Life... live it as best you can...

It's been an emotional week.... or tbh an emotional life. We all have that, a lot of us don't admit it, a lot of us do. I guess we choose to share according to our mood... or do we? Are we feeling our mood or the mood of social media... are we letting our feelings be decided by what the world might say....
I said it was an emotional week so let's start with that. Matts birthday happened and I love his birthday coz it's a celebration of him but it's not just for him so I let it build gently and he watches it build with a hope it's gentle and he tries to let it fall gentle but it crushes him and it crushes me and yet it happens and I look back and I watch him get enveloped in the love of his family and my family and the Facebook family he loves and needs... I watch him long for Jenny to be there to celebrate it with him...
Maybe this week I'm just emotional..  Jesus I miss the kids and I can honestly say we've never seen them happier. 
That minute you can't put your finger on and the pain of them gone is powerful but they're exploring the world and they both have someone to explore it with.
Yet they're gone and sometimes we long for them more than we can handle but fuck it, proud doesn't do justice to the way we want to explain it in the dictionary. But they have someone to share everything with and when everything seems too hard then you smile because they'll both be curled up with someone tonight when the lights go out and I sleep well when I know they have that comfort, that contentment a long way from home. I enjoy that comfort when I lie down, I curl up and I think wasn't it worth it, wasn't it all worth it. Isn't it a joy to relive the way life hits you yet keeps you living...
And yet tonight I feel the ache of things that maybe I shouldn't. But if I do one thing I don't apologise for feeling life.
Fucking Christmas ads are killing me this week and I'm missing Mam more than ever and Dad seems to be there hovering to bring that home. Fucking ads that remind me the kids won't be home for Christmas but I'll still celebrate it coz Santa never fails to arrive.....
Tonight I'm thinking about a girl in Cork who had to deal with her knickers being slung around a courtroom, her knickers!! I bought a leopard print bra in penneys yesterday for €5 and I still haven't figured out how to put it on. It's gorgeous with black lines across the back which are sexy as fuck probably, if you have less folds of skin than I own up too.
If I manage to get it on and pull pints in it tomorrow then am I asking for trouble... Fuck no. It's underwear, under my overwear and I bought it to feel good, for days when my period is too much and I spray dry shampoo in my hair and I cry because my leg hurts but I have to go to work and I'll forget everything when I get there. I'll forget everything because I work in a place that respects me, respects who I am, a place that I'm safe. A place that sees me as Val, warts and all.
All I know is nothing yet I feel tonight like I know everything. I feel like I've just arrived in my own skin and it will always hurt to feel it but it's home and there's nowhere on earth like home. I feel like I can suddenly be me... as a wife, a mother, a writer, a barmaid, a sister, a daughter, a lover.
I can be me and it doesn't matter that I don't wear make up or I struggle with a fucking bra I will figure out even if it chokes my poor tits
I can be me and no court in the world can condemn me for that even if I gift them the God damned bra that cost me €5....
I'm me bra and all....
P.S..... In 1978 I spent the summer looking for a Willie thinking I'd lost it.. talk about confused, the Willie was never found ... around that time I discovered Dallas and was grateful I had no willie coz I decided I looked like Lucy Ewing...
In 1980 I discovered I had five sisters and two brothers and I spent the rest of my childhood trying to be all of them at once.... I did torture them... 
In 2018 I realised it was worth it because I have part of all of them running through my veins and I'm grateful to be the youngest of 8...
P.P.S Tonight Mam and Dad are reading this laughing and shaking their head at their mad child always ranting....
P.P.P.S.....
I'm eternally grateful to be me.....