#120 OR hollow

These bank holidays are killing me. Two in a row, what do I do with all this empty time? I work anyway, eyeing my overtime spreadsheet with distaste. There's more overtime than regular time. Because if I don't work...what? I prowl the apartment, heavy with silence and motes of dust hanging in beams of sunlight. I'm slowly building more furniture, trying desperately not to think of them while I make it; no use finishing things I can't look at. So I topped the table with a sheet of glass rather than wood. Remembering how she hated the sound glass tables make. Ah, of course. I forgot that things hurt just as much when they have nothing to do with her as when they still carry her perfume.

Places she never went hurt just as much as standing in her childhood bedroom did. And Christ, that hurt. Her Mother asked if I'd like to sleep in there, told me to feel free to take anything I liked, needed. She closed the door and left me standing there, holding a bag, still dressed in my funeral suit, still choked from the memorial service. I slept there, woke frequently, confused and talking in my sleep, dragged my fingers over her things, toys, trophies, posters. Took only one thing; a picture she took of me when we first met, smoke curling in front of the lens, I'm looking down at the counter, serving someone. Not sure why she kept it, pinned to her wardrobe door all those years, on the back she'd written something, unreadable now. No chance to ask her. 

I took the picture, it's in the guest room of course, with everything else I can't stand to touch. Not yet. I left her family with tokens; a necklace of hers, a lock of their hair that her Mother clipped and twisted together at the hospital, photographs of us, a birthday present for them that she had bought early, wrapped and waiting to be posted. There's a similar parcel lurking for me in the guest room, tagged, a card with her writing. Didn't feel much like opening it on my birthday; one hundred and twenty days ago. Don't think I'll feel like celebrating on the 1st of January again. It will always be the day everything was torn apart and tossed up into the air. The day this ache started. The day this hollow settled in my chest. 

I got a phone call on the first, wishing me a happy birthday. I'd just left the hospital, alone, standing on the sidewalk on the verge of a panic attack. Not crying, just stricken, horrified, afraid, what now? What the fuck do I do now? The caller, my oldest friend, told me to ask myself that question every day until I knew. I still don't know any more the 120th time than I did that first time. The temporary answer is - I wait, and see if things improve. But that's not the real answer, that's not enough. 

So I work, and I strip the wallpaper, and build furniture and try to make friends who don't know about this hollow ache in my chest and I wait. But waiting isn't living and it certainly isn't thriving. It's long and it's grey and it's cold and it's so damn lonely that sometimes the ache is worth having because otherwise I might think that this is all there ever can be and ever has been. But the ache tells me there was more. Might be again, someday. 

I keep meaning to say something to you who have been kind enough to follow my blog. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an appropriate place for me to put something like that so I'm just tacking it on here and hoping everyone will forgive me for cobbling things together. I never expected followers, or comments and certainly didn't expect to be mentioned elsewhere. I started writing because I find it hard to talk, not because I thought anyone would enjoy reading about my anguish. It's hard for me to read this blog and I wrote it, so I imagine it must be difficult for anyone to read, let alone comment on. So while it's wholly inappropriate to say that I hope you're enjoying it - because undoubtedly it's not enjoyment you're seeking in my dark corner of the internet - I am grateful that you thought me worth following, and I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for.

#119 OR rice flour

The holidays loomed over us for months, neither of us mentioned it but the prospect of living for four weeks in the first world was daunting. We made a good team, a marriage forged in the damp heat of the jungle. We were married out there, in the gardens of the Embassy by a Consular official, papers double-signed in curving strange letters and English, surrounded by frangipani and bourgainvillea trees, groups of fireflies spinning underneath the branches. We worked together, rarely spent time to ourselves, always pursued by laughing children or inquisitive neighbours; when we weren't at the school I was at the slum and she was working in the village.

That first week she stayed with me I was nervous, worried she'd hate this place I'd fallen in love with. Came back early from school one day, wandering up the path with the same delight as the children I've just released; no school! And even the teacher's delighted. I spied her through the leaves and waited, oppressively hot that day, overcast, humid, sweat trickling down my neck as I try not to make a sound. A group of women squatting together, laughing, joking, one is singing; keeping time for my girl, clutching a pole at least as tall as her, pounding rice flour and water into dough. Flushed and sweating, shirt cast aside, left in a vest top and sampot, catch the glint of her engagement ring on the cord around her neck. Voyeur, sneaking peeks through the plants, listen to them laughing. A new joke, requires a mime, aimed at her and she turns, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm. Her eyes are wide, blush creeping across her cheeks, a woman is estimating size with her hands. Shake my head and step out of my hiding place, she catches my eye and laughter erupts around her before sharp orders are barked in Khmer. Behind me Ama is standing four feet tall, steel grey hair, face lined, fists clenched on her hips as she corrals her ladies back to their duties.

