Husband or cat?

After the Buddhist Christmas party, the Buddhist New Year party. An evening of reflection, meditation, poetry reading, sharing, wine, food, laughter, friendship. When Chris tentatively mentioned the idea a month ago, I leapt at it. ‘I’ll come, even if it’s only you me and Clare’ I said. ‘I won’t be doing anything else that night’. There were nine of us as it turned out, plus the cat, a beautiful and vocal Siamese (is there any other kind?)
It was a good evening, a positive evening, an unconventional evening. What more could you ask for? Better sober with good friends than drinking here alone. Everyone read something, I read ‘The Darkling Thrush’ (of course) and the poem by Rumi that I found on a scrap of paper and posted on Melinda. I wished I’d taken something of my own, but I told them about the blog and last year’s post. Mary read ‘Love for Love’ by Derek Walcott, I must get hold of a copy. I wasn’t clear whether the invitation extended to sleeping over or not, so I took an overnight bag in case, but at around 1:30 the party broke up. I found a text on my phone from Laura: ‘Happy New Year Mum. Love you xxx’.
I got back around 2, the house in darkness. Hubby hadn’t left the light on for me as he usually does when I’m out late, but at least he hadn’t bolted the door. I took my overnight bag into the second bathroom and unpacked my night things. And then I thought...
I went into the bedroom in the dark, got my dressing gown and the hot water bottle. I could hear his breathing, soft and regular. This is it, the voice told me, now is the time. It makes perfect sense. Why bother climbing in beside him, one more night? There’s nothing there for either of you, is there?
So I took my things into the spare room. Laid the bag on the floor. Boiled the kettle for the hot water bottle. Switched the radiator on – the heating was off, but it would be ready for morning. Looked around me. Checked the wardrobe – full of rubbish, I can sort that out, give myself some storage space in here. I need a bedside cabinet, but for now the clock can sit on the floor.
This is my room now. Why put it off any longer?
Lying in the bed, stretching out, luxuriating. The feather duvet, I will have to swap them over, this is bad for my asthma, but I can survive one night. And I’ll bring my own pillow from the other room tomorrow. But for now, it will be OK.
I woke just after 6, the cat had found her way in and was walking over me and purring. Outside the window, I could hear the fountain in the fish pond. A transit place. I won’t be here forever. But it will do for now.
It was gone 7 before I got up, even though I knew there would be no more sleep. So I did the usual things, fed the cats, put the coffee on.
I went to meditate, but the mp3 player wouldn’t switch on. Must have left it on all night, I’ll have to recharge it. Then I heard him in the kitchen.
‘I slept in the spare room. Thought that was easier than disturbing you.’
‘OK. I didn’t know what was happening so I didn’t leave the light on.’
‘That’s fine, no problem’.
So polite. We are always so civil with one another. Never any animosity.
The coffee machine gave its sudden final burst of noise and steam. I lifted the lid. Still some filtering through. He was sitting at the table eating Shredded Wheat.
‘Do you want your coffee pouring now?’
‘Yes please’.
I looked at the chair opposite him. Laura’s chair. Should I pull it out, sit down?
‘I need to talk to you today.’
‘OK’. No curiosity, no reaction.
‘Do you want to do it now, or later?’
‘Later.’
OK then. Later it is.

