Ep.25: Mrs Grumpypants
‘And what do you think about your mum having had cancer?’
We were staying with my great friend Ghillie, sitting in her kitchen cutting up cheese and slices of ripe honeydew melon which B kept snaffling.
‘I dunno, no one ever asks me’ B replies bluntly. I’m appalled. I thought I’d been doing an ok job of being open with B, including her in what was happening, trying to explain what was going on and why it was such a challenge. And no doubt I was doing a perfectly good job of talking about me and my response to the cancer but where was my role as parent and listener? ‘She’s much grumpier and less fun’ said B. I try hard not to flinch, tears threaten. ‘Your mum’s been going through a pretty tough time’ says Ghillie the peacemaker, filling my wineglass in subtle solidarity, to which B shrugs. I want to speak up and defend myself, say that she’s pretty grumpy too and that I’m only grumpy because she’s making life so difficult. All manner of defensive parries and reposts spring to mind but I swallow them down, bitter as they might taste, B has a point.
The issue of my being grumpy and angry worries me. Even if some of it may be understandable I’m not comfortable with it and over the next couple of weeks it follows me round. I put the accusation in my pocket where it sits leaden and hot, regularly burning back into my consciousness. I decide I’m going to make an effort to do better, be better, particularly with B.
A month or two later its 4am and I’m wandering around the moonlit house, sleepless and searching for my glasses which I’ve misplaced during yet another row with B which spiralled out of control the previous evening. The milky light spills through the rooms to sooth the pink and puckered edges of my anger which lingers still. I pad barefoot out onto the deck and pause in the silence, wondering what to do with myself. I’ve been dreaming of angry encounters so heading back to bed feels unappealing and anyway, the day ahead is empty and weighty so what harm will less sleep have.
As I sit to write I reach for my phone and become aware of how much my daughter is woven through my life. Passwords, desktop backgrounds, pin codes all wind their way back to her as the fulcrum of my existence but with our relationship lurching and capsizing so regularly I feel off balance, unsteady. Increasingly I’ve started to realise off balance and unsteady is how I’m feeling in general but when I reach for the tangle of feelings and emotions I can’t quite find an end to let me unpick it back to some source and beginning. There isn’t just one thread, there’s a mass.
One thread is my misery over not being able to join David when he goes cycling. I watch him leave with the bike on top of the car, heading in search of friends to ride with, and I ache with want.
'Let’s get a tandem!' I messaged him earlier in the week, ‘yesssss’ he bounces back and starts researching possibilities but as soon as I’ve cooked up the idea I start to unravel it again. It won’t fit on the roof of the car, my back won’t cope with the position on the tandem any more than it does at present. 'It’ll be a laugh' David counters but I’m suddenly losing confidence again. I’m desperate to inject some of that joy and freedom we shared on the bike back into my life, I miss it, I miss us and what it gave us both. 'Do you know any one with a recumbent bike I could borrow?', I fire off messages to cycling friends in my next stab at stabilising the situation. Once again I research possibilities but initial enthusiasm starts to wane as I slide my finger down over images of trikes on my phone. I don’t want to admit it but the thought of the trike makes me feel disabled, compromised more than I’m prepared to be. I try to rationalise it, to tell myself that surely being out on the bike, any bike, is better that wandering around no-mans’ land crying but the idea feels heavy and unworkable. I try to tell myself the recumbent bike will be fun, quirky, different but I limp round to the word disabled once again and it lodges in my throat. There’s a relief when David frowns at the image of my vulnerability on a low slung, poorly visible recumbent bike. Real or imagined his discomfort is an easy get-out for me so I loop back round to the start point and settle more heavily into my misery.
And does it make me angry that I’m not able to do the things I once did. Furious. There are days when I spit and hiss with frustration. “I get it, I hear you” David messages when I push apologies his way after I’ve snarled my way into another day.
But this leaning on David is another of the threads I’m worrying at. I watch him working hard, burying stress over a seriously ill colleague, pushing himself and the paperwork into more and more of our evenings and I decide I can’t burden him with my quietly blossoming depression. I finally admitted to a friend yesterday that the tangled threads were taking on shape of something more sinister and frightening. I’ve realised that too many days see me crying. I know the signs, the waking too early too often, the permanent exhaustion, the noisy brain. I’ve been here.
5.20am and I’m still here. I should go and curl myself round David, find some comfort and re-energise before I face the day and the inevitable fall out of yesterday’s sparring with B. Even writing it here, bringing it back into my consciousness, and I feel the anger flare and lick again. But how do I pick apart what part of that anger is justifiable and how much is just anger born of my own circumstance? I’m like a shaken bottle of fizzy pop, itching for someone to dare to twist my lid a touch.
I don’t recognise myself any more. I’ve lost me, I’m buried beneath domestic drudge, parental stumbles and the inability to get this stupid, ugly, scarred body to do what I fucking want and need it to do. I’m scared I won’t ever get me back.