Forwards

It’s been a while. 

Yet here I am. Typing away. Distracting myself from the PhD which still isn’t finished. 

The flat is looking slightly better. I’ve given up turning the heating off because when you curl up in bed and can still see your breath three nights in a row you begin to realise that sleep is slightly more important. 

I have pictures on the walls. Just posters. Tatty ones in frames that have followed me from university. 

Books on the shelves. 

A mismatched array of cushions. 

I wonder if I will ever manage to have a flat that looks more grown up than I feel. I like my tatty belongings, but at the same time I am somewhat embarrassed by them. 

I bought a radio. It drowns out the silence. 

I managed to hammer closed the window that the draft howled through. 

I have changed the tyres on my bike. 

I have had friends round for dinner. For a supper in which they had to bring their own cutlery and we sat on boxes as I didn’t have enough chairs. 

I get by. I am busy. Sometimes I gaze into the past, but less frequently.

When I am tired, when the alarm shrills in the morning and the darkness of the curtains drowns out the light I sometimes wonder lost for a moment. 

It is true that time heals everything. It numbs you and you forget. And you move on, whether that is right or wrong you stumble, then walk onwards. 

 

 

Little White Pills

The pills are tiny.

Small, white and perfectly formed they look like sweeteners. Like travel sickness tablets. Like chocolate drops.

Yet unlike these items each one has a number stamped on it. A number which promises nothing and everything.

I am ashamed of my past self. I had nothing but an ill concealed disdain those who visited the doctor. They were weak. Unhappiness? Unrest? Anxiety? Depression? To me these were all words of the weak. Words of those who fall by the wayside as the stronger trample eagerly over them.

I would not say that it was courage which drove me to make the phone call. Desperation is perhaps more adequate. The need for this to stop. Stop. Stop.

I am not such a fool as to think that these tiny white droplets will change anything. But I hope that they give me space to breath. To keep my head above water.

It is the second week now of taking these. And I cannot cry. The roller coaster of emotion still dips inside me, up and down, down, down.  I feel the emotion, but I do not physically respond. It is like having the wires cut on a circuit board. The electricity flows round but I do not light up. I am not calm. I am not happy. But I can work. And I can function.

So these tablets.

These white tablets of which I was so mocking.

I swallow down every night.

And I sleep.

And I hope.

And I work.

 

 

 

 

What doesn’t kill you

Makes you stronger.

So the saying goes. How much truth is there in this? How much do we buy in to this belief that everything happens for a reason? That it’s better to have loved and lost? That pain, hurt, violence in some way makes us a better person?

This week has been the toughest week of my life.

Its has had its highlights, the moments that shine through. Dinner with a man who I once liked very much and dated on and off. Who I think is perhaps the most intelligent man I know and in whose company I am never awkward or short of things to say. It has been seeing a friend for lunch. It has been training my body until I think it will break. It has been cutting my hair off so short I look like a boy.

Between those times, however, there are the bus journeys over Waterloo bridge. The train journeys home. The anxiety rising in my dreams so that I wake breathing hard.  The complete re-direction of my route to work so that I do not go past the flat. So that I do not run the risk of bumping into him. Of seeing him with someone else. The repeated need to force myself out of bed. The times that I have been unable to do so. The fear that I need to see someone about this. The belief that I should cope. That something is wrong with me. That nothing is wrong with me and that I am just being weak.

And so to lunch we go today. A public place. So I will not disgrace myself. So that I will not cry.

I will try to be my brightest, most pretty, vivacious. And yet I want him to realise. Want him to know how much he has hurt me. Continues to hurt me. I will want to talk about things that he will not. What has he been doing? Who has he seen? I will want to know the answers and I will not want to know. I will cut myself open in front of him in the hope that he will sew me back up, yet I know he will not do so.

He will close of conversations that he has no interest in and in which he does not want to answer and I will be left feeling worse. Adrift. Powerless and of little importance.

I want to see him and yet I dread it. The anxiety about the lunch has meant that I have not worked this morning and I am behind, further behind than ever. It is easy to let things slide.

Too easy.

Stronger?

It is easy to be strong when you know the meaning of the word.

 

 

The First Night

First week.

I promised myself no tears.

No contact.

Controlled. Poised. Busy.

I would make him miss me.

