Mechanical Nothingness

I don’t want to always play by the rules. There is no part of me that is truly mechanical. Only my marriage really. But then again, what are the rules to blogging? I don’t really know anyway. I just know that as much as I want to get things down somewhere as a way to alleviate confusion in my own mind, I don’t want it to read like some stilted and very ordered recollection of the events that have led me to my position now. So sometimes I might just throw a wild card out there, a few spare moments of time from my mind to this keyboard with little thought, just feeling.

Tonight is one such time. I’m alone in my hotel room after a hectic day collating information (without giving too much away I work within the tourism industry collating information for brochures). I was invited to the bar by one of the girls working on reception; I declined. Sometimes I feel like socialising, in fact I need it when I’m away from home just so I can break free for a while and let my defenses down, be who I want to be. But tonight it is as if my veins are bulging and I’m fit to explode the emotions are so high. Pouring it out here, well I’m not far enough into it yet to decide if it is really helping, or going to help, but I just know that somehow, some way – it feels necessary.

So here I am. Bleeding inside. Bleeding outside through these words. I don’t know if others have this feeling of utter helplessness, a kind of crawling pain that starts in the pit of my stomach and winds its way up my very core until it leaves me with a constricted feeling in my throat. Is it loss of love? Lack of love? Unsure as to how I have come to be here in my life? Confusion as to what my future holds? God knows… I just know that I feel it. I feel it so acutely I almost want to reach into the toilet and expel this devil from me. Is the devil him, Harry? I don’t know. I just know that I wish I could feel alive.

Yesterday I drove towards the mountains, they loomed up ahead – a spectacular horizon above the straight flat road. I thought to myself “I want to climb them, I want to climb over them, I want to be within their embarce.” So overwhelming was this feeling of wanting to be lost within their magnitude and feel nature spill over my physical being that I stopped the car, stood outside of it and pushed my face into the crisp air. White nothingness. Emptiness. Silence. Yes, I think it’s nothingness, that’s what I need right now.

Lydia

I’ve been rushing around packing to leave today… in 3 hours to be precise. I travel a lot with my work so I’m used to packing now and I know what to take at the drop of a hat, I know what I’ll need and I’ve been on so many trips that I also know about all the things that I won’t need. For instance I am never going to use those 7 extra pairs of knickers. I used to think to myself ‘now should I just chuck a few extra pairs in?’ and now I think, but WHY!!!!??? Something bred in me from childhood I guess – always pack your knickers! So anyway, packing to leave is not too bad for me, which left me with time to write a quick post.

Today I thought I would write about my best friend Lydia, who also happens to be Harry’s sister, because she is kind of integral to my life and my story, you see if I leave Harry, I’ll pretty much be leaving her too. Maybe I’m being over-dramatic? but I just can’t imagine how we would forge any kind of true friendship out of such a mess. I mean, how would it be if Harry met someone new and had babies? I can say all I like about not loving him, but there is something about that scenario that would dent my pride and really, is it ever that easy to continue such a friendship and not cross the desire to know what that person is up to into conversations? I can see us now on the phone: stilted… long pauses… because of course deep down I would want to know if he had met someone else. Is she prettier than me? Does she have a bigger arse than me (please god say she has). But you see, I know that Lydia just would not want to be involved and so wouldn’t bring it up and instead there would just be this soft silent buzzing dominating every conversation; that unspoken tightness in the chest desperate to burst out and say ‘c’mon! tell me!’ and then of course there would be the loyalty Lydia would feel towards Harry. Blood IS thicker than water, I’m sure. And then on top of that would I feel able to tell her about any new loves if they should come my way? She just loves Harry and me being together and has often stated how she would hate it if we broke up. Another reason why I’m scared… In so many ways my life is easy. It is logical. Ordered. Easy. I know where I stand and OK so I’m not always happy with the part that I play in certain relationships, but I know where I am.

So anyway, back to Lydia. I met her at a summer drama school back in 94. I was 14, she 16. She was all lean limbs and flowing hair, ballet tights and Shakespeare. I was um, not. I was more Madonna circa 83 with lacy tights, ripped t-shirts and backcombed hair. But we gelled. I thought she was uber cool and pretty, she thought I was hilarious fun and besides, I introduced her to snakebites and roll ups… I think we needed each other to bring an important ‘other’ element to our lives – I think we still do. She’s still prim and, dare I say it, boring (I should of known really that Harry would be the same!) and I’m still unsettled and secretly always in search of that next adventure even when I know it will probably mean a mountainess climb with avalanches along the way and that I’ll probably end up buried at the end, gasping for air in a sphere of white cold.

But I love Lydia. She’s smart, she’s fun in an understated way and well, she’s always been there. She never knows the right thing to say if I’m down, but that’s OK – I don’t like talking to people who know me anyway. I think? In fact, maybe it is just that… is she just my best friend because she’s always been there? What does she actually bring to my life? Oh gosh – this blogging is really quite a strange outlet. I set out to write one thing and then it turns into another until by the end I’m asking myself whole new questions. So anyway, L.Y.D.I.A! Smart, funny, educated to the hilt and destined for big solicitor type career but who met Simon 5 years ago and has since dropped her career aspirations and power suits for a 4x4, lunch with soon-to-be yummy mummy’s and cookery classes to help perfect her domestic goddess skills in preparation for the arrival of their first child in two months… of course, another reason why I want to stick around. She tells me I need to do the same, settle down and just enjoy the fruits of my husband’s labours. Thing is, Harry doesn’t earn as much as Simon so I would be living the dream with a Corsa, Tesco yoghurts instead of M&S and BHS sheets, not Egyptian cotton – I mean Christ, am I ready to give up for humdrum? I know sometimes I feel tired and lost inside and think that even if I was single, what have I got to give? But secretly, deep down inside, I don’t want to give up. I just want to feel alive again.

