#217

I've lived, quite happily, with my ghosts for the last eight months. Grief is comfortable, after a while. A comfort blanket of misery that you can take everywhere with you. I couldn't or wouldn't let it stop me working but I allowed it to extend cold, dead, clammy fingers into all other aspects of my life. It became convenient to nest in my sadness, to spend ninety hours a week working and the remaining hours alone, talking to ghosts. I could have made more of an effort, months ago, to pick myself up and dust off the darkness, little by little. But I didn't. I didn't want them to leave. A part of me loathes the intrusive memories, the nightmares, despises the shock of seeing her face in a crowd, of ironing a shirt and discovering the faded pink heart she stitched inside the cuff. The rest of me clings desperately to those small moments of shock which leave me standing, stricken, remembering her. After all, without those...what are they? If I forget, then what? What's left? 

 

I argue with the rational part of myself that thinks, repeatedly, perhaps now - perhaps it is time. I fight fiercely with that side of me; I gave up their ashes! I gave up her things! I gave in to her family, their graves aren't even in this country! I gave up my job, our house! Isn't that enough? What more am I meant to do? And so I curled, safe and sad inside my nest of grief. And there I stayed. People tried to tempt me out, to drag me out, to pull the words from me, and force my sadness into the light. As though it would crumble in the face of their happy little lives. But it doesn't work like that. I gave up those things because it was easier. Because if I gave up all the things that reminded me of them being gone, then I was free to live with my ghosts. 

 

I'm drawing myself out slowly now and trying to find people I can bear to have near me. People who didn't know her, and people who did, some of them. I've never particularly liked people, or really understood most people, which makes it even more important, somehow, for me to find people I can bear. I still miss them, daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute. I still have nightmares. I still get intrusive memories. I still see her face in crowds. I still haven't held my friend's three month old daughter, and I still haven't returned my mother in law's calls. I still work ninety hour weeks. I still talk to my wife. I still have that awful, hollow, clenching pain in my chest. But I've talked to an actual living person every day for two months, returned some calls from old friends, been outside more, drunk less, and tried a little harder. I'm not going to suddenly forget her because I put down the bottle and go sit in the garden.

And tonight? Tonight I had a date. A third date. Which I barely even thought about because I was so tied up in work, and so thrilled that everything went smoothly. So no guilt. Well, a little, when the extremely odd thought that my dead wife would have liked him. Which isn't a thought I can deal with, it's one that I keep boxed in the corner of my mind. Things are getting better, I suppose, which brings new guilt, new sadness, and correspondingly little happiness. Which makes it hard to see what all this was for.

#206 OR longhaul

For the last few nights I've been wandering the streets of the city late at night, through til dawn. Talking to police officers and appalled members of the public, watching London burn. I feel strange, disconnected from it, this no longer seems like my city, don't recognise these people. Youths in hoods kicking in shop windows and burning down one hundred year old department stores. That's not the mad British way I've come to appreciate, like a fine tea. But during the day, during the day Londoners appear incredibly brave in that stalwart English manner. Marching down the streets with brooms and binliners, or in the early evening making plastic cups of tea for police officers, handing them round on an upturned riot shield.

I'm staring down the barrel of having to move again. It seems as though I'm constantly drifting, although I never thought that this move would be permanent. I used to enjoy moving. We, used to enjoy moving. We moved yearly, every July brought the same old kit bags, different tear-filled goodbyes and parting gifts, the same drive to the airport and the same long, long flight to Paris, the same strange month seeing old friends, stocking up on odd little essentials (me - marmite, zippo wicks, biros, toothbrushes, and razor blades. Her - liquorice cigarette papers, underwear, birkenstocks, embroidery thread, and tampons. Both - pills, bandages, endless piles of first aid supplies until it looks like our luggage got switched with that of Médecins Sans Frontières.), and leaving our tatty, stained old Lonely Planet on the shelves. Then we'd head off again, with a crisp new guide book full of post-its and her over-excited red pen circles and exclamation marks. Heads together on the flight over, checking and re-checking the list of things she wants to do, and books I posted to myself from the airport, laughing at our mispronounciation and wondering whether it wouldn't have been easier to stay put? Seeing as we finally knew the language? No, of course not, why even bring it up?