I would make him regret it.

I would find him miserable.

This lasted until approximately 7.15pm on Sunday when he rang.

When amongst the boxes the vibrating phone, the familiar number drew me back, every vibration stretched out its tangled hands and dug its claws into my skin. The sharpened nails brought me both relief and pain.

Whispered. Stunted conversations. The first night apart with no prospect of seeing each other again.

How do you end a conversation? How do you begin?

‘I love you’ goodnight is no longer acceptable.

‘I wish you were here’ is now a lie.

So you say nothing.

Whispered. Stunted conversations that say nothing and say everything.

At 10pm I climbed into my sleeping bag.

No  duvet. Easier to leave it then to fight it out.

Cold.

But I sleep.

I do not dream.

I awake in the morning.

I roll over to find the space beside me.

I will not miss him.

I will not cry.

I will not be broken by this.

I repeat these things to myself like a mantra as I switch on the light  and begin the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday night, Sunday morning

Saturday, the actual day of the move, wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.

I’d imagined this day for so long. Imagined myself standing there looking at the boxes, the empty walls, worked myself up into a mixture of anxiety and paranoia that the actual act of moving seemed a relief. Friends, lots of them, came in waves. They bought optimism, sympathy and helped me fill up their cars with my valueless but priceless possessions.

My tat, my books, my cheap furniture was in the new flat, piled high in a messy bundle in the middle of the living room. The flat appeared stretched  bulging with objects that were the wrong shape and size bought for different rooms in a different life.

But the laughter that my friends bought, their conviction that this was the right thing to do, their slightly derogatory remarks about him chipped away at the sadness. My pride glowed slightly. I was perhaps, for the first time, in control.

When I walked down the road, walked home, home for the last night I stood in the flat and felt simply not sadness but also release.

The flat was once more his flat. Empty and lifeless. Perhaps it was a delusion, one that I adopted to make myself feel better, but without my things in it, it was just his. I had left no trace on it. There was nothing there I wanted.

That last night we drank wine and ate takeaway.

My good mood threw him off balance, making him appear, for once, as the vulnerable  one.

It was only when he fell asleep on me on the sofa, his arms wrapped around my waist  that  I crumbled.

I know that I will remember that night for the rest of my life. That feeling of contentment and loss. That absolute awareness of what you are about to lose and complete inability to prevent it. It is like saying goodbye to someone who is dying. You can’t articulate what they mean to you, you can’t convey with words what you want to say and you can’t stop their demise.

On Sunday morning I snapped, I was off, absent and abrupt as the minutes ticked down. Too close, too much comfort and you will snap. You will break. You will not be able to do it. But you drill yourself. You force yourself to breath. To get changed. To find the keys and return them. To be appear strong. You do this because you have conditioned yourself like athlete for a race, to do this for the last three months.

The same old tired but sincere words that he  had spoken before tumbled out, recited like a rosary. His belief in how pretty and intelligent I was, how much he wished it could have worked. Repeated and relayed, I had heard them before yet they still stung me.

Yet it was only when I said goodbye that my defences tumbled. It was only when I said goodbye that his defences tumbled.

On Sunday morning it was both an affirmation and a destruction.

On that Sunday morning I knew how much he loved me. That behind all the façade, the implacable façade that made me feel weak, that make me feel as if I was the one that was needy, that was vulnerable, that I loved him more, there was a person just like me. A person who as he shook with emotion, who for once let his defences down, showed me that he loved me. A person, who despite my irritability, terrible navigational skills, moodiness and awful cooking ability, would always love me.

And however much he has hurt me, however much he has let me down, I love him.

I love him.

I love him.

 

 

 

 

Friday

Looking back at last week it doesn’t seem real. The bright spikey colours have run in the wash, faded to murky pastels of emotion, shruken and well-worn.

Oh harsh irony. Oh bitter- sweet knife. Why make it harder than it had to be? Why let us get on, let us fall ill in turn and nurse the other one, let us sit drinking wine and eating cold pizza and talking about life and death until the small hours of the morning? Why make me acutely aware of what I had lost? Why, why make it so on our last week.

That last week everything took on an added poignancy. From the last Sunday dinner to the last time the alarm went off on Monday morning and I refused to get up until it had snoozed five times, everything was black, bitter and heavy. Everything mattered. Everything burned with tension, pulled taught, ready to snap.

