Just In Case I Am Making You Sick...

I am having a retro day, Die is taking a holiday from perfection and has gone on a bender. I keep turning my phone off in case he calls, and then turning it back on again in case he calls. The fucker.

I just ate a packet of luxury shortbread while I considered which aspect of my mental torment to address.

Think we're going to have to go back to the Lost Weeks, the Pre-Perfection Days, The Dark Ages, ie Christmas.

[Picture of worried woman in basement goes all blurry and then whites out. Spooky children's voices are heard singing "Silent Night" and fake snow falls as same worried woman gets out of an inappropriately cheerful Nissan Micra. Her eyes have gone all funny from crying and we watch her approach a darkened mobile home and knock on the door. A binbag, overflowing with empty Carlsberg export cans, reminds us that it is Christmas eve. Dolores, for it is she, is holding some white envelopes, and receiving no answer, puts one through the door and then turns to leave. She then puts one under the windscreen wiper of a battered drug-dealers BMW, and one under the wiper of a badly resprayed BT van, before getting back into her cute car and driving away.

Time passes. Inside the mobile home our eyes get used to the dark and gradually become aware that a human figure is under a pile of Carlsberg Export cans on one of the chairs. With a frightening suddenness, the figure says "Fucks Sake" and stands up, making the dog yap. He lurches to the door and opens a white envelope. Turning the light on, he reads Dolores' message and lets it fall to the floor, before opening the fridge and getting out a can of Carlsberg Export.

Lucky it fell face uo, because now the camera can zoom in and read it. It says:


Dear Die,

Here are some things you need to know:

1. You are wrong. I can’t even flirt with other men because I am obsessed with you. The idea of being with someone else makes me sick.
2. You have given me the worst Christmas of my life. You have destroyed me and I will never get over it. It would have been better if you had killed me.
3. I love you forever but I can’t be with you because you are so cruel to me. If you loved me, you could not do this to me.
4. I will send you this letter every day until you let me know that you have read it.

You don’t know anything about love. You have ruined my life.

Dolores


So that was something a bit different for Christmas Eve. Heh, I like to do something different at Christmas. I tell you what though, things got worse after that. Tell you some other time.

I was planning to counter all that with a cheery anecdote, but I can't with my babe out and about with a shower of wankers. I actually don't mind him drinking way too much just so long as I don't have to listen to his views on life afterwards. He's not an aggressive nasty drunk, he's an idiot pain-in-the-arse drunk. What scares me is that he will start smoking dope and get his paranoia back. He gave it up on Boxing Day and has been wonderful ever since.

Oh what's the point in fretting? Going to lose myself in the internet.

Night X

Months pass. Long complicated months with sinister overtones. But I took Ted for a walk in the woods today and there was a suggestion of Spring: snowdrops, catkins, pale sunshine and hello? what's this? well bugger me, its a tiny clump of fresh hope.

I saw a shy woodland flower and so of course my thoughts turned to love. (Groans). I thought hard about LOVE and now I am ready to reveal the TRUTH about LOVE.

In my experience love is not a sweet warm safe meeting of minds and bodies. It is a bitter grisly painful battle with the opponents alternately lashing out and whimpering pathetically. Sometimes there is a glorious truce, kisses, kindness, exhileration, angels sing, a golden beam of light illuminates the perfect couple, it seems an understanding has been reached and everything will be OK forever. But it won't. Any minute now, someone will feel slighted for no reason at all and it all goes wrong again.

Sorry to bring geometry, music and physics into this, if you run parallel to someone you may well form a lovely harmonious chord with them, but you will never connect, except at infinity which is a long way to walk. To connect, you have to come at them from an angle. Its a collision, and that means jarring, glancing, poking, crashing, bouncing violently off each other but at least you have a faint chance of fusing if there's enough heat.

That's a bit abstract, so here's a few concrete examples:

You wander the streets looking everywhere for their car and their hair, and your heart stops every time you mistakenly believe you have caught a glimpse. Then suddenly you are walking towards them on the pavement, and you look at your feet and ignore them. That is love.

You look forward to seeing them all day and rehearse the words you want to say to them "I love you so much". Then you open the door to them and what you hear coming out of your mouth is "You look like a cabbage in that shirt". That, sadly, is love.

Your friends say that you are made for each other and you deny it, saying that you actually fail to communicate on any level whatsoever. Your friends say that you are unsuited and you punch your friends. That is love.

Your heart is torn to shreds and you consider suicide because your lover is not listening to you blah-ing on about the thing that happened to you in the Post Office. That is love.

You take it in turns to be desperately hurt because the other one is subconsciously demonstrating that they are not quite as keen on you as they were yesterday. That is love.

Your eyes meet in the middle of a bitter argument about, say, whether gin makes you more depressed than vodka, and a little smile plays over your lips and you lose your advantage. That is love.

I could go on, and I probably will some other day. But right now, I have to go and thank my lucky stars.

Cheers
xx