From men to mid life crises, from Botox to Brazilians, from infertility to infidelity, every week Jacqui Leigh gives her personal take on being a fortysomething woman
No time for illness, pass me the drugs!
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I’m at work in front of my computer working on a spreadsheet, but every time my brain grabs hold of an idea it seems to float away until finally I’m just staring at the screen in a stupor. Weird, this doesn’t usually happen until till mid afternoon when I force down a not-very-nice cup of instant coffee.
Suddenly there’s a fifteen ton rhinoceros sitting on my head. And now there’s a burning golf ball in my throat. I’m ill, I have to get home, I need to be in bed right now!
My line manager is away so I get up and tell Admin. My manager, a softie, would have known how to say something nice. Miss Admin forces a tight smile of sympathy. Yeah, whatever.
I pick up my stuff. Maybe I should tell the people sitting near me but I still don’t know them that well and then they’d have to say something nice and I’d have to make an ill face to show that I really am ill because it’s not enough to say that you are. So I just leave like a coward.
The fifteen minute walk home is like a trek to the South Pole. I’m in a daze and I feel sick. I stop in the corner shop and buy a can of Heinz Tomato Soup. I can’t even make eye contact with the woman in there or I’ll throw up. Although, even in my weakened state, I wonder how there can be 187 calories in one tiny can of soup?
I stumble into the house, drop my stuff, slop the soup into a bowl and stick it in the microwave till it starts popping and exploding. It’s thick and gloopy as molten lava and the answer to the 187 calories is, of course, that it’s loaded with sugar, it’s mainly sugar in fact, which is why I only ever want it when I’m about to die.
I have the soup, take two paracetamol and climb into my bed which has no sheets because they are wet in the machine.
I lie in bed, shivering, listening to the silence and a dog barking somewhere. I could die here and nobody would know about it for ages. I’m here alone, with no one to make a fuss of me or make me a cup of tea or feel my head or take the two huge bags of wet laundry to the laundrette or put the sheets back on the beds afterwards. Whatever I don’t do now will have to be done later somehow. I can’t even sleep that long because I need to pick up Mo from school in a couple of hours and feed her and help her with homework and sort out her bath. I could call people, but I’m not ill enough, I’m not going to die, it can only be a cold because I’ve had a flu jab at Boots, which is the best twelve quid I ever spend all year.
This is how it is when you’re a grownup, a woman with a family - and even more so when you’re a single parent. There’s you, there’s you and there’s you.
I wake up an hour later still feeling like shit but now half dead with sleep. I text Dan and immediately get a sweet text back wishing that he could be with me.
That helps. A bit. But he’s not here is he?
I try to think positive. At least I’ve only got one kid and myself to look after. I remember what it was like to have a man at home with a cold. The performance, the acting out of symptoms, the endless updates. The stomach churning nose blowing. What is it they say? Kids get colds, men get flu and women get on with it. But even so, it’s at times like this that being an adult is crap.
I remember I have a half empty pack of Nurofen Cold and Flu in my bedside drawer, alongside various other unspeakable things. I pop the pills. Unlike Dan who refuses to take anything more than a Lemsip, I believe in science and will take whatever works, or says it’s going to work. I drag my carcass out of bed, pull on some clothes and within about five minutes I feel miraculously better. Ping! I look at my wet laundry. I can do this. I’m going to be okay.
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