Days 0849, 0850, 0851, 0852 & 0853

When I was a little person – golden haired and butterball turkey-shaped – and got sick with the flu or something equally yucky, my dad was a glorious nurse. My mum spent more time at home with me when I was sick, but dad’s shifts were more memorable. Tender and gentle and thoughtful. Of course I had to be on death’s door for either of them to confirm I was actually sick, but still. He took awfully good care of me. And still does.

My One True Love didn’t. At all. I once sliced open my face between my upper lip and my nostril when a speaker fell on me from a height. His response was to say he was too busy to get me to Emergency safely so could I just cover it up and lie over there. Because the blood bothered him. Yes. Yes. I married him after that. Yes. Yes. Perhaps it was a slight warning sign.

Anyway, that incident pretty much encapsulated his Care Program: just go over there so I can forget about you while you’re icky, thanks.

And of course Capt Arsehat. His idea of care was more of a ‘whydontyou’. As in: Your sickness is ruining my weekend. You are just being melodramatic throwing up and spewing diahorrea at the same time! Why can’t you ever be there for me? Why don’t you care more about me!? Fuck you! 

And so on. Delivered in all caps, of course, but you don’t deserve that, dear reader.

Is it any wonder I am used to taking care of myself when I’m sick? 

And yet, I hate that so much.

The gentleness of being cared for. I felt it in friend form this weekend. And it was beautiful.

I don’t know what kind of person I want to fall in love with. Not even sure I want to fall in love. Ever. But kindness, that is the Ultimate. That is what I want in my life. 

Days 0812, 0813 & 0814

In the same week that I learned just how much of a demi-dick Halfman was, I also had this experience, which I have yet to fully compute.

My childhood friend came to visit. He was other things to me too but above all, he had always been a friend. I trusted him to care about me.

Turned out he expected, and was frustrated by, my desire to go slowly and be friends first.

Now I wouldn’t claim I treated him perfectly – ever. I stuff up on that front all the time.

But when someone who you trust more than any other male gets angry and frustrated because you’re not sleeping with them … well, fuck that (but not literally).

Even a Good Man appears to have a sense of something ‘promised’, something ‘exchanged’. In other words, a sense of ‘if I put myself out for her, she should put out’.

In spite of the Halfman revelation coming at exactly the same time and sending my sparkplugs into meltdown, I could at least see how ridiculous and wrong that was.

And unfortunately there’s no turning back from that kind of attitude.

So I lost a dear friend. And so did he.

And that, as they say in the classics, is that.

Days 0674, 0675 & 0676

i come from a land far far away from where I live. And where I live is a small town with a big town dream.

I arrived here at 23, married. 

I made zero friends. Not because I am putrid but because everybody already has their friends down here. And those they aren’t friends with are family or people they went to school with.

More than one person said to me: oh, I’m not looking for friends, I’ve already got the ones I want.

Which I thought was just plain stupid. And very shortsighted.

Unless no one ever moves anywhere else (which does happen here far too much) friends come and go and come back again.

That’s the beauty of friendship.

And the nature of your friendship with even just one person can alter and change and grow and explode. The power can shift, the degree of need can agitate from one side to the other.

I existed here for about 15 years without any real friends. Partly it was small-townitis  as previously described and partly the controlling and introverted relationships I got into.

But about five years ago I hanged jobs and started to find My People. The ones who genuinely got ‘jokes’. The ones who were interested in big questions and politics rather than what was on tv last night (unless it was a leadership debate), and the ones who cared how I was when I wasn’t in the office with them.

Those friends made me stronger: finding them is the reason I’ve made the Good and Hard decisions I’ve made in the past four years.

Days 0657 & 0658

Yup. I am so not ready to try again yet. I thought I was but you know, the whole bothering to pay attention to someone else and worrying whether or not they’ll like you is tiring and – honestly? – a bit tedious.

So I get the subtle kick in My behind: I’m still really into Me Time and figuring out what that is. 

There’s far too little of it around to use it to concern myself with charming a male I don’t know very well.

I can see that Me Time has progressed from a total ‘me on my own time thing’ to an integrating of friends into Me Time. That is healthy.

Maybe I’m just ready for more of that?

Days 0534 & 0535

There are some people – a limited number for sure – who you just ‘click’ with in a lifetime.

Some you click with physically, others it’s a sense of humour, or a shared approach.

And some it’s just a total intellectual clickage.

That’s my favourite.

When your brains somehow hit the same spot over and over again even though you get there in totally different ways.

I got to see one of these people today – don’t see them very often, but when I do it’s always gratifying.

And besides, it’s just plain nice to know you’re missed.

