Doing Everything Alone

It’s the bins. That’s when it hits. Two in the morning, dragging the bins out in your dressing gown because there’s nobody else to do it.

Not the big things. The big things you prepare for. School applications. Hospital visits. Financial planning. You gear up for those. You put the armour on and you handle it because that’s what you do.

It’s the small things that break you.

The spider at midnight. The boiler making a noise you can’t identify. The flat tyre in the school car park with two kids in the back and nobody to call because everyone you know is either asleep or doesn’t owe you anything.

It’s making every decision alone. What they eat. Where they go. Whether that cough needs a doctor or just Calpol. Whether you can afford the school trip. Whether you say yes to the birthday party that requires a present you haven’t budgeted for because birthday presents don’t appear in the Universal Credit calculations.

It’s never being off duty. Not for an hour. Not for a minute. Because there’s no one to hand them to. No one to say “your turn” to. No one standing in the kitchen when you come downstairs at 6am saying I’ve done the packed lunches, go back to bed.

People say single mums are strong. And we are. But strong is not the same as fine. I can be strong and still cry in the shower. I can be strong and still feel the weight of it pressing down on my chest at 3am when the house is quiet and there’s nobody to share the silence with.

The loneliest part isn’t being alone. It’s being the only adult. The only person who knows where the doctor’s number is. The only one who remembers the inhalers. The only one who lies awake when one of them coughs in the night.

I don’t want a partner to fix this. I want an acknowledgement that doing it alone is not a lifestyle choice. It’s a daily act of endurance that nobody sees because it happens in kitchens and car parks and school corridors at 8:47am with a smile that costs everything and convinces no one who’s paying attention.

I’m paying attention. To every bin. Every spider. Every flat tyre. Every decision made alone at the kitchen table with no one to say “what do you think?”

I think I’m tired.

But I’m still here. And the bins are out. And the kids are fed. And tomorrow I’ll do it all again because that’s what this is.

That’s what this is.