She always talked to the person sitting next to her. I sat in the aisle, to stretch my leg out and get run over by the trolley. I always fell asleep to the sound of her answering questions about why we were moving and where from and gosh wasn't it exciting? I'd wake up hours later, the cabin dark apart from television screens and flickering orange floor lights, to find her straddling my lap, shaking silently with the giggles, her hand on my shoulder. Clearing my throat, what are you laughing at? She laughs harder now I'm awake, tears on her cheeks, sat on my lap now. 'I'm sorry, it was just your face!' Oh, nice I say and wrap my hands around her waist, kiss her chin and tickle that spot above her hip until she squirms and I have to lift her off into the aisle. I haul myself up while she's in the bathroom, as she weaves her way back through the chairs she sees me and scowls, points a disapproving finger at me. 'You didn't need to get up' I know, I say, catch her hips in my hands and kiss below her ear, but I don't know if I could have restrained myself this time, my voice is a low breath against her throat; I can feel her lascivious laugh against my lips. 'From doing what?' She bats her eyelashes, pouts, laughs at herself. Tickling you to death I say, she squirms away 'you better sit down before you fall down, old man.' Bitch I mutter, sitting down beside her.

I was always envious of the way she slept on planes. Over a foot shorter than me she curled up like a dormouse in a blanket, eyemask, and earphones, she shut out the world, pressed her face against my side, and draped my arm over her. The first time she did it I looked up at passing passengers, embarrassed to be seen so entangled. Because you never think it'll end, do you? Even when the dark recesses of your mind whisper those thoughts to you in the dead of night, causing you to reach for your other, better half across the mattress, just to brush them with the side of your hand. Reassure yourself that they're there, warm, and breathing. Even then, with horror clutching at your heart and squeezing, you never think it will end. Never really comprehend waking with the tight clench in your chest and reaching, reaching, fingertips curling over the edge of the mattress with nothing but your arm and empty stretches of cotton in between.

Those vile few minutes of sweating, shivering terror are why I walk the streets at night, why I watch late night television, why I avoid bed like the plague.

#196 OR quietly

I spent yesterday in a froth of anxiety and indecision (as opposed to my usual fug of misery and despair) over the approaching date. I changed my mind about going every ten minutes and crashed and burned horribly during my weekly meeting with my boss. I told him I had a date after dropping my notes and losing my third set of blueprints. He took a step back, aghast. 'A date? Already?' His voice was slightly shrill. 'Yes, a date, already', after a mere one hundred and ninety six days of being alone, a period of time which seems both interminably long and barely the length of a heartbeat. 'Are you, you know, ready?' I paused for a while, twisting my wedding ring and fiddling with my blueprints. 'No, no, of course I'm not ready. But I don't think I'll ever be ready unless I start somewhere.' He looked rather taken aback at that, but then it is perhaps the most I've ever told him about myself. Frankly, it came as something of a revelation to myself as well. 'Well, yes, you're probably right. I can't imagine starting over meself. Don't know if any woman would want me! Of course, you've got double the pool haven't you?' Thankfully, at that point, I managed to re-shuffle my notes into the correct order and weigh down my blueprints so we could return to things that did not make me cringe.

I do not have 'double the pool' I currently have a pool containing one woman, who I can no longer have, and a whole array of other people who I appreciate like I appreciate a work of art; completely asexually. But I agreed to a date, and dithered for so long that it was too late to cancel. So instead, I dithered over dressing, forgot my oyster card, spilled lighter fluid all over my hands and zippo, lost everything I required to get out of the house, and eventually arrived thirty five minutes late. My date was waiting, patiently, nursing a glass of wine and flirting with the barman. Apart from an awkward moment where he estimated my age as a full decade older than I actually am, everything was positively delightful. Charming, witty, a nice line in dry black humour, and a lasciviously throaty laugh. I would rather have had a dreadful time, I felt guilty. I still feel guilty. I took my wedding ring off, naturally, not quite able to leave it at home, so instead it burned a hole in my chest, hanging from the leather cord I carried her engagement ring on for so many months.

