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. 

Day 0588

I am not a fool.
I am able to grasp concepts and theories and all that sort of airy fairy ‘in my brain only’ shit.
I even grasp that people can be good and do something bad once in a while.
What blows my mind is people who are neither good nor bad. Not neutral. I don’t mean that at all.
But people who can be loving and gentle and kind while simultaneously being cruel.
Yes. I am thinking of both He Who Shall Not Be Named and Halfman.
In a way I can understand HWSNBN better. I know him better: I see where his pathology grew from. Though I still twist myself into Gordian knots trying to make sense of something nonsensical, there is some peace in my brain where I get it.
Halfman I clearly know not well at all. I only know the Honeymoon Halfman – the best of him – and then the cruelty that worked alongside it.
And in fact it is only in applying that word: cruel to him that I get any mental peace about his actions.
Because there is reconciling the gentleness and beauty I saw there with the cruelty with which he acted. It wasn’t even just a light coating of nice over an undercoat of cruel. It was genuine kindness on top of genuine cruelty.
How does that coexist?
How do I make sense of that?

Day 0507

Oops! Turns out Love does not actually = Kindness. I’ve spent my life thinking the two things shared the same definition, which makes me a real turkey cos I’ve certainly experienced all types of love but relatively little kindness over the years.
In fact, when I think about the possibility of meeting someone new – and it has begun to cross my mind once in a while (a nice change) – I want to find kindness before almost anything else.
Almost anything equals: right wing political views, unkempt nosehair and an exhaled wheeze instead of a belly laugh. And, of course, anyone who says while naked and in bed: So do you think less of me now because you know I cheat on my wife? … This is the first time of course!
SO how does one identify kindness?
I can recognise love: big, warm, blinding, deafening, stomach churning, electricity making love.
But kindness, it’s much gentler and quieter cousin, how do you identify that? And how do you distinguish true kindness from just being polite or gentlemanly? How do you know that it’s a kindness that will last into the intimacy of knowing someone really well?
Is the only way to test it? Because I don’t have a great batting average with that method?
I need a Cosmo Quiz!

Days 0496 & 0497

There is a weird space in the human brain when it is in the midst of a traumatic event — a space where milliseconds pass but it feels like ages; where the brain goes through a tick list of options, chooses one and takes action (or not).

I had one of these moments many years ago now. And I punished myself for the contents of my list for decades afterwards.

I’m slightly kinder to myself now. I even occasionally pat myself on the back for being able to think so clearly through all options in such a yuck situation.

The option I punished myself for was number two on this list:
1. Fight like hell to get away
2. Be passive and hope it ends
3. Hurt him

I opted for number 1. And I realise now that I only had number 2 pass through my head; I didn’t actually ever consider it something I would do.

But I over contemplated that micro second for so long: How dare I even consider not fighting! Did that mean I was weak and would rather give in than fight the good fight? Did it make me a bad person to include this option on my list? Oh, I must be a terrible, weak, horrid person for that to even pop into my brain …

And so on.

I don’t understand forgiveness yet. There really is something about it that makes me feel like I’m condoning something when I do it. I suspect I will grow out of that at some point.

But whatever forgiveness truly is, I have finally given it to myself over this thing – this instant that made me hate myself for years; hate myself almost as much as I hated the man who brought it about.

Day 0483

One thing I find endlessly attractive in a fellow human being is trying. As in, watching them and supporting them to keep trying to be themselves, to figure out who that is, to navigate rough times.
That was one of the things I found attractive about Halfman. He was struggling (little did I realise with how much) and certainly gave me the impression he was working hard on being true to himself and to the various people in his life even through a particularly difficult time (the separation that turned out to be a marriage).
But regardless of how much of a Wizard of Oz Curtain his struggle turned out to be, it made me feel privileged to share that time with him – to listen to him think things through, be frustrated, be elated, question himself and realise what he did and didn’t like about relationships.
That’s hard, meaty stuff.
I’ve said too many times already that most of us are good at the easy stuff, the happy times and times of plenty; it’s when the going gets tough that you can measure a person’s depth of character.
But again I find myself at the point where my evaluation of myself is quite unkind.
Somehow I expect to do everything the best way possible, but I only expect – and am sometimes impressed to tears by – other people’s failed attempts.
When I observe these failings short, I feel proud of these people just for trying and for continuing to try. When I fall short I tell myself off. It is in these weird instances that I sometimes wish I was my friend rather than Me. I might be kinder to myself that way.

