The Good, The Bad and Toe Curling

Yes I know more posts.  But it's that time of year when I know my brain has to switch off work so that it can be properly rested before next week.  January is such a demanding month, two weeks in it seems like months since Christmas and equally months until February.  However my mind is beginning to pick up speed, so rather than exhaust myself round the sales with money better not spent, I turn inwards.

I've got to get up and sort the attic, but also my laptop needs a bit of sorting.  I have two laptops, a work one and a home one.  The work one is terribly organised, but this home one has just really been there to get onto the internet and draft the odd letter to a bank or solicitor.  The writings were on the old, now defunct, laptop but I found an email in my gmail box with 56 attachments from my Dear Old Friend when he had tried to return the contents of my archive to me following our disagreement about his loyalities.  Yes, it doesn't quite make sense to me too, but the upshot was I was thrilled to have my work back, until that is, I started to read it.  Oh my dear, what a selection of clunking prose and crude analogy.  If you think this is unsubtle, you should read some of the earlier stuff!  No, don't worry, I won't subject you to it, well not all of it, but I have started a folder system in My Documents folder.  Within the Writing folder is Prose and Poetry.  In Poetry there is Good, Bad and Toe Curling.  Good is a very small folder.  I think my plans for a privately published book will take some thinking about!  Actually if I'm honest there are several I'm proud of, and some please me for sentimental reasons.  I know there are loads more around, the early ones on the desk top are yet to be assimilated so it will be work in progress for months, if not years, to come.

But I hope you will permit me the indulgence, a poem and some prose. 

The prose is one of the first pieces I wrote sometime in mid 2008, Solitary Spaces.  Even then I knew what I was grappling with, fighting to get through.  Fortunately the hopelessness has largely left me, and I read this piece glad that I had written it.  It could be argued that I am being maudlin, but I can celebrate who I am now, because I know where I have come from.  The poem is a little thing from Christmas 2008, my first Christmas alone, and my last Christmas with my father.  I remember writing it in the spare room that used to be my bedroom when I first moved to Shamrock as I'd given my father my bed, with my electric blanket to warm his almost fatless body as the cancer ate away at him relentlessly.  Perhaps I was dreaming for the security that was draining away. There was a real man I was hoping for, but he never came to me.  Was it a real love affair, or just madness upon madness to hope the right man had walked into my life then?  I've never met anyone who came close to him, but then I was hardly in my right mind was I? 


Solitary Spaces


So how to live the life of an independent woman when you feel anything but independent, and actually have all the responsibilities of married life, but none of the support. It is difficult, because as much as you want to have ‘a man’ to be your partner through all this, actually the only way to survive is to learn to live alone. To go to parties with a real smile in place, not that ‘deep breath trying to ignore the fear in the pit of your stomach before you walk through the door’ smile, to sit in bed on a Sunday morning and not think about what ‘he’ is doing with ‘her’ at that very moment, to be in control of the finances, not to panic as everything sometimes spirals out of control, not to feel guilty when pleasures come your way, not to allow fear in as you walk home in the dark, a fear that would have consumed you if there was any way of avoiding it. I suppose that’s it, facing the fear, that terrifying abyss that used to haunt the corners of your mind, like thinking about your parents dying, really when it happens, it happens, and you find strength from somewhere.

But make no mistake it isn’t easy. And in my case it’s especially difficult because my straying husband has strayed into an idyllic, loving young relationship where the two of them spend peaceful time together comfortable in each other’s space much as I had with him all those years ago. Or that’s what I think. And that’s what haunts the corners of my mind these days, in these early solitary months. And the real torment is I just don’t know, and probably will never know what the reality of their relationship is and it is utterly futile to even ponder it. However as you sit in bed on a Sunday morning sipping a cup of good refreshing tea unless you are terribly careful, the thoughts of their bliss stalk out of the far recesses and stab at the new young thing that is your independent life, ambushing your resolve and determination to survive. Because your independent life isn’t a strong life choice sort of thing, it has been foisted on you because it was your fault that he wanted to go elsewhere. Ah yes, blame. Still in those grubby, dark spaces of the mind is the persistent thought that if you hadn’t failed, he would still be here, in his pyjamas sipping his tea and life would be normal, like everybody else’s and when you knew who you were and where you were going in life. But did I? Did I really have a clue, apart from the fact that I was going with him, we’d face the future together. Did I assume that life was fair, that love was good and the only women who got dumped where the ones who didn’t love their men enough, who didn’t really want them and didn’t really understand the man they had. And the only men who ran off with younger women were emotional lightweights who didn’t understand what life was really about, skating on the surface of relationships never really committing themselves and being properly giving. Surely I wasn’t married to a lightweight was I? Surely I knew better than that? But I didn’t.