Later I look at her again, across the bed, examine the contrasts of our skin, she's still pale, slightly jet-lagged, dark circles under her eyes, white skin and fresh new clothes still smell of Western laundry. I'm dishevilled, unshaven, tanned so dark she didn't recognise me at the airport. Meeting her there my stomach was in knots; already been settled in the village for two months, already tanned, leaner, stronger, dropping Khmer words into English, clothes already sunbleached and tired. My arm lying heavy across her hip, hand on her stomach, calloused skin against hers. Relief washes over me many times in the next few weeks, every time I see her working dough into rice noodles, cooking pork over an open fire, slicking sweat away with the back of her forearm, catching my eye and smiling. Relieved that she's swimming rather than sinking.

A year later we're contemplating four weeks "back home" with unease. This is home. What will we do with running water and electricity? She mentions it first, carrying a vast basket of laundry in lean brown arms. "Washing machine" she declares, dumping the basket at my feet. What? She grins wickedly "all that time I won't have to spend knee-deep in the Seine washing things!"

And this time both of us have changed, our friends meeting us at Charles de Gaulle don't recognise us, her hair longer, down to her waist, mine shaven, both of us so tanned we look Khmer. Can't remember the special way you have to tweak our front door to get it to open. "This is why there are no doors at home" she murmurs, arms around my waist, words muffled by my shirt, draped on me - it's thirty hours since we left the village. At home. She's right, this flat isn't home any more.

Later; feel of the washing machine vibrating the floor, curl against her, press a kiss to the back of her neck, smell of shampoo and detergent seem foreign now after the smell of sweat, ginger and smoke. She closes her arm over mine. "So what were you going to do with this spare time?" A quick glare over her shoulder and she elbows me in the ribs. "Sleep now or I'll take it all to the Seine" she threatens already half asleep as I laugh quietly into the back of her neck.

#117 OR heartsick

I unpacked a little today. It's not laziness keeping me from doing it, at least it's not usually laziness. There's nowhere to put things away yet, only the kitchen is furnished and even though no one comes here it feels too strange to keep everything in kitchen cupboards. Mostly I was like a worker ant; carrying things back and forth between little piles. Storage...here...misc...hers. And a large pile of things which I can't bear to have around me any more but want to keep. The shrink calls that avoidance, I call it self-preservation, not becoming Miss Havisham. We laughed at her character at school, just children, not empathy. Now I can see how it would be so easy, safe to stay cocooned in the past.

Heartsick today, not sure why. Much worse these last few days, a tangible, creaking pain in my chest. Nothing's different, same routine for the last three months. Except I finally unpacked my camera yesterday, stripped the memory card and saved the whole lot to an external hard drive, threw that into the guest room. Needless to say, I didn't go in. Haven't taken any pictures in a while, the camera and I used to be inseperable. Even with the empty memory card I kept flicking through, expecting to come across some of them. I remember the last picture I took as clear as anything; the safrole tree that overhang our house, the backdrop to most of my memories of that place.

I packed slowly. There was a crowd in the middle of the village, conspicuously not watching me. Took me a whole day to clear the house, not because there was a lot of things but because everything I picked up suddenly seemed significant. That cracked green bowl took on a strange symbolism, spoke of every morning that we lived there, the soothing ritual of waking her with tea. The look on her face when I said we should just throw it out after it cracked. We kept it of course, fool for her.

When it was time to leave, I was at a loss. I went out to throw the bags in the truck, the crowd had gone, chased off by a friend. A lotus flower left on the steps. Stricken. Never coming back here, to this place. Pump water for the last time, flakes of rust sticking to damp palms, squeal of rusty metal. Get a can of oil from the truck and fix the pump, leave the can. They're gone and this is what you do? Fix the damn pump? She'd never have let me go without doing it. Take the little green bowl out to the safrole tree, float the lotus flower. Their ashes will be in the Netherlands, I'll be in London, our home is here. This is the best place to leave things. Snap a picture of the tree, not sure why. Look at the last picture on the camera; it's them, of course. She's standing in the river, waist deep, swinging a little girl up into the air, drops of water trailing from kicking feet.

