#151 OR 500 miles

There are very few people who can persuade me to answer the phone the first time they call. Usually I subscribe to the belief that if it's important enough, they'll call again. My godson gets me to answer every time; I'm his guardian, there's no dodging the phone calls, even if most of the time they seem to be for cash or sex tips. I'm glad he calls, I'm glad he want to talk to me and I'm unspeakably pleased that he has people that will love him no matter what. His Mother is my oldest friend and this year has been a very strange year for her and I. This year Godson turned thirteen; I received an email from his Mom which was just a subject line and two attached photos. One picture was Godson, grinning cheekily at the camera, all blonde floppy hair and white teeth. The second picture was a scanned polaroid; me holding him, he's maybe a year old and wrapped up in my jacket, I'm sitting in the back of an old Jeep in my shirtsleeves, I remember being freezing, driving 500 miles with Godson and his Mom to escape our families. I turned thirteen that year too.

I haven't held many babies in my life, only two that I held for any length of time without trying to hand them on to someone else as quickly as possible. Godson, of course, it was a long way and I held him for almost all of the two days while she drove. And my daughter, all too briefly. I thought of Godson then, in the hospital. Remembered desperately trying to keep him warm in my jacket and living in constant fear of running out of money or running into a family member. I promised Godson's Mom that I'd keep him safe, no matter what, from everything we'd run away from. It's worked out so far, sometimes by the skin of our teeth and most of the time through good luck rather than good planning. But we've managed it for thirteen years, mostly her work with me providing back-up. I promised the same thing to my daughter, the day she was born. In the end though, I wasn't there when they needed it most.

That colours every conversation with Godson. I can't promise to keep him safe no matter what, because things don't work out that way. I can promise to do my best. But that's nowhere near as reassuring to me. Because I wasn't there.

#147 OR catharsis

I am, currently, on a train to Manchester for a cheering visit to a cemetery and a few bitter, rain-filled hours contemplating the grave of an old friend. A decade now since he died and I haven't been back to the city in eight of those years. It's not as though he'd know if I didn't bother to show on the ten year anniversary of his death...but still. I couldn't stay away. It seems (implausibly) rude somehow, to carry on blithely with my small, unimportant little life when Manchester is only a few hours away. What's so crucial that I can't spend the weekend up there, visit my old haunts and marvel at how much and how little everything has changed? Nothing. So here I am. Well. Here I almost am, god bless the British rail system. I've actually spent the last ninety minutes trying to avoid the eye of a morose-looking sheep which is standing outside my window. Same sheep, for ninety minutes. We're moving that fast.

From Manchester on to India, to see what might have been. If I'd been a few shades braver or perhaps a few more sheets to the wind. I've bought a return ticket and have appointments made for the week of my return, all of which are tiny, unimportant reasons to return to the grey of London and the drizzle and my empty apartment. But then it's the unimportant reasons which tend to matter most to me. A very English way of thinking, particularly for a man who is not English. I don't like tea, though, so my assimilation is not quite complete.

I am still intermittently heartsick and aching and carrying this hollow feeling in my chest. Perhaps this trip is an escape, part catharsis and part running away and a slightly creepy imagining of what my life could have been like if things had gone differently. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I booked the tickets, only that I was a hair's breadth away from selecting one-way rather than return. I know that I'll see her there, too. That there's really no escape from this, no matter how far I run. Perhaps it's just a visit to old friends, to catch up with their new daughter and to help him renovate the ramshackle old house he's bought. Maybe we won't mention the adjacent plot of land where we planned to build a house for my family. Won't talk about how his oldest son is only two days older than my daughter would have been. Maybe I can leave the ghosts at home, for once. Locked up in that empty apartment, behind the door of the spare room.

If all goes to plan, the next few posts will appear while I am off gallivanting around Southern India. Of course, this train journey could be an omen. In which case anything could happen, most probably photographs of sad-eyed sheep will show up in their stead.

#144 OR paper or plastic?

Just hung up on my ex mother in law. Again. She's called regularly over the last four (how has it been so long already?) months. Three times today, which is slightly above average, usually she rounds out at a good four times a week. I'm thinking about changing my phone number rather than answering. She leaves voicemails periodically. She's worried, I'm exiling myself for no reason, I need to talk to someone, she doesn't want to lose me, I need family...the reasons I should pick up that she comes up with have been interesting. I'm not entirely sure why she thinks she knows what I need, or why she thinks I have any family left now. An estranged uncle who communicates with me through our lawyers. I haven't seen him since...actually I have no idea. He phoned after my cousin's funeral and that was a good five years ago.

I'm not completely heartless; I answered the first few phone calls. Figured she'd settle down after a while, maybe switch to email or a call once a month or something. But she calls all the damn time! And I'm sympathetic, I really am (mostly) but what she wants is her daughter and I'm not a replacement. Both times I met the woman it was over her daughter's hospital bed. Each conversation with her and each voicemail reinforces how little she knows me. Nobody tells me I "need" to do anything, it's a guaranteed way to send me off in the opposite direction.

