Separate Ways

I cleared the house on Sunday night, got my son into bed, asked the lodger to give me a bit of space so I could have "a difficult ex girlfriend conversation" in private.

I was at a works do the night before with a dozen or so colleagues. My ex-lover was there. I was tired and anxious about my son. I decided I couldn't be arsed to go over and chat, risk the uncertain welcome. She spoke to me briefly around midnight, by which time my head was thumping (sinuses, not booze) and I felt very flat. Two thirty that morning she texts, saying it was a shame I'd spoken to everyone but ignored her. I slept on my reply. Next morning I text back - I'm tired of trying to second guess whether you'll be approachable or not. A few more texts, not nice ones, and we agree to meet, Sunday night, to talk it out.

I spent the day working out how I'd tell her that all I could stand from now on is a semi-distant, office friendship. Trying not to get angry about all the times she's cut me off, saying nothing, leaving me to guess what's going on. What I'm planning might be harsh, after all we've been through, but at least she'll know where she stands. One night of being ignored has pissed her off, I've had twelve months of it.

She comes round, we sit nursing drinks on the sofa. She tells me why she needs to be distant. It's what I've guessed - we seem to find it impossible to be close without flirting, she doesn't want to play with my emotions, there are lines we can't cross. We agree to a professional distance from now on.

And then....

And then it just seems wrong. She loved me and supported me fiercely when I wouldn't stand up for myself. There were times she she was desperately unhappy and had no-one, no-one to talk to but me. I ask if she's able to talk now to her female friends.
"Yes. But ultimately we're all on our own, aren't we."

She's a much more private person than I am. Of course we are on our own, before our conscience, in front of our god. But I can't imagine facing the difficulties in my life without my friends to talk, moan, rant or cry to. I can do it because I know they'll do the same to me. And I want to be that kind of friend to her.

"It's nearly six years, you know, since we met," I remind her. We're holding hands, looking in to each other's eyes. It's so comfortable.
"You're woven through my life like a thread," she says.

Like a thread. The last eighteen months, it's felt like the fabric has been pulled out of shape, fretted, catching like silk on a nail. Since Sunday it has felt comfortable, like a warm scarf.

But do I want more? Can I avoid crossing those lines? Well, maybe this is telling - I feel settled, not breathless. Happy not ecstatic. I'm choosing comfy warm scarves for my thread similes, not sensual skin-close silk.

We'll see. It's got to be worth a try. And if we can't knit up this ravelled sleave of cares, if we're still snagging threads and worrying at loose ends, then we shall give up but know we've tried everything.

I suppose it was always going to come to this. The doctor, turning over pages in his file. Test results good, except one... ultrasound.

My son has started to develop liver damage. It happens to people with cystic fibrosis, he tells us. Nothing unusual. We're going to see a specialist. Don't change anything in the meantime, just carry on. Here's a prescription for some new drugs.

It hit me like a soft blow. All this time saying how well he's doing, but there's been no miracle - just a delay before the inevitable. Stuff starts going wrong inside - first pancreas and lungs, then polyps, now liver. Next kidneys, bones, clubbed fingers, god knows what and god knows when. Life expectancy 38 years. You don't just drop down dead, you slowly deteriorate.

I didn't let him see how low I felt. We carried on with the clinic and came home. Made a joke of how he'll not be allowed to binge drink.

He rang his mum to ask about going to the cinema tonight, told her the news. I filled her in on some of the detail.

"Was Mum upset about the liver thing?" he asked, later.
"No," I replied. "It's just another thing to deal with."

God, I'm tired.

Like a tectonic shift, the moment when the landscape changes underneath you. But this time it's the moment when you go from sussing out if she fancies you to realising it's not going to happen, and carry on being nice for niceness sake. Usually resolves around the word "boyfriend" coming up in conversation. This time, for a change, it was the word "girlfriend". Hers. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

One last word to say about envy and irony.

I spent a Friday teatime at my ex-wife's house last week. She made supper for me, our son and her current boyfriend. Despite the fact she'd temporarily dumped him while trying to get back with her jealous idiot ex-boyfriend, he's taken her back in good heart.

"I've been wanting to meet you for ages," he says, walking across the hall with his hand outstretched. "I haven't seen you since your birthday."
Ah, I was quite pissed - so I don't remember. This is going to be a new conversation as far as I'm concerned.