As soon as I turn over the engine there is a rushing of people, banging of doors. Heng is at the front of the group, I've left some things in the school-room, I say; can't meet his eye. He hugs me tightly "we will miss you teacher, the three of you."

Heartsick.

#116 OR chnganj

My next door neighbour is barbecuing tonight. I opened the basement door (ill-advised combination of solvents drove me out into the evening) and the smell of flame-roasted pork got me in the gut. Hands shaking, gripped the door, dishevelled, covered in sawdust, safety glasses on my head, blinking like a mole. His wife is delightful, pregnant, but then I can't avoid every reminder of my old life. Insist I join them for a drink, can't go back inside anyway. Not without a gas mask, idiot. A beer sweats in my fingers, sitting on a wall talking about how lovely the weather is. It's not, less than twenty degrees. The weather back home is thirty. Back home. This is meant to be home now, there's nothing left of home out there. I lost that.

The smell of roasting meat has me confused, torn between memories of open fires on packed earth floors and this ridiculous English garden, all abandoned children's toys, trampolines and flowers. Condensation from the bottle soaks into my jeans, my hands are still shaking. They talk about the basement, they owned it before I moved in and he would like a tour, lame joke about having gassed myself out, they laugh too loud, polite. Feeble sun on the back of my neck, hands clammy, sweating and cold.

Their daughter runs over, about four, dark curls and brown eyes. That's it. Silhouette of the wife, pregnant, turning meat over an open fire with bamboo chopsticks. No, tongs, the chopsticks are the memory. Laughter from two doors down, distorted, can almost pick out Khmer words. Set the bottle down, careful, stand, the daughter is clinging to her Mother's legs, dark eyes peering up at me. Make my excuses and burrow back into the basement, the noxious tang in the air has gone. Back against the closed door, run a cold hand down my face, shaking, glasses crack onto the floor. Sliding down the door, cold concrete floor, rough wood shavings. Sitting, lost in memories, sit there for too long; nearly impossible to unfold cramped muscles, have to drag myself up with the door handle.

Pathetic, weak. Scared off by a family barbecue. But that's the worst kind of memory, not something that happened once but a daily ritual. Cooking meat over an open fire, long chopsticks, the hiss of the grill, face flushed from the heat of the fire cutting through the blanket of humidity. At first we were hopeless, had to be tutored by a barbecue master in the art of not dropping chopsticks into the fire and not burning off the hairs of our hands. She adopts it as her favourite chore of the day, despite the unbearable heat and the fog of smoke. Overjoyed the first time we didn't sacrifice a chopstick to the fire, tin plate of meat, giant smiles. Our tutor comes over, snags a piece, chews thoughtfully, finally she decrees it "nangai, nangai" (okay, okay). Could do better, a solid C at cooking. The smell of charcoal in her hair that night makes me smile.

By the time I get off the floor it's hard to believe I'm here. This happens a lot, the blurring of the line between memory and reality. Some nights I half-wake, lost, smell of her somehow in the room, confused, where are we? Catch myself talking to her and that's when it hits me again that I'm lying alone, grey fingers of dawn easing through the window.

#114 OR stricken

Two days of hangovers in a row. I will never learn. In my defense only one hangover was caused by pathetic solo-drinking in my basement. The other was with people (!) my own age (!!) which required grooming (!!!) and real clothes (!!!!) as opposed to flannel shirts and sad old jeans. The first time I have been out and about on a Friday in, well...years. Sure I'm outside most Friday evenings, at least, some Friday evenings. When I don't sleep at work. But then I'm covered in sawdust and miscellaneous glues and metal shavings, dragging myself through the tramps and feeling out of place amongst the hordes of revellers on the tube. It was rather reassuring to find that I haven't quite forgotten how to talk to people, although I have apparently forgotten how to hold my liquor. Or at least forgotten (or gleefully ignored) the boundary between cheerful blurring, merry swaying and blind drunk. Instead I shot straight on through to embarrassingly pissed which led to an 8am meeting sweating neat whisky and trying not to vomit in pot plants. In fact not puking in the foliage might have been the only thing I achieved that day.

It feels odd though, I did all this at University and left with my degree and a minor in hangover cures (alka-seltzer in vodka was a personal favourite) freshly resolved to forge ahead with other things. Which I did. And now here I am again. Living alone, working too hard and for too long, drinking and making merry with not-really-friends but coming home to an empty bed, empty flat with everything exactly as I left it that morning. And no amount of liquor stops me slipping back into the same old nightmares; still terrifying after 113 nights.

