In any case she got back to me in the morning and was jolly and all that good stuff and said, sure, we can meet up later but it’ll have to be quick ‘cos she’s got meditation and then needs to pack and do other stuff and sleep. And then I get a bit open – a bit too open for text messages sent to someone while they’re at work – and say the things I didn’t want to say. About this new guy. About the real reasons for going to Ireland . I felt bad about that. It was a bit stupid but I have an inability to keep it in. I took myself off to my dad’s shop to work there and give my mind something else to think about. Though she was cool with it though and arranged to come over to mine after her meditation around ten.
I talked a lot with my dad at his shop. I was trying to get some wisdom from him about the whole women and commitment thing. He says he doesn’t have any regrets but also that he made a lot of mistakes. I say I’m trying not to make those mistakes and talk about wanting to be with someone in a serious way but all he can see is that women give you headaches – though he freely acknowledges that’s his way, not mine. In fact, when I asked his advice on something and he said to do basically what he himself would never do he surprised me with his clarity in knowing the difference in our natures. He never could commit or stay faithful and never really wanted to. He likes being on his own and not having to deal with another’s demands. Well I like that too – but I also prefer the life that involves another and all the sharing and companionship and cuddles and emotional growth, which I imagine is something that’s never really appealed to him. It’s about priorities and desires, I guess. Women for him was always just about the bunk up. For me, it’s that and a whole lot more. I do want to have a family. I do want to get to know someone deep down, come home to them, lay in their arms and share my heart. But I’m also terrified of it and I told him that; waxed quite lyrical and flamboyant about feeling the full extent of my fear of being trapped and how I almost would rather have died than finally give myself to Laura in a truly committed way. He liked her. He met her once and intimated that he approved.
Later on I met my mum and tried to tell her the story of the signs and how Laura had echoed Momma’s words – the final seal? the significance of the timing? – but as is her own nature she was being a bit too devil’s advocate for my sensitive soul. Still, it’s maybe something I need to help cut through all the slushy, mushy bullshit. I even texted some friends and asked them who they thought was best suited out of all my exes. One said “the French one and Laura” and the other said “Nicky.” I was happy that neither of them said Sophie, especially after the way she had re-entered my heart during my conversation with my mum’s husband; they both knew her quite well and thinking about how she was with them brings to mind that she maybe wasn’t that nice or good for me after all. Rose-tinted spectacles and all that. But she was cold and aloof and I’d do well to remember that, no matter what my record of our emails might try and tell me.
Funnily enough, right when I was working at my dad’s shop I got a call from Perlilly and we had a real lovely chat about various things and I thought she was a great help. I’d just the night before been reading the diary entries that cover the period of our time together and I was struck by a number of things. Number one, how awesome I thought she was, and how awesome she told me I was. Number two, by how surprisingly open and deep some of our msn conversations were. And number three, by how much like what I’ve just been going through a lot of our relationship was. It was all right there – the “don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” – the keeping things inside and unspoken – the fear of commitment and babies – and the resolutions to remember not to do those things in the future. That was a bit depressing, to realise that I’ve already lived all this once before and hadn’t remembered a thing – especially when I’m right now convinced that I’ll remember for the next time so powerful have the last few months been.
Mainly, though, it was in just reminding myself what an awesome person she was and that we had a really good time together. Of all the women I’ve ever been with she’s probably the only one I don’t have any regrets over. We broke up once, for about a month – I wouldn’t remember that if I hadn’t written it down – and I pursued her and won her back and things went from strength to strength, despite really lying in tatters at one point. I guess we took it as far as it could go – which was, ultimately, to a place of realising that our lifestyles were basically incompatible, much as we loved and liked each other – and I suppose that’s why I have no regrets. I mean, even after we broke up we spent the next three months sleeping together, and then after I went to Mexico for six months and eventually moved back to London, we hooked up again, but purely in a ‘friend and lover’ kind of way. I never wanted more from her and I got to realise that by being able to remain intimate. The last time we slept together was, I think, December 2010, a couple of months before I committed to Nicky, and a full twenty months after we officially stopped being a couple. A little while after that she met the guy she’s currently with and, though I’ve never met him, from what I can tell they seem super compatible and in love and I feel nothing but happiness for them. When I see her, which I do probably once or twice a year, we have a laugh and share like real good buds and there’s no sense of the romantic or sexual in my heart, which is unique again as far as me and my exes go. This friendship, I would say, is the definition of a healthy relationship. She’s so switched on and I think her such a great person. It’s lovely to know – and, perhaps, necessarily encouraging at a time like this – that these people I once felt so overwhelmingly desirous of and emotionally attached to can become, with the passing of time, good and trusted and purely platonic friends.