Turned out to be a very pleasant couple of hours. The grown ups talked, my son and his mate hung out with us. Ex wife's boyfriend couldn't be a nicer bloke. And they seem genuinely fond of each other.

Which is all well and good. Better she's happy than not.

Even so.......

Even so, bollocks! It's so bloody unfair. The irony of envying HER! I carry her through fifteen years of depression, rejection and illness and now she's happy - HAPPY! - while I feel so tired and beaten down by all those years of making-do and soldiering-on and putting on a brave face that the rest of the world sometimes seems to carry on its business on the other side of triple-glazing - I register it, but through a glass, quietly.

I know what I need to do. Keep myself fit, stay on top of domestic chores, don't stay up too late, don't drink too much, get into the flow of my work - and most importantly, seek out my friends. They're the ones who bang on the glass and shout Oi! when I need bringing round.

Coincidences - ain't life just full of 'em?

My best friend at Manchester Poly made me deeply envious twenty years ago when she got a well-earned place as a trainee journalist for a big news organisation. So envious that it made me get my finger out of my arse, buy an Amstrad word-processor and start banging out book reviews and features for a local magazine. My career started there.

Fast forward to 2009.
I meet up with same friend after 17 years. We get on like it's yesterday. She invites me down to her place in a little village down south. She's got a lovely husband, three lovely kids, still enjoys her job, lives in a sixteenth century farm house. With a fucking turret, for god's sake!

I'm envious again, but this time there's no coming back. I'm not ever going to ease comfortably into middle age with the mother of my son, leaning on each other while we watch him reach adulthood. I'm not going to enter my child-free mid-forties with someone I've known and loved through my twenties and thirties. And I'm certainly never going to live in a house with a turret, not unless I marry a rich widow.

We hate it when our friends become successful, so says Morrissey. I don't hate it, but I do feel an irrational, tired, resigned envy - let's call it Turret's Syndrome.

I am in a turmoil of exes.

Went out to meet last ex-girlfriend for a drink on Thursday (this is the one I dated for three months over the Summer before deciding there wasn't enough spark). A few beers in, there was still no spark, but it was nice to see her. We can be friends, she says. Another beer in and I was telling her about my ex-lover (the one I went out for lunch with recently, the one who makes me sad but who I can't seem to get out of my head).

Her advice - toughen up, move on, even if that means you have to think less of her to do it. If she was that great she wouldn't have walked away from someone like you.

Swaying home drunk on the bus, I was halfway through a text to 21 year old student girlfriend (the one I slept with last month but have hardly seen anything of since) when I hit send accidentally. It was a not-very-well-written "what's going on? I'd rather you dumped me than strung me along" sort of text. I'm not sure I was going to send it. It must have seemed quite abrupt. She was a bit miffed. She dumped me.

Three exes in one night - see what I mean about a turmoil of exes. Maybe that's a new collective noun.....

I never said whether that lunch date came off, the one my ex-lover asked for after twelve months of barely saying a word to me.

Well it did, and it was a lovely hour in her company.

We talked about work stuff, gossip, future plans, slagged off bosses, ribbed each other's foibles and failings. We laughed a lot, smiled about times we'd spent together. Her eyes sparkled, looking tenderly at me. She touched my hand, ruffled my hair. I talked about my last girlfriend, made fun of my inability to hold down the relationship. It was like the last twelve months never happened.

I didn't ask: why did you want to meet me now?
I didn't ask: do you know how much it hurt when you stayed so distant for the last year?
I didn't ask: are you dating?
I didn't ask: are they still trying to find you someone to marry?

We walked back to the office still laughing and gossiping, leaning sometimes on each other's arm. A few texts since. Nothing said that shouldn't have been said, no limbs gone out on... yet.

I met up with a recently-made friend today - a mate's girlfriend who's only known me a year or so. We walked through windy streets, sat in the park and drank coffee while I ran through the five... christ, nearly six... year history of me and my ex-lover.

"So what do you want?" she asks me. "You can't go through all this and just want another affair?"

No. About a year ago, last time we were close, my ex lover said "we could never have another affair, it would mean too much to both of us."

I doubt her situation's changed. I'd be no more welcome in her family now than six years ago.

So what do I want?

