I ran off to live on a bus in the outback with a convoy of ravers, Aboriginal land rights activists, circus performers and counter-culture artists

That same wanderlust expressed itself through summers of train-hopping around Europe on forged Interrail passes, bound for Amsterdam, Prague, and techno festivals in Hungary, dropping acid and anything else I could get my hands on along the way. Travelling in Australia aged eighteen, I ditched my friends and ran off to live on a bus in the outback with a convoy of ravers, Aboriginal land rights activists, circus performers and counter-culture artists. There, I shaved half my hair off and rocked the full Tank Girl fantasy with bovver boots and a tutu, got arrested, slept under the stars, and had the time of my young life. When I finally returned to London, my circuit board was well and truly fried. I’d touched something in the desert – something boundless I didn’t yet have words for – and there was no going back. I now refer to it as the gap year that turned into a gap life. I dropped out of art school after a single term and stumbled by chance into the burgeoning neo-burlesque scene, marking the start of a ten-year love affair with performing, earning my living as a cabaret artist and later, an area organiser at Glastonbury festival. My preferred living situation, too, expressed my break from the mainstream, graduating from squats to a decommissioned military boat moored on the Thames.

But in my thirties I knew I had to shift gears. Years of hard living had taken their toll, the breaking point coming after a stint “underground” directing an X-rated variety show at a luxury Soho nightclub – an environment rife with toxic masculinity and exploitation – a year that left me burnt out, broke and utterly adrift.

If my teens and twenties were a headlong charge into experience, my thirties brought the first real questions: What should come next, and why? I needed to support myself and spent time in the wilderness trying to fit my odd skillset into something lucrative, before committing to a return to education – and to writing, my first great love. Beneath this practical recalibration, though, was a deeper awareness: time was passing, I was a woman in my mid-thirties, and perhaps I was supposed to want certain things. But did I?

I’d been raised with the traditional family model – my parents still happily together – but I had never imagined or sought that for myself. My approach to relationships was curious rather than intentional, more a collector’s instinct: how interesting you are! My sexuality was that of a storyteller in search of the next yarn. I’d had relationships – some even serious – but cohabitation never appealed, not even with my longest-term partner of eight years. What kind of woman did that make me? My anxiety around protecting my freedom at all costs was reflected in every part of my adult life. All those years on my boat on the river mudflats, that liminal place between land and sea; the shows that lasted only a night, and the seasonal nature of festival work. All of it transient, here today and gone tomorrow. How could I ever commit to anything as permanent as a family?

I was thirty-seven when my sister fell pregnant. For nine months, my sleep was haunted by too-small babies, lost babies, babies born from fruit. Was my body trying to tell me something? When my niece arrived, I fell deeply in love with her. My maternal instincts were alive and well, after all. But by this time I was also writing my book, and while my own feelings about motherhood were cloudy at best, my sense of purpose as a writer was absolute. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a mother, or anyone’s forever anything, but a writer I was. With that clarity, I gave myself the greatest gift I could: I stopped thinking about what I should want and decided just to live. To please myself and see what happened would be my only rule.

I found my way, in fits and starts, to a new life in Marseille. I chose a crooked garret at the top of an ancient building near the port, with a hammock strung from the mezzanine and no air con. By day, I studied French and worked on my book. By night, I served rum drinks in a friend’s soul food restaurant and went dancing until dawn. I daydreamed in my hammock, swam in the sea at sundown and walked the long way back to town. Somewhere along the way, I met an angel-faced concierge and fell head over heels amidst the heatwave that followed, willingly breaking my own heart. Later, I dated a young cellist and bruised his in turn. I didn’t worry that I was getting older, with no plan but an almost-finished book, or that I was completely – luxuriously – alone.

It was in this state of contentment that life threw me a curveball: I fell pregnant thanks to a contraceptive fail. My son the two per cent chance in a hundred. On seeing the little blue cross, there was no doubt in my mind. Why start second-guessing myself now? I would have my curveball baby, and all would be well.

I soon discovered not everyone shared my view. Upon learning the biological father had chosen not to be involved, someone close to me assumed I’d ask a beloved ex to step into the role. Someone else suggested I tell people I’d had IVF. Motherhood, it turned out, was a magnet for stigma, with even progressive people harbouring ideas about the “right way” to do family, and the pitfalls of single motherhood. These comments stung, but I knew in my gut they were wrong, for they had nothing to do with anything I’d ever learned about love.

For the record, I prefer the term “solo mother”. Solo, as in soloist, suggesting something rare and soaring, lacking nothing.

Fast forward a few years, and my son has just turned four, our life together a jazz improvisation of hard work, good luck, chaos and great joy. My book is out in the world, with the money from an early TV option carrying us through the first couple of years. Our home is colourful, bustling, and – if I were to label it – Queer. Friends come and go, and my son’s thespian godfather lives with us when he’s not on tour. Family and neighbours make a social life just about possible, and my next book is written in the spaces in-between. I am tired, but we are happy. All is well.

I still don’t know what comes next or what shape my desires might take, but I don’t feel I need to. There is no fixed shape to a life, or to a woman. After all my roaming, I’ve come to believe that true freedom is simply this: a life wide open to possibility, lived as well as you can, with curiosity – always – for what happens next.

Ruth Ivo is a storyteller, a writer of memoir and fiction. She has worked as a showgirl, scarer of children on a Blackpool ghost train, area organiser at the likes of Glastonbury Festival, and was the director of an X-rated variety show at ‘The Club’. Her first book “Performance” is published by Coronet Books