Days 0468 & 0469

I had a paradigm shift – an important one – as I drove in on my daily commute this morning.

There I was, negotiating the 4WDs and dreaming of a nice coffee when DING!
As in ‘DING bat, how could it take 43 years to get to realise something so simple!’

I’ve long lived by the maxim: Treat others the way you want to be treated.

But the maxim actually is: Treat others the way you expect to be treated.
The two things are wholly different in a totally essential way.

The first puts me where I’ve always been: not expecting to be treated well, just wanting it like crazy and giving people too much latitude to not fulfill my wishes.

Because wishes are dreams after all, not realities. Not something you really ever expect to happen.

But the second version; the one where I expect people to treat me at least as well as I treat them gives me a line where I can say ‘No, you can’t treat me like that. This is not an equal relationship.’

I know Halfman examples are getting a wee bit tiresome (especially for me), but he did provide me with a huge and rich amount of fodder for greater understanding of the arseholery of males.

So allow me to contrast two situations:
Situation 1: Halfman is unable to do something for me because of the difficulty of the situation. I could have humiliated him then, if I’d wanted. I could have told him he needed to step up etc, but I didn’t. I thought: how would I feel in his shoes (or bare feet as they were at that moment). And I went with compassion: ‘There are a million things going on here, I understand if you can’t give yourself to me 100% right now. I will give you my empathy and care because you are deserving of it.’ He was grateful, I think.

Situation 2: Three months into our relationship, I questioned Halfman about something he did that seemed like it was less than honest with me and because he appeared not to be acting ‘separated from the spouseish’. This was when he reacted by telling me he had to ‘do this his way’.

And I felt terrible. Absolutely terrible that I’d questioned him when he had promised to be honest with me and it was a difficult situation and he was working hard to do the best he could and … blah blah blah.

We met up briefly the next day because I needed to see him in the flesh and see his face as we chatted about this exchange.

This is when he said to me that I was ‘better than that’. By which he meant I was better than the person who had questioned his honesty the day before when I’d seen photos of him and his estranged spouse float onto the internet as they frolicked among the white wallabies and leeches of their weekend away together.

That phrase has made me angry for ages now.

And today my paradigm shift made realise clearly why. This is when he should have treated me the way I treated him. He should have said: Goodness me, don’t worry about it. This is a tricky and difficult situation for both of us, not just me. You’ve been patient and generous and kind and I will be the same with you.

In fact, today I can see that this isn’t just what he should have said, but what I deserved to have said.

It sounds a small change in perspective really, but to me, it is a quantum shift. Long may it remain.

Days 0466 & 0467

Most things get easier as you get older; not physically but emotionally, I think.
Decisions get made, you learn you can live with your choices. You learn that when you lose a lover, there is likely another one out there somewhere.
Insults that would have crushed your soul in high school start to only make the person delivering them look small.
And so on.
Except, it seems, when it comes to unkindness.
It is like the years of unkind relationships I’ve had have scraped out some part of me right down to the rawest of nerves.
So any amount of unkindness, even that not directed at me, gives me a jolt and take days to recover from.
Unkindness has hollowed me out.
But instead of making me hard and closed, it’s exposed all my soft bits.
That is the place, I am increasingly certain, where my anger has come from.
I probably can’t avoid being treated unkindly or witnessing it being done to others, but I can bloody well speak up when I feel it happening.
So far that has gained me Halfman’s undying dislike and a handful of puzzled looks at an organisation where I volunteer.
And maybe I’ll find better ways of naming it up eventually.
But I am certainly no longer content to sit back and let it hit me: literally or figuratively.

