Train Fares and Pregnancy Scares

Hey ho!

Been a little while since I've blogged anything here. You ever get to a point where there's so much going on in your life you don't know where to start untangling it all? That's where I'm at right now, but while I've got a minute and some will to pen down my thoughts, I figured I may as well do so. Especially since it's always cathartic throwing down my emotions here.

I've been working in North London for a while now on a housing project my drylining company won a package for. We're doing the walls and ceilings of about 500 apartments. My job is to survey and administrate, basically I'm filling the role of a clerk; making sure people work the nine hours, get paid the right amount, make sure we have materials on site and that we have the right amount of men working in each part of the building complexes.

I've been working for the firm for a year but this specific project all started at the end of March, and what was supposed to be a three month job has now rolled into the fifth month with the prospects of finishing before Christmas looking grim. I've got two weeks off right now and then some more time for jury duty so basically I've got a much needed long arse break. Doing roughly fifty hours a week (when I'm contracted 39 and paid for 39,) takes it out of you and sometimes it feels like there just isn't enough time to do everything you want and need to do.

I started seeing my girlfriend in May after breaking up with my American ex. It's all going rather well for the most part; excluding minor squabbles we're thick as thieves. We're also hurtling along incredibly fast with the goal of moving in together into a little apartment outside London by next month.

This is gonna be really great considering it's £100 for a round trip with train tickets. Going a couple hundred miles to York and back every couple weeks is burning a big hole in my wallet. The things we do for lurve!

One thing my bird and I do not see eye to eye on is social issues like equality and pro-life/ pro-choice. Most people by now ought to know I'm a lefty-liberal loony and I'm as much of a pro-choice feminist as you can get. My Muslim raised Iranian girlfriend on the other hand, is quite the contrary. I probably should have seen the pregnancy scare coming.

Baby I feel sick and my tits are tender, I can't stop eating and I'm cramping all over.

Tick tick tick and tick in the pregnancy boxes.

We did a test that came back inconclusive with a faint 'positive' mark on the little thingie.

Any way a few days later and she did another one that came back firmly negative. I literally jumped out of bed and danced around. The idea of having a kid at twenty fucking terrifies me. There's plenty more emotional stuff I don't want to dig up here because it's inherently private but so this is only half the story but it's really worth saying that I've had a lot of time to reflect on the idea of fatherhood for the last few days.

I think adulthood has hit me like a brick wall all of a sudden. From finishing sixth form at 18 I travelled around the world for six months on my own and came back straight into a full time entry level profession. I've got rent to pay, food to buy, a lady to take care of and a car to run, not to mention commutes to work and responsibilities of a middle-management position on the job. It's hard to remember I'm only just out of my teens...I feel like I should be 25 or something.

Scrolling through my Facebook feeds and seeing mates travelling through Cambodia and Australia, drinking in Bruges, getting plastered at uni and going to reunion parties is kinda rough...I miss all that, I wish I'd cherished it at school and made more of an effort. It's been two years since I finished sixth form now but I'd love to just turn back the clocks for one day and go back to being a relatively care-free, drunk, lazy and frisky teen.

Instead I've got bills, work, chores and pregnancies to worry about. That's okay though, I'm coping with it all, it's what I'm used to, it's just a shame I couldn't put it all off for another couple months.