I don't really understand how families work, not really, so maybe that's part of my reluctance to answer. I left my abusive parents when I was thirteen years old and haven't seen a single member of my family since. So I really have no idea how to deal with someone trying to mother me, even my own mother never tried to and really, I think it's a little late in life for me to be adopting a parental figure.

I called her mother, after the accident. I was eerily calm on the phone, dialling, giving the news, hanging up, dialling the next member of her family. I met her mom in Hong Kong airport for only the second time; I never was one for grand family reunions, my wife went home alone each summer for two weeks. She was ghostly pale, holding herself carefully upright, I gripped her arm and by the time we got into a taxi, I was all that was holding her up. She was silent throughout the six weeks we spent watching and waiting and clutching onto threads of hope. Afterwards...she was in pieces. I arranged everything, filled in reams of paperwork, filed reports and certificates and got permissions, booked plane tickets, half carried her to the airport, delivered her to her wife in Amsterdam airport. Got myself, somehow, to London. Accompanied by two small, light, white plastic boxes. That's what I remember most clearly about the funeral home. A charming Cantonese girl with a devastatingly white smile asking me if I preferred a metal or plastic container. Like at the supermarket; paper or plastic? I laughed and hated myself for it.

If I could give her what she wanted I would do it. In a second. But I can't, because what she wants is her daughter and granddaughter. So while I understand that she's distraught and that I am a complete bastard...I still decline her calls.

#141 OR withered petals

I have a problem with jasmine.

Actually, as you've probably guessed, I have a problem with many things. Today it is jasmine. Courtesy of a woman at the train station who swept past me, knocking into my shoulder and leaving me reeling. Not because of the knock, I'm not so fragile, because of her perfume. Not overpowering, which made it worse; the scent elusive, drifting, awful. The memory of smells and tastes is so much stronger than the others. The quicker to open old wounds, to twist the hollow in my chest and leave me standing, aghast in a crowd of pushing strangers.

Jasmine grew over the deck, crept up the posts and pushed tentative tendrils through the cracks in the planks. The flowers opened in the evening, as the sun set and enveloped the house in a cloud of jasmine perfume. She made jasmine tea, harvesting the small white flowers in the early morning, a basket of them, petals tightly furled. More than once I woke surrounded by the smell, confused in the early morning light, to find her kneeling, concentrating with that small frown, over a sheet covered in tiny white flowers. Picking the best of them and periodically standing to press the rejected flowers into the mosquito net, held there by fragile green stems. That night the rejects would open for the last time, still clutched in the net. She'd lure me to bed at six, early, flickering orange light of the lamp on her skin, warm against mine. The smell of jasmine curling around us.

Standing in the middle of a throng of pushing commuters, I recalled this poem:

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"

Antonio Machado
Translated by Robert Bly

Which left me so much more stricken than the smell of jasmine alone. That final question echoing in the hollow of my chest.

#138 OR spine unbroken

I say it gets easier. I say there's light at the end of this exceptionally dark tunnel. I say it was worth it. That I'd get married again. That I'm fine. That work is a good distraction. That I have hobbies and friends, as though any of those things compensate for family. I say that I'll call you back, that this time I will email, that I'll come visit, come stay, that I'll be at your wedding, definitely. That I'm thrilled your wife is pregnant, that your nephew won a race, that you'll be in town in July and we will be having drinks, that I can't wait to see you. I say I'll book a holiday, relax, enjoy being alone for once. That I'll get in touch with my last living relative and finally let him know what happened. That I'll text you back, sure. That I'll come out, watch you drink and dance. That I approve of your new girlfriend, that I'll meet you in Soho. That I'm fascinated by the details of your new business. That I enjoyed the book you lent me and returned to you, spine unbroken. That I have somewhere to go this summer. That I have plans for Christmas, already. That I have plans for life, that I'm going somewhere, that I have ambitions. That I've started drawing again, don't worry. That I'm not spending too much time alone. That I'm sleeping better, without pills. That I'm taking my medication and going to the doctor. That I'm eating right and talking about things. That I feel better. Really.

What I don't ask is why people are letting me get away with these huge lies? Enormous, blatant lies. Easily disproved lies that I tell straight to their face, looking them right in the eye. Perhaps the truth is too uncomfortable, it certainly is for me. I prefer the lie, the dream, the fantasy, the few elusive seconds before I'm truly awake when I believe they're here with me. Why tell the truth? Why let people see that behind closed doors I'm a wreck and perhaps the string tying me together is made up of threads of memories and dreams and ghosts. The only person I trusted to see me like this is gone, the person who saw what I meant rather than what I said, the one person I allowed to care. It hasn't been long, but already I'm not even sure how she managed it. Where the cracks in my stonewalling are, the tiny spaces she infiltrated now closed in self defence. No more, not again, certainly not yet. Too easy, once people are inside, to be hurt again. Too easy to be seen. Really seen and known and the full extent of this pain exposed to strangers. No. I prefer the lie, the stonewalling, the safety. I prefer to return the book, spine unbroken.

