When I grow up I want to be Carrie Bradshaw, albeit a an overweight, less fashionable, financially destitute, uneducated version. I have been spending a lot of time watching Sex and the City, mostly to distract myself from something else and I can't decide whether it is meant to make us feel better that even glamorous women have shitty love lives, or make us feel hopeless because if they can't make it happen what chance do us mere mortals have.
As far as role models go she's not what most people would aspire to, but she is neurotic and in that way I feel I have found a kindred spirit, and I won't let the fact that she's a fictional character take away my sense of validation. I watch a thirty something single woman on the flat screen who picks the wrong men, chucks tantrums and can't budget and I feel like giving her a high five. But then she has so much more.
Carrie has my dream life, a professional career where she writes for what appears to be a fairly good living, in a city full of culture and possibilities, with friends who love and support her and never has a problem getting a date. Instead, I have a medial low level part time job that barely gets me from pay to pay, in a tiny town in the middle of oblivion containing only a singular remaining divulge all type friend and I have never been asked out on a official date in my entire life.
Watching the glamorous foursome tramp all over the city I have been fantasising about since Sesame Street leaves me feeling with pangs of jealousy, but that's not why I'm watching it. As 1.30am on a Monday morning creeps up on me and I count down the hours until I have to go to work I still can't stand to turn season three off. Each time I turn it off a new feeling engulfs me, not envy, grief and I remember what I was trying to distract myself from.
The source of the grief I feel is something Carrie Bradshaw will never have to deal with. The complete emptiness and fear that I feel for the three nights a fortnight my son spends away from me. The horrible moments before I drop him off when the terror seeps in that I could never see him again, the sleepless nights I spend checking an empty bed holding back the tears at the thought that it may remain empty forever. It's the most horrible place to be, a place many shared parent's are spared from. Then my son comes home.
For 11 days a fortnight I have the joy that can be unmatched by any designer clothing, cocktails, fancy jobs and unlimited supply of eligible bachelors. The feeling I get when my little boy puts on a concert, creates something just for mummy and crawls into bed next to me in the middle of the night and tells me he loves me. Somehow it all feels better.
It's 2am on a second Monday and in six and half hours I will have him back. But I still can't sleep, so I lose myself in Carrie's life a little more.
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