The first night out...

My first night out and it’s less about tearing up the dancefloor and more about tearing up as my toddler yells ‘I come for a drink wiv yoo!’ as he muffles his screams into his daddy (my soon to be ex’s) neck. I’m crazy nervous and I think about turning back, but the presence of the ex and his begrudging babysitting duties so I can have a night out stop me. I’m not sure why I am struggling with this, it’s not like it’s my first night out post-partem, but it is the first time I have been out post-separate-m and I have a wicked case of the mommy guilts.

I rationalise, now that I’m SingleMom I also have to work out times when I won’t need to be ‘right there at this very second mom’, times when my kid will need to see his dad and vice versa and those times I will have to be ‘something other than just a mom mom’. So I head out, into the wild unknown, only it’s my local ‘mismatched vintage interior, eclectic books and boardgames’ boozer we’re headed. I’m wearing a new dress, almost entirely too short for a respectable mother to be wearing, but then maybe what I need is something entirely unrespectable.

My friends are good for a giggle, a spot of man-bashing and a lot of titillation at our somewhat naïve friend’s cries of ‘they don’t all watch porn do they?!’ (and the answer to that is that I’ll show her how to check the Internet history on the family computer). Yes, it’s pretty much a scene I’ve enjoyed many times before, a scene of girl’s nights all over everywhere and emulated in a thousand diaries of Bridget Jones and her friends.

But tonight feels different somehow. Like the rest of my life feels different. It feels like a night where anything could happen – it probably won’t, of course – but now, somewhat young, somewhat free and entirely single, it could.