I groped through that week like a temporarily blinded man. Fumbled my way through. Compelled by the new job, by the need to organise, pack, sort, order. Swept away on a tide of lists until Friday. Friday, when I managed to make it through the day. Friday until I got off the tube to realise this would be my last walk home from work. Friday when I walked stubbornly home refusing to cry until it rained and I realised that none of these people would see me again and I walked sobbing down the street towards the flat.

It was not dignified. When I cry I do not resemble a heroine in a drama. Red, blotchy and raw, I crumble and I shake. I joke to my friends about this. How you would have thought that now, having had so much practice I would be better at it, but I am not.

Friday. Dreading the weekend. The date branded on my brain. Moving day tomorrow.

I go home. I pack. I sort. I cry.

Mundane, routine movements that are suddenly precious because of what they represent.

 

 

 

 

The Final Countdown

It’s been a while since I wrote and for that I apologise. I have missed it. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say, rather too much.

Last Sunday it was two weeks until I move out.

Today it is eleven days. Tomorrow it will be  ten.

Yesterday it was a week until I start my new job.

Today it is two days until my last day at my part-time job. Six days until my scholarship runs out. Four days until I pick up my keys for the new flat.

The days, the numbers, the hours,  flick quickly by in the calendar. I count them, make lists, line them up. I know when  and where I have to be at all times. I am highly efficient and highly inefficient at the same time. As I cross items off my check-lists, I achieve nothing. I function merely on automation. Yet I carry on, because that is what we do.

I go out to dinner, poke fun at my own misfortune, drink more wine than I have done in years. My diary is now full of appointments, things I must do, places I must visit and yet although the pages are full they are also incredibly blank and empty.

On Sunday afternoon he returned from a work trip. I had missed him. I had been fuelled with jealousy. I had been defiant. I had been broken.

I was not prepared for the admittance that he had missed me. Or the crushing realisation that whilst he will not ask, that whilst we will not get back together, that if he did, I would agree. It would not work. Too many words have been spoken. But on Sunday as we cooked dinner together, laughed and told each other about our week, small fragmentary snippets of information slipping out in wine and closeness the flat warmed and returned briefly to a home.

Now those glimpses into the past remain, softening the walls of the flat. It is the dreaded calm before the storm.

I am afraid of the 6th of October. I am afraid of what happens afterwards and how I will cope. I may pretend that I am calm, that I am not pushed, but it is a lie. A lie that is spoken to trick both myself and others into believing that all is not lost. That this is not the end.

The sense of powerlessness that surrounds me will push me over the cliff edge in eleven days.

 

 

Saturday Afternoon Reflections

I avoid the radio.

I have acquired an almost awful sense of arrogance that means that every song on the radio seems to correlate to my situation, to resonate particularly with me. The world, at once so unbelievably large and intimidating has also shrunken and shrivelled so that I struggle to balance on the island beneath my feet.

Yet in the hairdressers. The only place which forces you to look in the mirror. To stare solidly at your face for an hour. To stare into your own eyes.

The radio plays. Forces you to listen.

After half an hour of analysing my face, wondering if I’d aged and trying to tune out, what appears to be a collection of the hundred greatest love songs of all time, I turn to the magazines.

Sex tips. Relationship advice.

Why are we so obsessed?

In the year of the ‘chuck or marry’ as one of my friend’s so eloquently described it, my social circle is quickly diving into two groups. The haves and the have-nots.

This weekend, two phone calls remain in my mind. Both from fantastic, brilliant, beautiful women whose hearts have been broken and who are now broken and desperate and I bleed for them. I try not to say it will get better. That time will heal. Because I don’t know. I just don’t know that it will.

We have risked everything and lost. Sometimes I look at this divided circle and wonder if the lost generation is not those in work, not to do with class, but is now love. To be seen to be in love. To publish that in the media, on facebook, twitter, to show it, present it, to demonstrate it. Because we measure by comparison. We grade ourselves by what we are not.

Perhaps it is time to stop measuring.

The Other Woman

The other woman.

The woman who already has a boyfriend.

Who sent my boyfriend explicit messages during our relationship.

Who repeatedly pursued my then boyfriend, her then boss, at work.