Anyways, I expected what we might talk about was the Nicky situation but actually what we got onto was more the question of career and my ideas of this mid-life crisis wherein I feel like I’m just drifting through the world and really truly need to knuckle down. Perlilly, of course, has only ever wanted to be a singer, and has pursued that to some extent – but suddenly, at the age of twenty-seven – which I can hardly believe! feels like it was just yesterday we met, when she was twenty-one! – she’s decided to go study to be a doctor and has already enrolled on A-Levels and is looking at something like six or seven years of study before that desire becomes a reality. Christ, that amazes and inspires me! Just to get on and do it and set course for such long-term goals when she’ll be not far off my age when she arrives finally at her destination – the sort of long-term goals that terrify and paralyse me and yet – well, if I’d actually gone for some of the things I wanted to do when I had the initial feeling instead of shrinking overwhelmed by the thought it then I probably wouldn’t be in the boat I am now. I mean, how many years ago is it that I first had the thought of wanting to study to become a psychotherapist? And no more so especially than when Perlilly and I were together in London and I used to meet my old friend from Mexico Canadian Dave for lunch and feel envy because that’s exactly what he was doing – plus working full-time, plus doing his own writing as well – and I knew I’d love to do that but always the thought of the money got in the way. The money! Ha! I’m shaking my head right now: how many times have I let that come between me and the doing of the thing I love? The five years between my BA and starting the MA. The postponement of getting involved in a committed relationship. But – no sense harking to the past – crippling sense of failure and regret are leaving me now this last week or so – and it’s all about the future. A strong to desire to get it on. And the awareness of the weights that hold me down, my fears and old habits, with regard to this and to Laura and to staying in one place and to pretty much everything else besides. Yet the only way out is through…
I get tickled by the idea of studying to become a psychotherapist – hell, why not a doctor myself? Talking with Perlilly is like opening a door to another world – the world I might have known had I not been born in South Elmsall or had I stayed at QEGS or had professional middle class parents. I’ve always had a top notch brain and though I know I lack common sense I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone I felt was any smarter than me. Indeed, through being at uni this time and associating with those who will go on to be lawyers and doctors and chemical engineers I’d say perhaps the opposite is true. But growing up in the way that I did I guess I bought into the notion that people who worked those kind of jobs were somehow of a different species; all those around me were factory workers or unemployed miners or market stall holders or shop assistants. If you were lucky – and especially smart – perhaps you worked in an office, but that was about as far as it went. That’s pretty much always been the limit of my imagination and I guess I now see why: I mean, even though I was generally regarded as about the most intelligent boy in my year that’s pretty much all my careers officer would have suggested to me. And yet here I sit knowing full well there’s not a job I’m not intelligent enough to do. No wonder I’ve got bored of pretty much everything else I’ve tried! But all that’s ever limited me was my own imagination and ambition – and an imagination and ambition that was placed in me right at the beginning of my life by growing up in a town in which all previous generations had been groomed for the pit. I suppose that’s a little bit sad, but given that I’m blameless, and given that I’m waking up from it – please, God, don’t let thirty-seven be too late! – then there’s nothing to do but realise it and move on.