Time to sign off…

At this point...

At this point you might be wondering why I am married to a man I don’t love. I mean, did I ever love him? Did I marry him for money? Did I fall out of love with him for a reason? Why stay with him if I don’t love him?

There really are so many questions to answer and it’s hard when you start writing about it because one thing leads to another and another and another and before you know it, nothing makes sense anymore and then you start to doubt your own legitimate reasons for not loving a man who, generally, is OK.

In brief, I got together with Harry when I was 20 and he was 36. He was my friend’s older brother - my friend being Lydia who I met when I was 14 and she was 16. Harry wasn’t on the scene much in those days, he was off working in the Middle East and I knew him only from family photos that graced Lydia’s house and one family party when I was 15 and he flew back to do his duty. He was all blue eyes and innocent charm, I can remember thinking that even then but I certainly don’t recall thinking anything other than that. No, I was too busy eying up her cousin’s mate from London who was all brown eyes and arrogance.

Anyway, when I was 20 I went to another family party and Harry was there again, only this time I’d been pushed around and treated like shit by several boyfriends – various eye colours, but all arrogant – and I now fancied myself as someone destined for better. My eyes fell on Harry from a new slant. He spoke with a nice accent due to his impeccable upbringing, travelled extensively (a huge draw to me as I had notions of travel but had failed to so far make it out of various bedsits and studio flats in my home town) and well, his blue eyes and innocent charm had become that much more appealing to me after realising that arrogant men, although sexy in the beginning, are always bastards in the end.

He saw a 20-year-old girl with nice tits, a determined manner and sadly (I believe now) his over-consumption of beer that night of the party had knocked his senses somewhat and failed to remind him that I was in fact his sister’s friend, a lot younger and therefore – surely morally out of bounds? But no, the beer talked and coupled with my pushiness and belief that I was being assertive and in control, one thing led to another and in the morning he paid for my taxi home. Maybe he felt trapped after that? Maybe he wishes he hadn’t had so many beers to cloud his normally rational ways? Maybe he saw me as a mistake but one that he would now have to stand by? Because well, after a bit of cajoling on my side to make it into more than a fling “of course we have things in common Harry! Just because I am young, it doesn’t matter!” five years later and we were married and ten years later now it’s me who feels trapped. Irony.

Problem is his sister is still my best friend. His best friend’s wife confides in me at every turn, I love his parents more than my own and to walk away from this relationship, well it wouldn’t just be us. It would be everything. My entire world.

Fear of Blogging

Gosh, it’s been a while since I posted. I mean, I’ve been wanting to start a blog for a long time about my life, but then I do and suddenly I become paralysed with fear: what if someone somehow manages to find out who I am? What if it doesn’t make me feel better at all - you know, writing about it?

The thing is, I can’t really talk to my friends about what’s really going on. I’m a kind of pillar of strength; one of those women who appears to have it all. Reasonable looks, nice husband, exciting job, sense of humour. I know how to say the right thing at the right time, give helpful advice to bawling mates who are going through a crisis and put my arm round them or take them partying accordingly. I am the ‘holder-upper’. I don’t break down! I don’t cry! I hold everything together!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to paint a perfect picture because seriously, it’s really not that perfect even from the outside. But you know, life . is . not . really . that . bad. And when I consider that all over the world people have to deal with death and life-changing illnesses, I feel somewhat of a fraud. But hell, see! This is precisely why I started this place. FOR ME. So that I can moan without feeling guilty and spill my guts without friends looking bewildered, not knowing whether to put the kettle on or pour a whiskey. I wanted this space to just be mine.

But why I ask myself and no doubt you ask too - the dark vast cyberspace that might be looking back at me as I upload these words – why not write them in a diary? Why not scribble notes? Why not write them in a word document on my computer? Well, for some reason it feels too permanent. Ink, paper – it’s too real. This, this is out there in the ether. Nobody knows who I am, nobody can log in to my blogger account. This is my place to feel free and of course, if anyone ever stops by then well, they might be able to give me advice that isn’t clouded by knowing me. By knowing my life. By knowing him.

So, I’m hoping to make blogging a little more permanent despite the rollercoaster of fear about doing it. But don’t hold me to it. I’m off to Canada in two days… that’s the nice part of my life.

Harry

My husband, lets call him Harry - because he smells like a Harry - bores me. I lie in bed at night, my eyes vacant, staring at the slither of light coming through our Homebase curtains and I wonder: how did I end up here? How did I end up in a bed next to a man I don't love? How did I end up with Homebase curtains and landscape paintings on my wall?

He snores. Christ it drives me crazy. That weird kind of shuffling snore that is neither here nor there. I'm forever nudging him or whispering "shut up" in an exasperated manner and sometimes, for a second, he'll be quiet. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to listen to it at all.

But mostly i do. I listen to his shuffling snore and I let him nuzzle into my hair and it makes me feel sick and then I cry. I cry a lot. Soft, burning hot tears that cling to my face and take forever to roll off my cheeks. I wish for one to roll off and land on his face, so he'll know; so he'll see that I don't want to be here. But even when they do, he doesn't notice.

Most nights I lay in bed dreaming of being with someone else, but I'm getting old now. The lines on my face seem to multiply daily, my body isn't what it was, but mostly - I feel dead inside. I have nothing to give. And so I just roll over and try to sleep.