Who still has a boyfriend and who now has restarted those texts in earnest.

Who he will sleep with when I move out.

The other woman whom I despise.

Who makes me angry and sad at once.

Whom I wish I could tell what I think of her.

Whose boyfriend I wish I could tell.

The other woman whom I both despise and pity.

 

The Ex

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Living  my life in clichés again.

I picked up my phone, scrolled through the numbers to my past and typed out the message.

A gentle tugging reminder, a butterfly-like beat of flirtation, a hint, a whisper.

The response. The slow awakening of friendliness like a bear from hibernation. The wariness of why I text, what I want, of the revelation that I am once more single.

Lunch. Nervousness. Fingers running through my hair. Concealer, powder, hastily applied.

The new flat. The place I was never invited to.

Awkwardness. The hesitation. The stop-start of interruption that trundles like a tube train. The fear that this wasn’t such a great idea. The half-concealed, half-overt evaluation that replicates most closely my recent job interviews. Have we done better? Are you still attractive to me? Do we remember why it never worked? How have we have changed? The questions buzz silently around the living room.

After an hour it is time to leave.

The hug. The closeness of another human body. Not the one I want. But one familiar. One that is safe.

The doorstep revelations, the most honest words I have spoken all day that come flooding out in that space between inside and out, between private and public.

The closeness of our faces. And the desire to be desired. The brush of the lips and the gradually, so, so slowly moving hands from my bruised face to my side.

Full up and yet half-empty, the moment leaves neither of us fulfilled.

Loneliness clouds our reactions. I have engineered this meeting. I have  wanted and not wanted. The kiss draws a line. It is both a step forward and a step back.

Ex’s are ex’s for a reason my mother always said.

I always agreed. But as I stumble away out of the door and down the metal steps I cannot but think that there is often comfort in the past.

 

 

 

Last Night

I don’t know what it is about the darkness of the night which escalates fears and anxieties.

At 6pm the text that told me he would be going out for dinner with work friends was a bitter pill to swallow. But swallow it I did because I can lay no claim to him. His cancellation of our plans earned no rebuke by my bound tongue.  For I maintain the peace even as its tightly wound layers restrict and suffocate me.

At 10pm the text I sent asking him whether he would be back, or if I should lock the door. The reply that said he would be home. The discomfort of listening, lying in bed waiting for the sound of the door, key, footsteps as you push the spikes of anxiety back down your throat. The desperate beckoning of sleep on a now bed of brambles. The prayer that sleep that will release you, at least momentarily.

At 3.30am. Awake. Alone. Checking the phone. No messages. Stuttering, jagged, half-formed thoughts. The attempt to reassure yourself that it’s still early enough.  That he will still return. The desire to call him that overtakes the voice which pleas with you not to. To remain calm, detached. To not reach once more for the self-destruct button which glides towards you, tempting you with its soft blanket of comfort.  The answerphone. The message you leave and which scratches your throat . So weak are you in the middle of the night.

At 4.38am. The despair.  The resignation that he has not returned. That it is now too late and too early for him to do so. The fear that he is with someone else. That she is better. That he will love her. That everything. Nothing. Is as it should be. The frantic, fumbling fingers as your hand reaches once more for the phone which will only sharpen the pain.

At 5.27am. The desperation for sleep, to forget, to never have to know, so tired are you of this, of having to deal, of having to cope with this all the time. The self-loathing that drifts up over you as you text, you reach for the button again and again and again although you know you have no right and you remind yourself of what you have lost.

5.50am. The alarm. The dull tiredness which settles over you body like dust. The call to your friend, to say that you can’t make it. That you are sorry that you have let her down, but that dust is weighing down your limbs.

6.03am. The gradual breaking of dawn. The key in the lock. The smell of alcohol in the room. The arms which wrap around you in the cool breeze of the morning. The explanation. The acceptance. The tightly bound tongue. The small sprinkling of laughter.

6.04am. The resolution that this will be the last night. The resolution that you will, never, never, have a night like this again. The resolution which grows harder in your heart until it sets there like stone.

 

 

 

 

The Job Offer

I have a job offer!

An offer of a job!

The excitement bubbles up inside me, dripping off my tongue in round fleshy words as I call my friends and family.

I’ve managed it! I’ve passed! All the interviews, assessment days were worthwhile afterall!