So what should I be? What should I do? Conversations with Phil the other day did often loop back around to the need to do something challenging, something versatile, something that would push me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted really. School I flunked out of because it stopped pushing me. And uni was a doddle, and consequently boring. And in all my jobs – maybe forty or so, only one of which I’ve done for longer than a year – it’s small wonder that I move on once the initial learning has been accomplished and it settles into repetition. I did once want to become a policeman – it’s in my blood, and Phil himself was a detective in the fraud squad – but I ditched out pretty early in the process when I realised how much of police work was standing around doing nothing or shepherding drunks and no doubt maddening paperwork. I wanted to be cracking cases, using my brain and my cunning to think like a criminal and fighting for what’s right. Phil says I’d have been good at it – and that the two-year probationary period “on the beat” wouldn’t have been that bad – but he also, at the time, put me off it, and still does. He says I wouldn’t have liked the authority, the bullshit, the necessary sacrificing of one’s morality and the lawyers. He’s probably right in that – all through my working life I’ve been rankled by authority, unless it was respect earned – and I guess I wouldn’t have lasted long. But I would have been a bloody good detective.
The main thing I wanted to be, I suppose, was a teacher. Once upon a time I had a real passion for education and for children. I loved being around them and loved the learning environment. It all felt so alive. I first went into a school back in 2002 just after I finished being a postman and I really felt that was the place for me, that I’d found my vocation. I was volunteering as a learning support assistant and loved everything about it. But, at the same time, I wanted more and I wanted to be the one at the front of the class, the one in charge. So I immediately went and got my degree, and got a job as a teacher and…I hated it. The kids I could just about manage – okay, at times I adored being their teacher – but the rest of it was too much. The prescribed learning. The curriculum. The forcing of Shakespeare on kids who could barely write their own name, who would have been much better served by learning to read a newspaper and write emails and think about things. I was in the wrong subject, I guess – all along I wanted to be a Religious Studies teacher, a subject I felt passionate about – plus the related areas of citizenship and the humanitarian aspects – but English and nouns and all that stuff, much as I love writing, just left me cold. I didn’t care about the subject and to be even a half-decent teacher you’ve got to care. Then there was all the paperwork and the pressure and how completely screwed up the whole system is. I guess at one time I thought maybe I could move from teaching into working to improve the system itself – God, it’s so gone wrong, for both the teachers and the children – for everyone, pretty much, except the clueless politicians who shape it – but that was a pretty overwhelming idea and, anyway, I didn’t last even six months. The stress was ridiculous, the paperwork pointless. And looking at those who had been doing it for years, it never seemed like it would get any better.
Hmmm…maybe I should go into politics? ;-)
What else? Lately I’m mostly thinking of training to be a psychotherapist. I’ve thought about that for a long time and obviously love the intricacies of the mind and emotional problems and growth. It’s a fascinating subject. I love to help people. I love one-on-one interaction. I love what’s real and deep and healing. I’m a great listener. I have an infinite amount of patience when it comes to other people’s problems. Whenever I talk with a therapist I think how awesome it would be to do that and know that it’s only the time and the money that have put me off. But now I’m in this place of wanting to knuckle down and realising that the time is going to pass anyway – the time haspassed – then that all seems pretty silly. I’m going to seriously look into that.
Fireman? Probably not intellectually stimulating enough. Some kind of business? I’d be good at it but not sure the idea of working purely to make money would really sustain me, it’d need to have a sense of goodness about it. Charity work? Done that: good but ultimately again a lot of bureaucracy and frustration. Physical labour? Really, really satisfying – hauling logs and working with wood about the best thing I ever did. But in the long term? Something I could do for the next twenty or thirty years and earn enough to support a family? Not sure about that.
And then there’s always the writing, which I know is my big thing and major passion – but will it ever be more than a hobby? Could it ever pay the bills and satisfyingly fill my time? Or is it just a pipe dream? A nice aside? Something that may one day make sense to me. Man, I don’t want to end up like Kerouac.
I should write one of those agents that were interested in me though. You walk in a bookshop and see all that’s on offer and wonder what the hell you could write that would find a niche in the market. Maybe rather than trying to come up with something and see where it goes I should just ask an agent or publisher, “what do you want?” I’m pretty sure I could write anything and write it well, and enjoy it too. Maybe that’d be a better way to go about things.
