Filed under: Relationships, Single life | Tags: death, depression, family, Relationships, single, stress
Today I heard that my grandfather has about three weeks to live. That is, unless he starts taking his medication. Which he won’t take because he so depressed that he’d actually rather be dead. The ironic thing is that he won’t take anti-depressants as he’s afraid they’ll kill him.
There’s nobody here to hug me and make this seem ok. There never is. I’m single, so I don’t have the luxury of splitting my pain two ways. I don’t even have a shoulder to wipe my tears on. My parents went home together, united in their anguish. My sister is putting the kids to bed, then she’ll sit down with her husband for the evening. A team, ready to battle against the sorrows of the world.
I’m alone. And I don’t think I’m any worse off for it. I find that during most truly sad occasions, there’s nothing anyone can say to take the pain away. Being held when you’re crying doesn’t make you want to cry any less. It just means you have to worry about your mascara or mucus ruining someone’s jumper while you cry.
I make myself tea. I think. I write. And I’m uninterrupted. I don’t have to listen to anyone else’s point of view, or pretend that their words of advice are having an effect. I’m not going to upset anyone by withdrawing into myself for a few hours, or hurt anyone’s feelings by snapping at their attempts to cheer me up.
Sometimes, we don’t need to cheer up. We need time to accept reality.
People in relationships develop ways of coping with trauma the same way smokers or alcoholics do. Stressed? Have a hug. Upset? Tell me about it. Anxious? There, there. The constant attention, the sounding board, the affection. These things become essential means of dealing with the vicissitudes of daily life.
What happens when you run out of cigarettes, or can’t get a drink? You realise you have no other coping mechanism. You’re helpless, waiting for someone to walk into the room or into your life who can help you deal with the world around you.
Filed under: LOVE, Parents, Relationships, Single life, heartache | Tags: alcohol, christmas, death, family, holidays, LOVE
Christmas is like being wrapped up by your friends and family in a big, warm cuddle. It’s about showing the people in your life that you love them by buying them novelty bottle openers and heart-shaped frying pans. It’s a time to bond with people in the pub by singing Christmas carols and relishing the annual free drink from the barman.
We’ve always had wonderful Christmases – two great parents, four excited kids, and a big family gathering in Dublin to celebrate on the day itself. The sad thing about our family gatherings is that the numbers have been dwindling since our childhood. This year is proving to be the most distressing so far – I saw my Grandfather yesterday, and he told me that he wishes he were dead. Wow.
I’ve mentioned my Grandfather before – an incredible, inspirational man who sadly has a tendency to see the worst in everything (and everyone) around him. He’s taught me so much throughout his life, and it pains me that the biggest lesson I’ll ever learn will be from his death. He’s alone. He’s alienated most of the people who care about him, he’s frightened and bullied the nursing staff he’s met over the last few months. He has refused offers of help and mocked the thoughtful efforts of his neighbours.
The lesson is so obvious that I’m not going into it. The message I’d like to spread in my last pre-Christmas post is one I’ve written before:
Love the world – it’ll love you back.
Tonight I’m going out with The Femme, a couple of her friends and… the man. Yes, the Unlikely Valentine is still on the scene. There have been phonecalls, messages, and a couple of rendevous. It’s all getting a bit pedestrian. I’ve made a conscious decision not to touch a drop of the bad stuff over the holidays – let the early mornings, extravagant meals and epic Monopoly games begin!
Happy Christmas
Filed under: LOVE, Parents, Relationships, Single life | Tags: chemistry, christmas, death, ex-boyfriend, guilty pleasure, lie-in, morris dance, multiverse, nocturnal, reaper man, shopping, sleeping in, terry pratchett, tk maxx
I’ve tried to start this post four times already, and the words just aren’t working today. I’ll just get to the point, shall I? Guilty pleasures. I touched on the subject in my last post and I feel like I need to take it a little further today – here are five things that make me go mmmmm:
5. Sleeping in
I’m not a morning person. That sounds so negative in itself – why can’t we simply say ‘I’m semi-nocturnal’ instead? A good lie-in brings me right through to lunchtime. Please don’t call me before 10am. I love to wake up early, safe in the knowledge that I can roll over and go back to sleep again, which I regularly do. I don’t know what causes the guilt – I work strange hours and am certainly as productive during my week as all the 9-5ers out there. But I automatically find myself answering “10am” to the “What time did you get up at?” question. Nobody buys it.
4. House
I’m working my way through the box-set. I’m getting a little anxious as I’m on Season 3 and the end is looming nearer than I’d like. Generally speaking, I hate TV. DVDs don’t count.
3. Terry Pratchett
I’m actually re-reading ‘Reaper Man’ right now. It was lurking on the back of my bookshelf behind all the intelligent, highbrow things I usually read. (!) What’s not to love about the idea that Death is a nice guy who ends up reaping the harvest on a small farm in a no-horse town? The opening line: “The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse” tickles me, even though I’m not sure that I know what Morris dancing is.
2. TK Maxx
Yesterday I indulged my Christmas spending craving with a juicer, a casserole and a present for my Mam:
Obviously, it’s a Crumb Pet. A teeny tiny hoover that picks up the crumbs from your kitchen table. She’ll love it.
TK Maxx is where I got my gorgeous Filofax for €12.99, a beautiful stone elephant for my office for around €4, and the afore-mentioned casserole and juicer were €12.00 and €10.00 respectively.
Why does shopping make me feel guilty?
1. My ex.
My ex is the person who inspired the ‘harbouring guilty thoughts’ theme. Even my sister sighs on occassion, looks off into the distance, and announces that he could have been a model. Still could, I guess, but I think it’s safer for me to think of him in the past tense. He idolised Kurt Cobain, and built his music, his wardrobe and his hairstlye around him, so it’s apt to call him Kurt.
Kurt and I met when we were 16/17. I was going through one of those horrible, painful, heartbreaking teenage dramas and he arrived just on time. He was a talker, a listener, and a comedian. We got together, and I broke up with him two weeks later. He was way too serious about ‘us’ – he was, and remains, a serial monogamist, and had jumped from one long-term relationship straight into ours. Long-term felt like a jail sentence to me at the time, and that was that.
We kept in touch, for years, until it reached a point in our lives where we were both single and interested once again. I had been living in Holland, but after a magical Christmas with him I quit my job, packed my stuff and headed home to the Emerald Isle. There followed three years of intense passion, immature promises, stupid mistakes, and an inevitable breakup. I left once again, this time to Australia, and we stayed in touch.
The funny thing about Kurt is that I honestly don’t find him attractive anymore. When I see him, I know that he’s not the person I lived with and loved for so long. We’ve both moved on, moved apart, and that’s healthy. The guilt in this instance is caused by the memories. I have so many beautiful memories of him, of us, that nobody else has been able to compare to since we broke up. It’s been two years, and nobody has made me laugh as much, made me cry as much, or turned me on as much as he did.
Chemistry. We had bucketloads of the stuff.
