#124 OR please leave a message after the tone

Most of the time I'm holding my own. Perhaps not swimming but at least drifting rather than sinking. Things really aren't as bad as they were in January. It's easy to forget that they have improved because, well, they're still very far from good. And every so often there will come a day which is a nightmare, everyone gets those, it's not unusual. They seem more intense somehow, as though it's a personal insult for the universe to throw this at me on top of everything else. Feel like an ant being pursued by a kid with a magnifying glass. Yesterday was one of those days.

It started badly, of course, all days start badly now. The pain was more intense than usual, requiring crutches and a brace which always inspires a bright and sunny disposition. The benches in the tube station had been varnished (at 0500? As though I'd slid into an alternative universe in which council workers are fresh, chirpy and feverishly wielding brushes before dawn.) and fumbling crutches, myself and my bag of stuff onto the train meant I couldn't choose an empty carriage, no chance of a seat. These were all minor frustrations compared to the gathering darkness, no reason for it, but for some reason everything felt grey and the hole in my chest was aching more than usual. Spent long periods staring at the wall, woolgathering. 

Had to remove my wedding ring to finagle my hand into a cabinet for fear of losing it in the damn thing. The tan line caught me by surprise; it shouldn't. Not after all this time, but it still stole my breath away for a long moment. Too long. I know that it takes time and I know that it hasn't been long enough to get any kind of distance (emotional, I've at least managed geographical) and I know all too well that I expect too much, too fast. I know all of this and tell myself these things daily. Doesn't stop me shattering a coffee mug against the wall or slamming my hand onto the counter. Have to hold it together at work, no time for this shit, this shaking and losing of time. Check my watch to see how much time has passed, too long, almost an hour. Fuck. What use am I now? Like this? What use is this? What is the point? Rage, again. Everything boils down to it now. I'm quietly appalled by it, such a completely inappropriate, explosive response to a fading tanline under a thin silver wedding ring.

A voicemail from my Mother in law (ex?) rounded out the day nicely. I have no problem with her; it's hard to have any of the stereotypical family issues when you live thousands of kilometres away. She wants to talk. Worse - she says I need to talk. My first thought is that her daughter would never have said that. But then her daughter had the misfortune to get to know me and learn to deal with my ridiculousness. Need to talk, do I? Well that's not going to persuade me to call her. That and the guilt. That's the heart of the matter - the hot, tight knot of guilt that I'm carrying around. I wasn't there, wasn't with them, shouldn't have let them go, shouldn't have let her drive, should have gone with them. If I really want to twist the knife I remember saying goodbye, warning her to drive safely. But remembering that is dangerously close to remembering the hospital and those are the nightmares that wake me in the dark of the night and lurk in the quiet corners of my mind, just in case I get the mistaken impression that I'm moving on.

It's days like these that leave me in a boneless heap on the couch, staring at the wall. Keenly aware that everything I cared about has gone. Not everything; days like this make me over-dramatic as well. Convinced the world has ended. It has not. I am here, pressing on. Bloodied but unbowed. Friends reassure me that it's ok, fine, healthy (probably) to give in, to spend listless hours sitting, staring at nothing. It isn't. I'm miserable, not stupid. Force myself up, away from the cocoon, back to the present. Off to the basement to stare blankly at something else and baptize myself in sawdust.

She's calling again. Immaculate timing. Her daughter was always late. For our wedding, even. She hasn't said a word about the hospital, doesn't blame me. She should. I do.

#122 OR ghosts

Dinner with a friend the other night, grilled steaks in his fireplace, drank beer, relaxed. He's a new friend, I'm starting to prefer the people I met after I moved back home. They're easier, things are simpler, I selectively edit my life and we have a good time. I don't want sympathy, I don't want to talk to people who remember her, or what I was like before I lost them. Don't need people to tell me I'm different now, that things have changed. Of course things have changed, of course I've changed. Everything fell spectacularly to pieces, one day I had a family, a home, a job, friends, a place. The next day everything was gone, some of it taken and the rest I thrust away from me, too painful. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, didn't want to live at all never mind live and work in the same house, walk the same streets, drowning there, surrounded by her things with the ghosts of her laugh torturing me daily.

Old friends ask how I am. No really, how are you? Won't accept fine for an answer, want to know everything, are sympathetic, they miss her too, they've found some photos, would I like them? No. No, I don't need any more memories. I need...something. Fresh air, change, a way out of this cocoon of misery, this stasis, this hot, heavy air choked with ghosts. I need it all to be over, no more calls from lawyers and accountants and companies asking to speak to my wife. No more long silent pauses on the phone as it hits me all over again, no more voicemail messages from her Mother telling me I don't have to go through this alone, no more of this grief.

New friends do not know. New friends see what I tell them, the director's cut of my life. No wife, no daughter, time spent overseas was nice, just wanted to come home. Missed the cold, the grey, the rain. They laugh, I laugh, all is well. No ghosts. Of course I still remember things, of course I still walk with friends and catch a glimpse of her in a crowd. Of course I still have their pictures in my wallet. But it's nice, just for a while, to pretend that I'm all right, that this terrible thing never happened, that she never walked into that coffee shop, that I never wrote my number on her hand, that she never called, that we never laughed together, never fought, never moved to London, to Paris, to Thailand, to Cambodia, never scrambled across a beach in the pouring rain, never got married, never lived in that tiny, cramped little house, never went swimming in the river, never had a daughter.

I enjoy the pretence. The weight doesn't lift, but maybe it shifts a bit. It's good, for a little while. But later, guilt. As though the pretending is tantamount to forgetting, denying, wishing it never happened. Which is not true. I don't regret it. They were worth all this.

#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.