It ended early, thankfully, as things wound down I was increasingly cracking up under the weight of eating in public, being my most charming self, and not mentioning anything tragic. So we milled awkwardly outside, my date waiting for a cab and myself waiting for a cab to whisk him off. We dawdled, I smoked, and was surprised with an invitation to a collection he is curating in a few weeks. Another date. An invitation to a second date, made on the first. I mumbled, stuttered, dropped my cigarette, bent to pick it up, stumbled, and was hauled up slightly too close to him with his hand on my arm. He hung on a little too long, I apologised, and laughed at my own bumbling ineptitude. We stood like that until a cab showed up, I kissed him on the cheek, pre-emptive in case he went for the lips.

It was early, so I went to the cinema, alone. Harry Potter, again, and sat in the dark and cried, quietly.

#194 OR base camp

I worried, less than a year ago, that I would be a terrible parent, that despite years of teaching I'd suddenly be unable to cope with a single child. That I'd drop her, or break her, or even worse simply fail her in some profound way so that she grew up sad, angry, and confused about why I did that to her. In the quiet, dark moments I spent lying awake beside her I wondered if I would take after my father and somehow be unable to stop myself turning into him and driving her away with fists and harsh, mocking laughter. I worried about losing Lena and being left with a girl I couldn't possibly understand. I worried about being unable to talk to her, or whether she'd turn out like me and our combined silence would drive my wife to distraction. I worried about losing her, like I worry about losing everyone. In spite of all this fretting, I figured that by the time she was fourteen, we'd have it sort of worked out, be almost forty years old and have some semblance of a grip on life. In short, it would be very different to having a fourteen year old dropped into your life and scrambling to make the best of it.

I don't know how to deal with him. I don't know what he needs, I don't know what he wants, nor do I know what he likes to do, his favourite food, colour, the names of his friends, what vaccinations he's had, where his birth certificate is, who is listed as his next of kin, what he's allergic to, when he last had a doctor's appointment, what the hell the name of his asthma medication is, or any of the other stuff that I really do need to know. Things that I assume I'd have got to know over the last fourteen years if he'd been mine. As it is, I'm fumbling around in the dark, making huge catastrophic mistakes, and lying awake at night worrying. He needs new clothes; I have no idea where to take him, no clue what he likes, and a sneaking suspicion that we'll be that teenager/adult pair having a quiet, vicious row in the middle of a department store.

Worrying about all these things now, brings back the quiet panicking I did while she was pregnant, except there's no one telling me not to be so ridiculous, and to shut up and go to sleep already. I've been on my own for seven months now, which seems an interminably long time and is the longest I've been single since I was twelve. It still scares the shit out of me, as well as being somewhat liberating. Unfortunately I don't do well with freedom, I devolve into a shambling, shuffling, dishevelled creature, wearing the same paint stained shirt for a week, and forgetting how to talk to people other than myself. I smoke too much, drink too much, and attempt to live on a biscuit and tea diet. Luckily Godson has adopted a pack of friends and is running wild over London, occasionally stopping by to complain that there's no food, drink soda, and lounge in front of the television in bizarre yellow and purple pyjamas, leaving me free to carry on my semi-feral existence.

In an attempt to remember how to relate to people I have a date tomorrow night. Accepting seemed like a good idea at the time, now...I am not so sure. Real clothes? Shaving? Taming my hair? Attempting polite conversation, appearing interested, talking about myself (the horror), navigating through crowds, eating nice food in public, not blurting out that I'm sort of heartbroken and still talk to my wife. I might as well try climbing Everest.

#186 OR why am I writing?

When I resurrected this blog in the wake of January's assorted tragedies and uprootings, I contemplated making it private. In the end, obviously, I did not, because I thought no one would read it. I'm still not quite sure why anyone has. I re-read posts only on particularly dark days when it seems impossible to reach the light, when there's a deep, dank place inside me which nothing will illuminate, which nothing can reach. Or on days when I've forgotten a little bit more of her and the agony of that is almost unbearable. I was convinced that no one would want to spend their spare time reading about such pain. And yet it seems that people have, and do, and while I'm grateful...I am also extremely confused. This is not the sort of blog that I read, I don't read widow's blogs or surround myself with the bereaved in an attempt at self-soothing. Instead I come here, and write (poorly) about whatever is hurting me most. Usually it's memories of her, of them, sometimes it's my frankly useless body, and sometimes it's the end of a series of books. I write about what hurts most because I come back to it later to open old wounds and remind myself that I am indeed capable of feeling something. 