#135 OR outrunning

One day off a week, and I have no idea what to do with it. In a way I wish I was new to this city, then I'd feel obliged to explore it instead of having this pervasive feeling of apathy. Wanderlust, too. Wishing I'd chosen another path, there were two choices back in January - a job in London and one in Goa, India. I chose London because it was familiar and because I had planned to move to India with my family...around now actually, June, we were due to leave Cambodia and start afresh. She was so excited, we'd been on holiday there a year ago, loved the chaos, the press of people, the noise, the heat, the colours. Mostly loved her being happy. And now, here, looking out at rain-soaked grey buildings I can't remember why I turned it down. Fear, obviously. Afraid of falling to pieces dramatically and being unable to cope, of letting my friend down and ruining his new business, of moving alone to a new country - even though I've done it before, frequently. But there's a stark difference between being alone and being bereft.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write a resignation letter. Imagine being on a plane next week, packing up the shabby old kit bags that have survived so many ridiculous adventures and just leaving. Locking up all the memories of them in this flat and taking myself off, away, somewhere warm and bright and spend my days working on something that matters. There's a space for me there, already planned and waiting. Space for three, and I'd still feel bereft, of course. I know from bitter experience that there's no way to outrun myself, however hard I try. But maybe a purpose? A new language to learn, new children to teach, living with friends, maybe it would work. Soothe the raw ache in my chest somehow. Maybe it would hurt more, finding myself once again on a long-haul flight, turned away into the window and wondering what the fuck happened. Maybe it would recall too strongly the flight home in January, a stark reminder of explaining to the check-in girl why there was only one passenger instead of three. Of crowding myself into the airplane bathroom, kneeling, almost a month since I lost them and finally, finally wracked with sobs so harsh my lips cracked and bled, burnt with acid when the wrenching made me vomit. Keening, curled and spent on the tiny floorspace. Harsh, acrid misery, white knuckles gripping the sink, shaking, not recognizing the dark-eyed, gaunt man in the mirror. Returning to my seat, one of a bank of three. Two of them empty.

#132 OR puzzle pieces

Dinner with old friends tonight. Christ. Awful. Pretentious city bar with generic dark decor and glass tables, vase of beheaded flower stems on the table, full of bankers with their ties hanging from jacket pockets. I'm out of place, got caught up in my work, had to make do with the clothes I keep in the workshop. The mirror over the table reveals, barely, through too low light, a scattering of sawdust still in my hair. I smell of fresh cut wood and epoxy, bandaged hand where I was too avant-garde with a chisel. Our friends are in suit pants, tailored shirts and gelled hair, clean shaven, too much cologne. I barely recognise them from the idiots I met stealing road signs outside University halls. Somehow our roles have reversed; at Uni I was the smart one, always smart and well dressed, they were sure I'd be an advertising exec - a wanker in a tight suit. Somewhere along the line they became the executives with the tidy wives and the pressed shirts and the children and I...I became someone else entirely.

When something terrible happens, something life changing, something which completely alters your perception of yourself and the way you live your life, the way you do everything; you're broken down. You're in pieces and have to work to put yourself back together. Some things are simply thrown out, some are reforged, reshaped, twisted and turned until they fit somehow in the new you that's being created. It happened when I crippled myself, it's happening now. And somewhere in all of that I stopped being the guy that wore snappy suits and stole road signs with his friends. Now I turn up to swanky city bars covered in sawdust, wearing steel capped boots and plaid shirts, I wouldn't choose these friends. I'm not the same person, and my 18 year old self would have had nothing to do with this guy. I'd have wondered why he couldn't afford cologne instead of eau de woodwork.

The first time I put all the pieces back together I somehow became the man that disappears overnight to have frantic adventures on the other side of the world and has to send postcards to let people know he got married. Somewhere in that wreckage I became the guy that steps up and volunteers for things. I liked that guy. I was certain that I was a good man, my wife was proud and endlessly frustrated by me. I took that to mean that I was doing the right things. Now, I'm not quite sure.

Everything's all mixed up and tumbled around and spread out on the floor of the spare room with her life. I've been back in London for four months and still wake, disoriented, straining for the sound of cicadas. I'm not sure where the old pieces fit or what the hell to do with these new pieces; these jagged red and black slivers of grief and guilt and fear that have somehow become mixed up with the familiar, worn edges of the pieces I knew so well. They'll fit, eventually but I get the feeling I'll lose some more friends, put up some more walls and maybe those new sharp pieces will re-shape the old ones into something else I don't recognize.

I never did have the patience for jigsaws.