The relief floods through my veins like lava.

I didn’t think they’d offer it to me! 

There’s a chance I’ll be able to pay my rent on the new flat. That I will be able to afford to eat.

They want to hire me!

He is the first person I call. The first person I always call to tell my news.

Busy in the office he nevertheless answers. Relief, and a mixture of pride ripple in his voice.

I knew you could do it he says. I always knew you were capable. I’m so pleased for you.

Later in the pub, with my friends, my bubbling words of success burst.

Amid the warm swell of chatter I realise that the one person I wanted to celebrate my success with is absent.

I cycle slowly back in the Autumn darkness.

I sit waiting on the bed.

I watch the key turn in the lock and the door swing open.

I look into his eyes.

I knew you could do it he says. I always knew you were capable. I’m so pleased for you.

 

 

 

 

Tupperware

Tuesday began like most days at the moment with a cliché.

My complete inability to explain the rational for my emotions, to render them meaningful relegates them to a state akin to Tupperware boxes – labelled, confined and preserved in depth of the freezer.

Fitting my emotions into these nicely provided boxes is proving time-consuming.

Firstly, it assumes you own the right box or have the ability to purchase the right box to suit your needs.

Secondly, once the emotion is deposited you must close that plastic box of cliché air tight.

You must then label it. You must unpick the messy strands which comprise that emotion and entitle it.  The recipe which comprises so many individual ingredients is given a name which reduces it to one unifying dish.

This must then be cast into the dark depths of your freezer. Stored for three months until the label peels off and the dish is no longer identifiable.

The cliché remains preserved but frozen in its Tupperware box.

Heart

Walking across the bridge I feel my phone vibrate from the depths of my bag.

Heart momentarily skips, hops and judders up the ladder.

It is not him.

Heart drops, plummets back down the snake towards the pit of my stomach.

It is C.

‘Do you want to be set up with a cute 35 year old, very sporty, bloke I met at a wedding yesterday? He’s very sweet…Ready for dating?xx’

Heart twists and turns.

The text is well meaning. Kind. Hopeful.

The text brings the realisation that I have turned into one of those women. The singleton. The plus one at the dinner parties. The extra place setting. The blind date patron. Dependable, fun, the reliable one. Always free. Always able to take that last minute ticket. The friend in need. The friend indeed.

The text, its brutality, simplicity, its desire, stirs a messy witch’s cauldron of emotion. Am I ready to date? Would anyone want to date me? Would it be fair for me to date anyone? Would it be fair to date for a distraction? When, if, will I be over him?

Heart sighs. Stares out across the water towards the future. Orders the reply.

‘Not yet. Maybe soon x’

Phone returns to bag. I continue the walk home.

My heavy steps on the bridge echoing the heaviness of my heart.

 

 

 

 

The Saturday Afternoon Phone Call

The phone rings.

It’s my parents.

The traditional Saturday afternoon phone call. A welcome distraction from the unyielding conference paper that I must complete for Monday.

We talk. Work, interviews, sport, the references I need for the tenancy of  the new flat, the conference, my errant brothers; these topics of conversation fill the twenty six minutes of the phone call.

We do not mention him.

In the aftermath of the break-up, my mother was the first person I called. Unable to articulate I sobbed hot tears of unhappiness, shock and loneliness down the phone line to her 200 miles away.

That day I called my parents five times. I had nothing more to add. There were no new developments. No further news. No plan. Just shock, hurt and a frantic all-consuming desire to erase what could not be undone.

Their voices travelled back down the telephone line towards me echoing my shock and an anger that I could not feel. They let me speak. They listened as their daughter sobbed uncontrollably afraid of the horror of silence which threatened to crush her.

The following week I could barely answer their calls. Their concern peeled back the carefully constructed façade of normality. Their questions pierced deeper, forcing me to examine the situation afresh. Their love reminded me of what I had lost.

Now the concern still lingers in their voices. Down the occasionally crackling line they continue to assess, and worry, and examine my responses.

At 28 it pains me that I worry them still. That I have caused them such concern. That in a way, I have perhaps let them down. My parents refute this and I too recognise the fallacy of the sensation, yet it continues to exist.

At 28 I am still their child.

At 28 I am more grateful to them than they will ever know.