Ode to albatrosses

Some people live forever, some you forget the instant you turn your back after meeting them, others you will never even meet nor hear of so are, effectively, not even real to you. I'll always remember my first boyfriend. We were six, maybe seven, it lasted a day and we had to break up when I went home because we were both on holiday and didn't feel we could manage a long distance relationship. Plus, he tried to steal my ice cream and two timed me with my sister so I wasn't really that happy with him anyway. I can't tell you his name, nor what he looked like. I can tell you that we had a blanket in the car that day and that my mum and dad fought the whole way there and back. I can nearly visualise his face, but my memory isn't that spectacular so I only have a vague Peter Pan-type image of a boy with a pretty face and a penchant for mischief.

I'm in that relationship now, all over again. He isn't pretty nor seven years old, but he has the same appeal. You're more likely to find him near some mischief than anything else, and I definitely wouldn't put it past him to try to steal my ice cream before I had given him permission. He'll never really get old for me, no matter how long I know him. If I know him in fifty years he'll still have that special place in my heart for the Peter Pan type figure of mischief; the boy who has made me stupidly happy, but also permanently pissed off. I have two levels, the girl who needs that idiot child to make her happy, and the maternal, slightly more mature, woman who wants to make him act with more responsibility, like a bigger, better, person.

He's so separate from everything else; he has absolutely nothing to do with anything that was in my life before. I guess it's the same as being a super hero at night, but having a mild mannered alter ego during the day. Except a lot less dramatic. I see him late at night; I can only count a few instances when I've seen him before eleven o clock. And I think that was the best bit about us; it makes things easier not having to cope with all the everyday stuff. He doesn't come into contact with my family, and he isn't anything to do with school. He fits; it sounds really strange, but his personality fits into mine. We can have stupid conversations about buying a farm, about the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And we can talk about artichokes. I love that, but I don't need that. I need someone who I see on a regular basis, who reassures me when I feel sad, and whose there when I simply need to sit quietly with someone's arm around me.

What I need doesn't matter, not right now. For now, what I want is much more important. So I see him when I can, and I mope in between, wishing I had a more constant stream of happiness. We'll last forever. That cut-out moment at about three in the morning where we're lying there wrapped round each other in the dark, talking about stupid things; that's us, and that's what lasts. But the relationship is already dying. I've grown up a little; we need different things, yada yada yada. But we'll be okay for a while. For a while we'll go on as we have done, I'll probably let it last till June when he goes; there isn't much time left anyway. He makes me happy, but any illusions of love, or anything else even slightly meaningful, are gone.

Labels: Flying, Past tense

“The best things in life are free.” The Beatles, Money.

She was fifteen. Barely that, having only just had her birthday the week before. He was twenty three. It was, as these things always are, at a party. She’d been drinking for six hours, he was probably worse. I knew she’d gone, but I couldn’t find her. A pretty large part of me didn’t want to find her. When she came back I’d collapsed.

We haven’t had a mother. I couldn’t be a mother to her, she was too strong willed and stubborn. But I was her confidante, I looked after her, stuck up for her, helped her whenever I could. But I couldn’t stop her, and I couldn’t leave her. So while I waited I drank. I drank away the memory. I saw her walking out the door, hand in hand with him, into the darkness. I just kept seeing it; over and over. And every time it came back I’d drink more, faster.

She came and lay next to me, “I’m sorry Harriet, I’m so sorry, I know its cos’ve me, I’m just so sorry.” I cried. I cried as she told me all of it; I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want her to tell me. It hurt too much- I understood. She went to the hospital the next morning and took the morning after pill. When she got home she cried too. She cried for hours with my dad shouting in the background, wanting to know what the hell was going on. I told him she was feeling really ill and that someone had rejected her the night before. He believed me unquestioningly.

I knew it had to happen eventually. She looks old for her age, and she dresses provocatively. She wasn’t ready. I knew it, she screamed at me when I approached the subject with her months before that. She knew she was ready, how dare I try to influence her life like that, it was none of my business. But I knew what would happen, I went through the same phase at her age, and I knew how much she would regret it.