I didn't have an audience in mind because I couldn't envisage there being one. I don't have an audience in mind now because...it still seems unbelievable that anyone should want to read anything I have written. That doesn't mean I'm not incredibly grateful for comments, or for people linking to my meagre little corner of misery (something which is absolutely astonishing to me). I am, fawningly so. Even though I have no real idea who I'm aiming this blog at, apart from myself, it's a little unsettling to think that I may manage to disappoint someone that I don't even know. 

I have laid bare very specific aspects of myself here. Things which I cannot say out loud to anyone. But this agony is not (thankfully) all of me and life is improving, slowly. After 186 genuinely awful days, I do still feel guilty about having fun, about doing things, about living. I do still feel that I should not be, that everything I do which is not limited to crying in the dark, is a terrible betrayal. I squash those feelings down. Because what's the point of being alive if that's all that I can do?

I think about them all the time. Right now, even. How ridiculous she would find this situation that I seem to have got myself into. She had to apologize for me not talking, for absent-mindedly wandering off while people were talking to me, for telling people to just be quiet already. The absurdity of me, in my own roundabout way, apologising for talking too much, to complete strangers, would make her howl with laughter. She'd be smug, too, because I'd finally understand how annoying it is to have to smooth down the feathers that I've ruffled.

Really, anyone who reads this...you probably know my wife better than you know me. There's thirty posts about her, about Cambodia, about grief and pain and loss. Posts which make my heart ache when I read them back, posts which bring clouds of memories to sit, heavy on my shoulders and follow me through the day. 

Looking back, it would make more sense to have introduced myself back in January, rather than awkwardly appearing here, in July, after exposing the darkest recesses of my mind. Unfortunately, in January, I wasn't particularly coherent. So here we are. God. It's always at the strangest times that I find I need her, that I realize all over again exactly how much she did for me and how I just don't quite work without her.

#178 OR riddikulus

When the first Harry Potter book came out, I was twelve. A year later, I would run away from home. Between thirteen and seventeen I was shuffled between foster homes and institutes and had long periods of being homeless, or squatting. I didn't have a lot of things, I didn't have a lot of money, often I didn't even have enough to eat. In fact I can still remember the contents of the horrible old duffle bag that I carried everywhere with me; one pair of jeans, one sweater, one t-shirt, sleeping bag, pocket knife, notebook stuffed with photos, my grandfather's watch, and, by the time I replaced the bag in 2004 – five extremely worn out novels. Paperback. I read them so often that they disintegrated. When I replaced them, I forked out for the hardback copies which have weathered my affections rather better. I read those books endlessly. In the rain, in the cold, by candlelight, by torchlight, under the covers, in my sleeping bag, in school, hiding in public bathrooms, on park benches.

I grew up with Harry Potter, in a lot of ways I spent more time in the wizarding world than I ever did in the real world. Those books taught me a lot of things and will never really leave me. Which, to someone that doesn't quite get it because they're a children's series and I'm a grown man now, makes absolutely no sense. But there are good lessons in there, important lessons. Without those books, I would be a very different man. Because it's that imaginary world which taught me about love and friendships which go far beyond family and doing what's right instead of what's easy.

Perhaps most of all the books are, to me, a way of coping with loss. They get called a children's series, and perhaps the first three are, but the rest of the series is a veritable bloodbath. No other children's story wipes out so many of its characters. And yet you carry on, because the ones who love us never really leave us. And because there's really nothing to fear in death.

My wife was a Harry Potter nut. The majority of my generation is, actually. I expect the midnight showing will be packed with adults, rather than children, and I anticipate a lot of crying. I watched every film with her, the last three at the midnight showing, with her wearing the same nerdy t-shirt. She refused to read the last book for months, almost a year she held out without reading any spoilers, without even lifting the cover, because she didn't want it to be over. Needless to say, when we moved to Thailand we took six books with us, just six. And those are the copies I've been re-reading over the last fortnight; frequently dotted with splashes of ginger tea or a flattened mosquito, bookmarked with Khmer newspaper clippings and with her scratchy pencilled notes in the margin. Inside the cover of the Deathly Hallows she's written today's date in stark, excited pencil and surrounded it with a countdown of the months. She arranged my annual summer vacation around the release of this movie and warned me that she would be seeing it often, maybe daily for a week or so.