Day 0511

So many paradigm shifts lately: I’m becoming a human tectonic plate!
But it’s all good. I think.
Today’s earth moving realisation?
Well, I’ve always looked at my life and thought ‘a good romantic relationship would improve this’.
But today I found myself thinking: ‘somebody’s going to have to be great for me to want to share this life and my happiness with them’.
Is this what that cliche of ‘you have to find yourself before you can find someone’ means?
I hope not: I hope I am so unique that I’ve discovered something about life that not a single other person ever has, but on the off chance I’m not that unique, I guess I can live with finally understanding the cliche.
Because it feels strong. And good. And happy.
That’s not to say the ooze of Halfman can’t still creep in and take my appetite away. But there are friends who can make me laugh when that happens so the fug he brings on his carpet of crap doesn’t last quite as long. And it certainly doesn’t take me down the tunnel of dismal soul-crushed nothingness anymore.
Hallelujah for that.
And for friends.
Hal. Le. Lu. Jah. For friends.

Day 0502

The first guy who legitimately asked me out on a date was my close friend’s brother. We were in grade 12: he was in third year uni. He was studying to be an engineer and I remember asking him to explain what made engineering interesting. He talked to me about the angle of the ramp bits of sidewalks at crossings. Hmmmm …
He started by offering to drive me and my friend everywhere we wanted to go. And then he joined us: at movies, playing Risk (the world’s most boring game – does it ever end?), going to Dairy Queen for a banana split.
Eventually he got on the phone one evening when I rang my friend and asked me out.
Ugh. It had never ever ever occurred to me that he might like me. And he was my friend’s brother: it felt like incest somehow.
Never mind the sidewalk ramp obsession, the dad who was a coroner and spoke of corpses at dinner, the xmas tree that literally did not get taken down from the living room until it had lost every needle and turned a very dry reddish brown. Never mind he wasn’t tall and blond and athletic and everything I’d ever dreamed for myself.
I ended up feeling anxious for 24 hours and then told him ‘thank you’ but that it made me uncomfortable because of my friendship with his sister.
Turned out she had encouraged him to ask me.
Urgh.
I eventually lost her friendship over a boy – not her brother.
I’ve often wondered what became of her and her other, younger brother, who had a room in the attic under the sloping roof where he kept turtles in a kids’ wading pool.

Day 0484

When I was 19 I had the strange experience of having a female friend dump me. She did it by phone and it was over a boy: well, two boys to be exact. But she told me it was because I was ‘too happy’ and that annoyed her so … She wasn’t interested in spending time with me anymore.
It actually made me laugh; it was so absurd.
I’ve long wondered why she chose that lie to explain her decision to me.
Perhaps she was just feeling bitchy and telling me I was too happy was her way of scratching my eyes out nor trying to make me feel inferior.
Unfortunately her long distance boyfriend, who she cheated on in my presence, had a crush on me for many years. I suspect that made her edgy though I don’t think I ever passed anything onto him about what she was up to.
It was impressive how utterly this woman cut me off: from friend I saw constantly and shared lunchtimes with everyday to someone who hugged her nose in the air and pretended I didn’t exist for the next three years of a degree program in which we were two of just 12 students.
She was committed, I’ll give her that.
She eventually married a dental hygienist and I just say there was a certain sense if kharma in that fate.
Dingbat is the word that keeps popping into my head as I contemplate this memory – and what I fabulous word it is.

Day 0457

I would never have guessed there would be so many steps to regaining my Self.
Today’s involved a legal query: what name should go on such and such a paper (one that signifies independence for me quite literally).
And the reply from my lawyer: Put N—– McB—- on it.
That’s My Name. Please wear it out.

That is me. Me!

Mother of beautiful child.

Woman who is Still Here in spite of an over-run of arsehats.

Daughter who has regained the friendship and care of her parents after He tried so hard to sever them.

Person with incredible friends who don’t get tired of propping her up, smiling at her, telling her the truth when she needs to hear it.

Human being worthy of being treated with kindness, of not being lied to. Of being listened to.

I will doubt all these things as soon as I stop writing them.

But more than anything I want them to be true. And I felt like they were for more than a minute or two today.

And that’s not just ‘nice’; that’s the beginning of a revolution.

Day 0446

How do you measure the value of what you’ve done in life?
Is it some ratio of happiness to sadness? More things you define as won than lost?
Because that can’t work: sometimes losing things is a win.
Is it measured on the last day? In the worth of the being you finally become?
Or in how much you tried, how much effort you put in?
I know it’s not measured in mistakes; of that I am sure.
Or in the money in your bank account.
Or the letters after your name.
Could it be in the friends you make? And the character of your children?
Or the amount of lessons you learned, even if you learned them all through failure?