Anyways, the thing about writing is it’s not really up to me, it’s up to the whims of fate and the market – although there is certainly more that I could be doing, such as sending my stuff to other people. Difficult to imagine them wanting to buy my words when they don’t even know they exist.
I think I’m going to buy a printer and send out some hard copies again. Another thing I don’t do because I’m too tight. But a few times lately I’ve read about manuscripts that were plucked by curious agents from the slush pile and went on to become successes. That’s not going to happen when everything I send is by attachment. You just never know, eh?
And now we come back around to where I was in the beginning: relationships and my questions over Laura and Nicky – and Nicky’s impending visit last night, for what I felt would really be the final rites. She got here about ten, just after I’d finished making dhal and a nice homemade loaf of bread. More doing stuff that I know I enjoy but killed while I was with her. Doing it, yes, to impress her, and to further impress upon her my changes, but also doing it because even though my mental justifications might say, oh, it’s just easier and cheaper and less effort to buy it yourself – well, let’s face it, it’s a much better use of time than sitting on the internet. All that stuff – no longer growing our own food or making lavish and intricate meals or baking bread or fancy pastries – going instead for supermarket convenience and ready-made pizzas and Burgens – well what does it do except free up time that is only squandered anyway, on internet or lazing or television or inane texts? And so I make some effort. Whether she’s impressed or not I don’t know. Fact is, I think she’s both impressed merely by the quality of the emotional change in me and moved on. I can feel it. I’ve always thought it. This new guy in Ireland – where she is now; flew there just this morning – has done that for her, and maybe that’s what she needs to do. I don’t mind anymore. I feel well and truly let go and accepting. It’s not even a case of saying I want her to be happy – because, well, she is happy. Mainly I just hope that she’s able to overcome her own issues next time, and that maybe she’ll use me as a reminder when the going gets tough.
We talked some. We laid down and hugged. It wasn’t heavy, though there were a few moments when we perhaps foolishly got into reviewing times we went wrong in our relationship and said what we should have done instead. I guess we had some kisses. She said a few times she ought to go but didn’t. And then we stood up and hugged and kissed – and kissed a little more passionately – and went to bed one last time. It was pretty awesome.
And then she left around two. Kind of strange to know where she was going and what it would mean for us. But ultimately I’m glad I’ve ridden it till the end and can see that it’s made a better man out of me. Probably there was never any real danger of her committing to me – she, I feel, was my own fear of commitment and entrapment made manifest in the external world – and now on we go, her to whatever flight of fancy she takes, for however long – she’s got a good nine years on me anyways – and me to having realised it’s high time I knuckled down, in more ways than one. Three days ago I was terrified I wouldn’t know how to do that. But as time has passed and I’ve started making efforts – discussing careers, chasing up leads, feeling excited with sinking my teeth into something real and feeling and knowing how good that would be for me – the fear has dissipated and all I feel is a drive to action. Career-wise, things are moving; hell, they might as well, for what’s the alternative? I don’t want to bum around and drift forever. And it’s not as though I’ll never be able to take another holiday. Shit, if I was a qualified psychotherapist I might even be able to move to Canada or America . It’s time to get real.
But as far as Laura goes, and that feeling I had Sunday night, that she was always the one, and that it’s only now I’ve come to realise it…well, no rush there. I’m still terrified, even though it’s exactly what I want. But just because I believe in feeling the fear and doing it anyway it doesn’t mean I have to do it today. And I suppose I should wait and see what happens with Nicky, just in case she does return from her week in Ireland having experienced that this guy is about as real for her as all my fantasies are for me and that’s actually ready to get serious and knuckle down with me. Fact is, I’ve professed my love for her and I know that I’d want to make it work. She’s too awesome. It’s confusing. But I can’t see it happening – for her to want to fly over there to meet this guy and not want to be with me despite the incredible intimacies and lovemaking and joy we’ve shared speaks volumes. And the timing of the whole thing too…
I’m just starting to get a sneaking suspicion that everything’s working out perfectly after all…
No comments:
Post a Comment