Day 0465

I don’t know if it’s impressive or disappointing or both that Halfman-related anger can still creep into my thoughts and my skin when I don’t expect it.
Perhaps it’s the time of year recalling hard and lonely decisions, the Bruny Island Birthday of Betrayal, or just the fact that it’s sunny and I (in spite of my best efforts) know that he still exists, still thinks he’s charming, still bumbles about under the guise of a human being.

See, even that was nasty.

That’s the kind of angry I get: ‘stab you through the eye with sarcasm and nasty words’ kind of angry

It’s so ugly and unkind.

And I’ve made a decision that Kindness is the rule for me in life.

I don’t particularly want people to remember me as ‘nice’ but I do absolutely want them to remember me as ‘kind’.

And I think too I need to let go of trying to expect people to change to become kind. Some people just aren’t.

And I need to watch that trap where people appear kind when in fact they are motivated by what they want and are lucky it just happens to be kind.

This will sound petty as an example, but it’s the clearest one I have in my brain at the moment:

This is not kindness or generosity: Buying new stirring spoons for someone because *you* don’t think theirs are adequate, especially after you’ve asked them if they are happy with their spoons and they’ve said ‘yup, they stir and spoon things just fine so all good’.

This is kindness: Seeing a clearly harried mother standing on the sidewalk five metres from a tantrum throwing child and saying quietly to her as you pass “you’re doing well”.

Day 0451

Of the types of acts that leave indelible warm and fuzzy memories on my rather bedraggled heart, it’s the kind ones I remember most clearly; Not so much the gestures of love. They can often come combined, I suppose, but it’s still the kindness that stands out.
I think that’s because kindness is so simple and generous and, usually, very quietly given.
Love is loud and – sometimes – ugly. It is selfish too in its own undefinable way.
So when I look back on the memories I’ve harvested I am quite sure it’s the kind acts that stand out.

The lady whose name I’ll never know, standing behind the make-up counter in a department store who held my hand and spoke calmly and warmly to me while we waited for the police so I could report a sexual assault. Who whispered into my traumatised brain ‘this was not your fault; it was not about you’.

My child, who at the age of three, watched me trying to put my socks on through the intense, tear-jerking pain of a debilitating back injury and said: Don’t do that, Mum. That’s my job. And proceeded to put my socks on my feet for me punctuated with gentle kisses dropped onto the pads of my toes.

A former co-worker-now-friend who continues to tell me that my presence helps to make the world go around as I pull myself through the black holes of family court.

And so many, many more.

Kindness is the antidote to that dark spot that is sometimes inside me. It stops me from hitting the bottom over and over again.

And so I conclude: While love is amazing; kindness is extraordinary.

Days 0444 & 0445

In the first relationship I had after I separated three years ago, the man just wanted a root but then was so surprised that I had a brain (he had to tell me this — that’s how surprised he was) that he realised he also wanted to spend time with me when I was upright.
Lovely.
I was rather naive. I still didn’t really believe at that point that men would expend all the energy of being charming and kind just to get a root or two. (I do now; that is one thing Halfman gave me — the understanding that men will put more energy into getting a root than Any. Other. Part of their lives. Any. Other.)
So I just assumed that because he was acting full on like he liked me, that he must actually like me.
And it wasn’t too long before he started in with the ‘I love you’s and ‘Don’t you love me too’s.
Well, I didn’t. And I said so. I told him I enjoyed his company. And he was a good cook. And it was nice to be out in the world trying on a new relationship for size after two decades of you+me relationships.
And truth be told, I guess it was curiousity and enjoyment of someone’s admiration that prevented me from putting up my ‘No’ hand to Halfman when he revealed his feelings for me.
I liked him. He had lovey dovey eyes when he looked at me. He seemed sooooo gentle.
And it was Great Fun: To be admired. After years of the opposite, it was delicious and intoxicating.
But I wasn’t In Love then. Not until quite a bit later.
And I wonder if a big part of the In Love that I fell into was enjoyment of knowing I had that feeling, that capacity to feel, still inside me somewhere. I mean, I cared about him deeply and loved him tenderly, but the best thing about it was feeling that way: warm inside, filled with anticipation, loving the sound of another person even when they weren’t doing anything.
Those are the bits I want again. Just need to make sure they’re attached to an actual Whole Human next time around.