Well I know what I don't want. I don't want to be left hanging, texts unanswered. I would give her my love and affection but couldn't stand if it weren't returned.

I want to ask those questions I didn't ask over lunch. Why did you re-establish contact now? Are you seeing anyone? What do you want from me?

One worry - how selfish is she? Behind that smiling, sweet, easygoing conversation, hand laid on mine, does she just want a friendship because she's tired and needs cheering up, even though she knows I would have so much more?

Quick note cos it's late and I'm tired.

Ex wife came round this evening, shut the kitchen door and announced that she'd seen the error of her ways. Clocks stopped, birds fell from trees, jaws dropped across a two mile radius......

I kept a straight face and accepted it for what it was - good news at last.

She'd spent some time with her idiot ex boyfriend and decided that - at heart - he was still the same nasty piece of work that fucked her up last time. If not worse. Apparently he had a rant to her about me, along with his recently dumped girlfriend and some of our mates who he never liked. Bizarre, I only met him once and was quite nice, in the circumstances.

She's going to try and patch things up with the last bloke she was seeing, who according to everyone who knows him, is a decent chap.

That's a relief, a big dull weight off my mind.

On with the rest of life.

My son's ill, coughed so much today his chest hurts. Hope it's just a cold, nothing worse. He's in that "underlying health problems" category that worries doctors when it comes to swine flu. So fingers crossed that the good news thing stretches out a bit longer.

It's like the conversation never happened. We were out this morning, walking the dog with our son, just talking about stuff. She'd come round, we walk, we talk, she heads off and I get on with the rest of my Sunday. We don't talk about her new former-ex, maybe-back-on-again idiot boyfriend. Mostly because our son is in earshot the whole way, partly because I can't be arsed.

She sent me a text on Friday. She's met him again, thinks she can keep it in perspective, maybe get him out of her system, promises again to keep him away from our son. I spend half an hour on the platform of Bristol Temple Meads, ignoring my colleagues, trying to write a reply that doesn't use words like "you", "selfish", "stupid" or "bitch". Give up and get a cup of tea. Finally write one asking her to listen to the advice of her friends, seeing as they were the ones who had to pick up the pieces last time.

So, it's a waiting game. I've asked people near her to keep an eye on her for me. Maybe she'll handle it, maybe she won't. I still feel angry, but there's a dull, resigned edge to it now. Bring it on, let's get it dealt with.

To add to the dramatic 24 hours detailed in the last post, my ex-wife dropped a proper bombshell tonight, as she left with our son's stuff for her half of the week with him.

"I thought I'd better tell you before you hear it from somewhere else, but I've decided to start seeing XXX again."
"You've got to be fucking joking! You're mad."
"I don't want to talk about it."

So yes, it seems she's started again with the bloke - the depressive, jealous, angry idiot - she left me for three years ago. What a bloody stupid, selfish bitch. Has she forgotten?

Has she forgotten that for two years I wasn't allowed to set foot inside the house they shared because he was so jealous and insecure?

Has she forgotten the bag she used to keep packed ready for staying over at friends every time they argued so much she couldn't stand it any more?

Has she forgotten howling in the night with pain and grief?

Has she forgotten how he once called her best friend "a hatchet faced bitch" for taking her side in an argument?

Has she forgotten how our son's friends used to make up excuses to get away from their house, because the atmosphere was so bad they couldn't stand being there any more?

Has she forgotten this is the relationship that drove her to take an overdose?

Clearly she has. Or at least put a rosy enough glow over the events to think it is worth having another try. She tried to make out that when our son was there, everything was ok, that their arguments were no worse than any other kids see their parents having. Yeah, right. And more to the point, he isn't my son's parent - he has no stake, no ties and what's more, I don't bloody trust him.

Well I haven't forgotten. I told her tonight that I won't stand for my son being in the same house as him. If she gets back together with the stupid twat, I'll take custody.

This is so shit. I had just about got used to enjoying her company again. Now I've got to start watching her like a hawk, waiting for her to go off the rails again. Bollocks. How bloody selfish of her. And on an entirely selfish note, why now!>? How am I supposed to enjoy a night off, a night with a girlfriend, when I know I could get a call from the tearful stupid bitch at any time, asking me to come round and get our son because she's had another fucking argument with Dickface?