The best things in life aren’t free; they come at a high cost emotionally. It took her weeks to recover, and six months later she still hasn’t regained nearly half of her previous confidence. She regrets it. I don’t tell her, “I told you so.” I barely tell her anything anymore. We don’t talk; I find it hard to get on with her at all. I love her, but ever since then I’ve found it increasingly hard to communicate with her.

Yesterday she cried. She told me that she feels like she can’t talk to anyone anymore, like I hate her. She feels lonely and hates it because she’s always fighting with both me and dad and there’s no one on her side anymore. I can’t explain why I’m not on her side anymore. I know that I stopped sticking up for her, I stopped covering for her. In a slightly vindictive way, I guess I’ve made things harder for her recently. She was hurt that I’d returned from my interview and she’d had to hear what had happened from dad as I was on the phone to Stacey.

I don’t know. I guess I just gave up. I still remember feeling completely powerless, it’s the one feeling that I can’t physically tolerate. Whenever it happens I do something incredibly stupid. Since that Saturday night I haven’t been properly drunk. I have had only one hangover, but it didn’t even compare to the one I had at work the next day. They nearly sacked me for that one shift alone. Since then I haven’t been sick while drunk or hungover. So it cured me of binge drinking, it cured her of casual sex, and it stuck a gradually widening rift between us. I knew there was nothing else I could do for her. And I don’t know what I can do now.

Labels: Alcoholism, dynasty, Mistakes, Pleasure

I said that I’d never cry for you. I’ve been fucked over too many times for that. I don’t know if I’ve even told you how fucked up things really are. I guess it’s too early to tell you all the baggage I come with. Though to be honest, with us, if it isn’t too early then it’s too late. We can’t get to know each other enough to delve into the weird psychological problems that I have, and I know that you must have, because everyone does to some extent. We just don’t have time for that. I can’t let you see it all, I can’t let anyone see it all, the abyss is just too steep, too dark, there isn’t any going back after that.

I’m not crying over you. I’m crying over everything else. My patheticness, the way we all pretend that we’re people we aren’t. You can’t lie to people unless you fully believe the lies yourself. And I believe my lies, if only for the time that I’m saying them. But sometimes I believe them for longer than that. I believe them until someone suddenly wakes me up, confronts me with the truth. And then I’m standing on the abyss again, knowing that it’s going to be there forever and there isn’t anything I, or anyone, can do about it.

I don’t want you to tell me I’m a psycho. I don’t want you to scream at me in frustration, I don’t want you to see what’s under my mask. I know what happens to people who see beneath the mask, they retain a little bit of the madness. I don’t mean my mask, anyone’s mask. You just physically cannot see into someone’s soul that far. The key to making a relationship work is to bare your soul to someone, but to still be able to keep your secrets, the big ones. If someone knew all the secrets it wouldn’t work, there would be too much to come back from.

But I won’t let you lie to me either. Don’t tell me that everything is okay, or that I’m over reacting. Don’t expect me to listen to you if you tell me one thing, then tell me another five minutes later. Don’t ignore me in the hope that when you next see me I’ll have calmed down. I don’t work like that, I get angrier, and then I get livid, and finally, when all my energy has gone, I don’t care. But if I don’t care then you’ll never find a way to make me care again. Or maybe you will, who knows? I forgave my mother after eight years, I can always learn to forgive you. But she’s my mom, I don’t know if the situations are similar enough. And eight years is a while.

I won’t ask for commitment. I won’t tell you that I’m too pissed off to have sex. I won’t listen when people tell me that you’re not good enough for me, or that you’re an arrogant bastard. I won’t cheat, and I won’t lie to you about anything that matters. But I can’t tell you all my secrets, and I can’t wait forever for you to explain. And if you make me cry over you, then I’m sorry, there’s nothing you can do to fix it.

Labels: Demons, Falling, Introspection