I've thought a lot about this movie, and what it means. It's the end of a saga I've been wrapped up in since I was thirteen. Half my life has been tied up in these novels, these movies. J K Rowling said at the premiere last week that Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home. Which sounds a little trite, a little unbelievable if you're not a bit of a Harry Potter nerd. It's true though, because the things we love never really leave us.

And because I loved her and she loved this series, and because she'll never really leave me, I'll be wearing her shirt tonight, to the midnight showing. And trying not to cry for a variety of reasons.

#176 OR splinted

I like to wait, most of the time, for other people to initiate difficult conversations. I prepare myself, run through things I'd like to say and file them away at the back of my mind until someone else brings it up. Rarely do I ever have the desire to jump right in and get things over and done with, I'm happy to wait. But I'd waited since April for Godson to come to me so we could hash out a few key issues, and he never did. He was sick while he was here and then he was back at school and there never seemed to be any time, even on the phone, to straighten things out. Perhaps I should have broken my unspoken rule and gone to him back in Spring when he was still here. Instead I let things sit, and, as it turns out, fester until it all erupted on Saturday and we both said things that we didn't quite mean. On Sunday I let them sit, because just seeing him made me unspeakably angry and we'd already done enough shouting in the heat of the moment. Monday, unfortunately, I had to suck it up.

I bought breakfast, deposited it on the coffee table and we watched cartoons with thinly veiled animosity. It took us around an hour to get round to actually speaking. I swear, if I didn't know better I'd think we were actually related. We talked about his Mother, and I laid out what I knew about where she is, we talked about Lena, about his step-father, about his school and about sex. Because he's a fourteen year old boy and it's impossible to have a conversation with him without it returning to sex. He apologized for what he said, I apologized for treating him as a friend rather than a...I don't even know what to call it, a ward, I suppose. He told me, very quietly, that sometimes I call him Alexei. Which I hadn't realized, and is a disturbing thing to learn. But it's true, I treat him like my friend, my brother, not like a kid, and it's too much sometimes. They're similar, in a lot of ways and there's an uncanny physical resemblance, which I've never questioned his Mother too closely about.

In the end, I buggered up, and I should know better. Equally he was vicious, and should know better. But we've both been dumped together and there's a certain learning curve when a teenager is unceremoniously dropped into your life.

And this morning took me to my speaking threshold but, alas, we were not done for the day. I took myself off into the bathroom and he took himself into a spare room to practise in peace. Now, this sodding bathroom is the current bane of my existence. I know that I should admit defeat and call a plumber but after so many weeks of wrestling with it the whole saga has become a point of pride and I will bloody fix it if it kills me. It made its first returning stab at me today, the bastard. The short story is I was a touch cavalier and jammed my hand in a position that a hand is not meant to be in and the result was a compound fracture of my first finger. Sickening to look at but not half as painful as the seven hours we spent at casualty waiting for me to be 'reset' which, as a word, does not convey the disgusting sight and sound of your finger bones being realigned.

Seven hours, and all I wanted to do was ask him what he means when he says he loves me. I'm not sure why it's bothering me so much. I mean, he's known me as long as he's been alive and I endeavour to turn up whenever I'm needed, it's not altogether surprising. I love him. It's just...something. Something is a little odd about it, a look he gets. Not worth ruining our new truce over, though. I promised myself I'd try and remember that he's fourteen, my godson. Not my brother, not my friend, and I can see what he means now. I do treat him like my brother, Godson and I drive his Mother mad when we're together. All inside jokes and pranks and running off to have mad adventures. All of which is fine when you're visiting but it's not sustainable with him living here. And asking him what he means by loving me is, well, rude for one thing.

Fuck, I'm exhausted and he's only been here two days. I don't know if I'll even make it to September.