbooks were nothing more than silly fairytales.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that I fell out with my best friend around this time, just as she was settling down and I was heading off on my latest career path as a solo travel writer. Her wedding was one of the most painful, discombobulating days of my life. Part of me was baffled by the absurd theatre of it all. She used to be the most genuine, wry, intelligent and pragmatic person I knew; yet here she was, an atheist, standing in a church in a dress costing thousands of pounds that she would only ever wear once, promising a God she didn’t believe in and a chapel full of people she didn’t particularly like that she would never break up with her boyfriend. The other part of me, in retrospect, was just bitterly sad that I couldn’t have the same ending.
When it came to the prospect of children, I was less conflicted. First and foremost, I didn’t like them. While I could objectively see the appeal of the very clean, quiet, symmetrical-looking ones in photo albums, I had no desire to spend any time with them. As for the snotty, loud, peculiar-looking variety? They made me recoil. I have never been very good at arranging my facial expressions into the correct shape for specific social situations. My idea of hell, therefore, was other people showcasing their offspring. I was hardly mother material.
The most significant turning point in my life came when I was diagnosed with raging, top-end-of-the-spectrum ADHD at the age of 31, and put on medication. It was like all this time I’d been driving around in the dark with an upside down A to Z, and then someone switched the light on and installed Google Maps on my phone. I still had the same personality, but at least now I could find my way.
Next came Julius. He wasn’t my type and I wasn’t his. Where my exes had generally been grumpy, cerebral, dark-haired and at least a decade older than me, he was bright, effervescent, sporty and not yet 30. We met in Santorini at the most inconvenient moment, just as borders were about to close in response to the pandemic. For whatever reason, though, it worked. Before we knew it, we’d both beaten our previous relationship record of two years and then, at the tail-end of the Covid shutdowns, came our son Jasper, who neither of us knew we wanted until after he was conceived – and not how intensely until he was born.
Sarah Carter is a health and wellness expert residing in the UK. With a background in healthcare, she offers evidence-based advice on fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being, promoting healthier living for readers.
