Keeping ourselves amused... that's how we ended the last blog almost a month ago. Not feeling very amused now. Flat instead.
I've had a tough month at work. Understatement - I thought I was going to cry at one point, thought I was going to fuck up badly at several others. Hardly saw my son or my friends in three weeks, hardly saw my girlfriend.
Monday and Tuesday last week I had to work later than I normally would accept on nights when I've got my son at home. Got back eight o'clock on Monday, nine o'clock on Tuesday. He seemed quiet, quieter as the night went on. When I put him into bed - a routine we still do even though he's 14 - he couldn't manage to hold it in anymore and began to cry. He's tired of the constant attention to his health, he thinks about his own life expectancy, he's worried about all the shit about swine flu on the news, he can't talk about it to any of his friends. "I feel empty," he said, "hollow." For a moment I thought to myself how much he sounded like his mother when she talked about depression.
I told him what I normally tell myself - that he's done so well to stay as fit and well as he has done up to now, that with more of the same and advances in medicine he can be like this for longer. I told him he can talk to me at any time. But it's hard to reassure a boy who's old enough to understand what's happening but not old enough to have the kind of deep friendships he needs to help him cope.
We talked round it some more. I promised him a day off school. We tried out the usual bedtime jokes and eventually he went to sleep. The next day, he went to his mother's. And the day after that - Thursday - she texted to say he'd been very upset again last thing at night.
I felt for the first time in ages a powerful sense of wrong - that his mum and me should be together looking after him. Not because I think she'd be any easier to live with, any easier to make happy, than she was in the last 15 years, but because then I would be there for him all the time - not just my half of the week.
And then a couple of hours later - still working at eleven pm - I ran into my ex-lover, out for a drink after work. I could barely talk to her, couldn't face the small-talk that is all that passes between us these days. I made my excuses and headed into the office. And I stomped back asking the night air - where are you when I need you? Why aren't you here for me?
So there in the space of a couple of days - my ex-wife and my ex-lover leaving me to deal with this alone. It's sad that this is what I thought rather than "I'll tell my new girlfriend and ask for her shoulder to lean on." I missed old connections, not new ones. I wanted the comfort of people who know me better than anyone else - christ, even the comfort of my ex-wife.
And on Saturday, I decided to tell my new girlfriend all this - in a roundabout way which ended up as one of those "I'm not sure where this is going" conversations. Now I feel shit about upsetting her.
I am tired and wrung out. I haven't helped myself by getting drunk Friday and Sunday nights, struggling over the weekend with a hangover. I need a break - and I'm hoping that a rainy week and a half in Cornwall with my son, a dog and some mates will do it for me. Fingers crossed.