My lack of furniture preys on my mind an awful lot. Not what other people might think; no one comes here, they go straight to the basement because that's inevitably where I am. This enforced emptiness feels impermanent, which I like, gives a false impression that this misery won't last forever. The grief will pass, I know. Soothed by long hours sanding things and working through everything. Buying a full set of furniture wouldn't have the same therapeutic value but this way each new piece is terrifying, represents Progress. Progress which I'm not sure I've made; still wake each night shouting myself hoarse, sweating, tangled and sick, still spend the first half hour of each interminable morning crouched on the bathroom floor retching.

Perhaps this way is better, this starting from scratch. From heaps of lumber stacked against a basement wall, not from an Ikea catalogue. Nothing that she slept in, sat on, lived with, nothing which draws out agonizing memories of her. Just her things, still heaped in the spare room. Going in there is becoming like scaling Everest. Even leaning my forehead on the door, hand resting on the door handle exhausts me. Each night I decide, not tonight. Each night retreating, coffee instead, a few hours work downstairs perhaps. And then it's three am and I'm awake, bolt upright on the basement sofa, throat hoarse, heart pounding, all too soon crouched on the bathroom floor, still dressed in yesterday's clothes.

Of course, the trouble with starting from scratch is that I don't know where to start. It feels as though everything that was anchoring me has gone and now, now I can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone. Except, somehow, I don't get to choose. I get nightmares, flashbacks, nausea, shaking and shivering, insomnia and this unshakeable, unbearable numbness. Mostly I get anger and mostly I aim it at myself.

And of course the problem is that it's not quite nothing, for I am a sentimental old fool. I have one thing, a chair of hers that a very kind gentleman came to view in Paris and offered to pay for and remove. But I was stuck, stricken by the memory of her in that chair, us in that chair. Of holding her in my lap while she cried after her Grandmother's death, of her falling asleep still in her graduation gown, of the way she shyly held up ultrasound pictures for me, of hours nursing ginger tea and crackers, of her giggling and tipsy in my lap all tangled up in me and missing my mouth with her kisses. Couldn't part with it but can't look at it, out of place here in this empty flat. Just one more thing to keep me out of the spare room.

#113 OR voyeurism for amateurs

I spend my life in basements now, the workshop (work) and the...well...workshop (home) both basements, thankfully only one is flanked by a funeral home. Although there are worse things to work next door to. At least the dead are generally quiet. I mostly work with wood at home, started in Cambodia carving an otter as a prize for a school project. They trap them there, skin them and eat them, view them as pests even though they're officially endangered. We used to buy them, $20 per otter and drive them to an otter sanctuary in Tonle Sap. Seven hours in a Jeep with a furious, thrashing otter. Wonderful. So, woodwork. Quiet, calming, it's getting me through. Slowly. But I still look up and expect to see her curled in her chair on the deck, gas lamp on the floor between us. She's sewing, usually, or reading, squinting in the half-light, occasionally uncurling herself and stretching, snapping her joints before settling back, hunched over her work. If I look up too quickly here, at dusk, distracted, should have turned the lights on, illuminated only by the heater. Shadows leap across the sofa and more than once I've smiled at her. Except, of course that there's no one here. Just me. Stabbing a chisel into the workbench and slamming on the lights. Ridiculous. Shaking my head to dislodge the crystal clear image of her, cross-legged, bent towards the light, curls of hair falling around her face, more than once I stopped whatever I was doing to just watch her. 

I stayed late in town one night. Photocopying at an internet cafe. Only an hour from a village with no electricity and no running water I'm able to send emails, photocopy and lounge in air-conditioned hotels. The drive back seems long, I know she won't be sleeping - the soothing sounds of cicadas, creaking trees and chittering bats become something else entirely when you're alone in a house with no locks or glass in the windows. Dark, overcast, can barely see the road through the windshield, pressed up against the steering wheel, seatbelt frayed where too many drivers have done this exact thing before me. No lights as I pull into the village, past midnight, only three hours till the first stirrings of morning rituals. Turn the corner, pull the Jeep out of the way and spot a light, I think. Leave the papers, car unlocked, limp around the deck, long day. Turn the corner and she's curled tight in the chair, gas lamp flickering next to her. Transfixed. Noise of cicadas loud in the quiet night, a halo of mosquitos around the light, oppressive blanket of heat, damp shirt against my back. Quiet steps, leave my cane against the doorframe, looking, haven't seen her since this morning.