Which makes occupying this solitary space quite a difficult place to be. My punishment. So it is very appealing to want to fill this space with another man. Someone to reassure and help rebuild, but really is that fair? The journey to find myself is a very uncomfortable one, but one I must do alone. The trouble is with this journey it has no itinery. When I used to go on holidays, when I was a real person, I used to leave notes for the housesitter, we always had housesitters, for dogs, cats and horses, and it was something of a joke that even for a short break the notes would run to 7 pages of type written instructions. The housesitters always appreciated it, I listed builders, electricians, routines for the goldfish, you name it, I had thought about it and reassured the stranger in my home that they would be supported by my care in my absence, and then I’d pay them for it. The price for me moving somewhere else to lie down and recover from being superwoman. But always there was a plan, and about 2 days before the end of the holiday, irrespective of the length of the break, I would start thinking about home and what I was going to do to improve our quality of life, what changes could be implemented to help life be better. I never remember my straying husband ever starting these conversations, always me, endlessly planning and refining, to make existence as good as it could be, given we were together and as far as I was concerned that was enough to make every day worth starting and finishing. Now, what do I do? I don’t want to plan, I don’t really want to live if I’m honest, but everyone tells me I must and I would be missed. Why can’t they see that it isn’t easy, it isn’t fun and actually what really frightens me is I’ve learnt nothing from all those years of marriage, that what I did was wrong, I failed. And if I failed then, and I didn’t know I was failing, how can I ever, ever know that I can trust anyone again.

Which, I suppose neatly ties me in chains as strong as Houdinis, without the dexterity to wriggle free. But are these chains the stuff of fantasy? Pretend, and if I knew, I could writhe out to gasps and applause from the waiting crowd. They would want me to, of course, the crowd of onlookers. Those alongside, they really want me to break from this awful prison of my own mind, but unfortunately the man I let put me in this deep and dark dungeon and walk away with the key telling me it was my fault, my gaoler, will tell you that I imprisoned him in my despair and hopelessness, and he fought bravely to escape the desolation of my soul, to have a future of hope and light and youth.

So solitary spaces are difficult ones, where reality crashes in on one, and hope is in short supply. It’s only the look of shock on another’s face when you explain that if that lorry crashed through the barrier and squashed you and your car flat, your first emotion is one of relief that it would be all over, you realise that very few people really understand this. Even writing it down, it seems oddly melodramatic, but to try and keep yourself going when there is no real point you can see at all, is immensely difficult. What you want is someone to love you again, to fill those dark spaces with the warm glow, but until you can love yourself again, all they would be doing is becoming another keyholder to your chains.

What happens then, when he walks into your life far too early, and all your logic and planning about having to be alone go out the window? Is it love or desperation, a need for validation, grasping at straws, or not seeing the truth of what you are doing. Or just something you couldn’t help. Like sitting next to a girl on the train at 5.43, getting talking and giving her your mobile number. The most terrible words in the English language: ‘why not, what harm could it do?’



A Christmas Wish


I don’t allow myself to dream
I don’t allow it in,
Except on quiet nights,
As I lie alone and gaze
Into the middle distance of my soul
And test the waters of happiness.

You are there, gently wrapped round me,
Breathing softly towards my ear,
Hand holding mine in contentment,
Alone at last. At peace.
All passion spent.

The day went well, we laughed and talked,
Drank and ate,
Worried about our children,
How they fared in this strange new world of us.

But they were happy because we were happy,
Rescued from our separate selves,
To smile and feel and be.

One day I’ll find you,
Or you’ll find me.

It is my Christmas wish,
My quiet, distant dream.

25/12/2008