She brought breakfast to the school, rice, charred pork, chicken stock, chilli sauce in a tin box, chopsticks nested in the curls of her hair. I'm buried in papers, white skyscrapers line the front of my lopsided desk, she takes my hand, leads me out back. Peace, just for a minute, eating with her, a quiet smile on her face watching the yard busy with children coming and going. We don't speak until she's ready to leave, pinning clean chopsticks back in place. "Tonight?" she asks, I grimace, photocopying, exams, a smile from her "some peace at last!" A lingering kiss, the press of her hand warm against my chest and she's gone, fresh water and a clean shirt left on my desk. I watch her leave, can see the silhouette of her through her white shirt, a gaggle of young girls follow her to the path, stroking her arms and giggling. She doesn't look back but she waves as the path turns out of sight.

On the veranda I watch her. Wish I had words for how she leaves me breathless in this shifting orange light. Wish I could tell her everything, thank her for all this. For leaving her life in a heartbeat and coming here to live so far away from everyone she knows and for doing it so well. She shifts, smiling in her sleep, damp hair wrapped around her throat. I lean on the railing, watch her stir and wake, slowly, not quite shrugging off sleep. Smiling at me, stretching as she unfolds, collar of her shirt slips down and she links her arms around my waist, drop a kiss to her warm skin, salt, soap, her. The chink of her anklet as she stretches up to kiss me, pauses, one hand on my cheek now, studying me. Her eyes narrow, small frown, cocks her head to the side. I wait, almost smiling, know what's coming. Her face clears, she reads me like a book; "I wouldn't be anywhere else."

#112 OR first world problems

This week has been particularly testing. Just the world making sure that I'm so close to cracking under the strain that the creaks and groans can be heard in France. Of course these are all ridiculous first-world problems which means I'm not only stressed, I'm guilt-ridden.

I'm currently serving two masters at work and each is convinced that their project is the most significant and requires the lion's share of my attention. I spend between seven and eight hours per day on each of them, 80% of that time working, 10% listening to them shouting down the phone, 5% drinking coffee, smoking and watching videos of owls and as of this week? 2% up to my waist in the air conditioning system, 1% swearing at the air conditioning and 1% retrieving sensitive glues and varnishes from the funeral home fridges next door. The remaining 1% is of course, reserved for dithering outside the funeral home fridges hoping that I've remembered which one isn't currently occupied. God forbid I choke on noxious fumes before I have time to succumb to heat stroke in this wretched basement. Still, this is England and there's a national holiday soon, rain is undoubtedly imminent. Nothing cheers the spirits more than damp bunting. 

The Bank Manager called, alleged that he's been sending letters which I have ignored. Me? Ignore vital missives stamped URGENT in glaring red letters? Surely he has me confused with some other disorganized cretin who stuffs all mail - junk and otherwise - into a shoebox and keeps it under the bed. He gave me the first appointment of the day to intimidate me. Unfortunately by 9am I've already been awake for five hours and working for four so his little plot failed although he still succeeded in brow-beating me into switching joint accounts into solo ones. On the way out of the bank my lawyer called to let me know that he'd mailed hard copies of my freshly re-drafted will to me and that they have to be signed. So much bloody paperwork. I assumed there would be some, when someone dies things need to be changed, fine, no problem. But I've been awash in a sea of official letters, documents and forms for three months! None quite so impressive as those from the British embassy which were only surpassed in size and weight by the accompanying guide on how to fill them in.

This delightful day was rounded off by group therapy in which I was harangued by a fellow inmate and told to get a girlfriend. Again. Twice she's harassed me on this particular subject, perhaps she thinks if she shouts it at me often enough I'll eventually snap and accept the nearest woman (her)? 

Other highlights of the week include a visit to the Society library; searched thoroughly, stripped of all electronic devices, pens, bags, coats etc and finally thrust, blinking and as naked as a mole rat into the hallowed halls and ushered into the waiting room. My book was delayed, it missed our appointment by thirty minutes, proving that even inanimate objects have more captivating social lives than myself. The accompanying notes to the social butterfly in question were delayed by an hour and a half, finally arriving on their own cart with an honour guard of dust bunnies. And they were in braille. The other copy has been misplaced. At this point it seemed rather as if the Universe was just taking the piss. 

The silver lining to this rather thunderous cloud was the very appealing gentleman trying not to laugh at my misfortune in the library. His card is grey (happy medium between white: boring and black: pretentious) and reads Name, Nefarious Deeds. A card like that combined with a handlebar moustache? That deserves a call, surely. After all, how much worse can things get at this point?