http://husbandorcat.blog.co.uk/2007/12/

It’s exactly a year today since I logged on here, and – in characteristically gloomy mood – whinged about my boring New Year’s Eve. And set myself a challenge. To blog every day for a year. Well, I didn’t make it EVERY day. Just every day I was here, home, in my study, in front of this battered old PC. And it wasn’t always 500 words, not in the early days. I’m not sure when the ‘write 500 words every day’ merged into the ‘blog every day’. Some of the earlier posts were fairly cursory, although the rest of the 500 were lurking somewhere in the background, on my hard drive or in a notebook. I didn’t always feel able to share them. But I got tired of editing. So, now, everything comes in here, often in a big splurge. And a lot of the time I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to say until I say it, though there are other occasions too, when the words are just hammering to be let out.
Needless to say, it’s been one hell of a year. I’ve fallen into and out of love twice – actually, make that into twice and out of three times, given that I started the year still nursing that stupid infatuation that had been rolling its way around my heart since the first faltering steps of this blog, over three years ago now. But I let him go, replaced him; let him go, replaced him; let Himself go - the only one who was consummated out of the three - but he’s gone now too. So be it. I have sealed up the box marked ‘love’ and deposited it in a left luggage office, ‘Not wanted on voyage’.
At the start of the year, I thought I might be going to Vienna and/or Sydney. Well, that didn’t happen, but I did go to Hungary and Berlin, unexpectedly, and also to Brussels, Oxford, London and Paris, all stations along the way. And metaphorically, to other places I never expected to see. I have spent good times with old friends, happy memories to lay down and treasure for the hard times, and made quite a few new ones, both on and off line. As for other plans, I still haven’t made any progress on that bloody novel. Or on my research. No high grade journal papers this year, I’m afraid. No poetry published. Just blogs and notebooks.
Marian suggested the other day that I should close this book and start a new one, something which had already occurred to me. But I still have another step to take, one which will be the culmination of the last three years, in fact, of a much longer journey than that. A culmination AND a springboard, as I said in the presentation for my doomed interview. The first of many down a new path. And part of me is excited and part of me is terrified.
I always strive to be honest, here as in real life. Oh god, how disingenuous does that sound??? ‘Trust me, I’m a used car salesman/doctor/politician’??? Well, I AM a doctor, of sorts, if not of medicine. I can’t swear that I’m always consistent, but I always sincerely believe in whatever it is I’m writing as I’m writing it. I hope those who have known me for some time know that is true and appreciate my sincerity. I never set out to create any special persona for myself, just to draw out what was there, the things I didn’t understand or recognise about myself.
And in the process I have discovered/created this unique and – if you don’t mind me saying so – rather wonderful woman. She was always there, but she never believed she could emerge into the light of day, always doomed to be the ‘might have been’, the ‘should have been’, the lost twin. It has taken a crisis to pull her out at her full stature, to stand blinking in the daylight. I have no idea where her next step will take her, but it has to be done. Because the one thing that makes her really uncomfortable is deceit. And she has been living a lie for so very long, by default if not by action.
And HusbandorCat is the appropriate place for the chronicling of that step. So, I’ll be around for a little longer. And then, my friends, expect news about a different blog. I hope you’ll choose to join me there, but the choice is up to you, of course.
In the mean time, celebrate today in the way that suits you best, and let us all welcome 2009 with hope.
Linda
xxx

My family meets today at my house. Three generations – and I am one of the elders – OK, the youngest of the oldest, but even so... How did that happen? When the generations before us fall away, and suddenly we find ourselves on that pinnacle, or outcrop at least, looking back at the ones toiling up behind us. Nurturing the children, watching the ones who are no longer children making their way through the thickets of adulthood.
We cannot live other people’s lives for them, but we can reach out a hand sometimes, when we have come so far, but still have so much further to go on our own journeys.
I meditated on love again this morning, as I do every day. Learning to feel that generalised love: for myself (hardest of all, of course), for my friends, for people who are difficult to like, for all living beings. To even it out and be able to say: ‘I accept you all. We are all in this life together. I will see you for who and what you are, and I will wish you well.’
I see the destructive power of both hate and love around me. I see friends who are suffering in love and I try to offer what comfort I can. We love the person who is in our heads, but sometimes we have to face up to the fact that that person does not exist, we have to let them go, and it’s hard, believe me, I know just how hard. ‘If I’d never loved, I never would have cried’. Who said that? Oh yes, Paul Simon, ‘I am a Rock’. But that is too bitter, that song, it’s a young man’s song. I hope I’m not bitter. I’ve moved beyond that, I like to believe so, anyway.

‘Love’ and ‘hate’ trip off the tongue, but is it really ‘hate’ which is the opposite of ‘love’? I think of someone else I tried to reach out to. I won’t try it again, that is too dangerous, and I have to protect myself, I’m not a saint. But I wonder, what is it that drives that person? Not love, whatever they may think, or if it is, a particularly dark and distorted form of love. Hate, then? No, I don’t believe it’s hate either, because if so, I’m not sure who the hate object is, unless either the self (and I don’t think this is true, the person in question is cunning and has very strong instincts of self preservation, I’d say), or the rest of the world in general. But I’d say that this person doesn’t hate other people so much as see them as objects, tools, to be used and manipulated at will and then discarded when they no longer fulfil the purpose intended. No, I suspect that what drives this person is neither love nor hate but fear. Fear of being alone and powerless, perhaps, of being found out, of being rejected, of seeing themselves as they are.
I don’t feel anger towards this person, but I do feel sorrow for those who have been hurt. And gratitude that I am not one of them.

Another morning, and today I actually don’t know what I’m going to say. I have had a lot of private thoughts that I don’t feel able to share – yes, even I have them.. But nothing so far has formed in my head to write to you. And so I will sit in front of the keyboard and see what stream of consciousness emerges today.
I have managed to avoid thinking about work for a few days, but it can’t be put off indefinitely. I spent some time yesterday looking at my college work, I have an assignment to complete by the end of January, and I need to go back over what we did, the things that we rushed through, that I didn’t have time to practise between sessions. I enjoy it, it means a lot to me, and several people have said that the qualification might help my employability. Well, it can’t hurt. So there is an incentive there.
I’ve also got some follow up work from the Berlin meeting to do for the 15th, but the email asking for it, with very non-specific and confusing requirements, only arrived last week. So, that will be a challenge And the paper I presented in Oxford has to be rewritten and expanded by the end of the month for inclusion as a chapter in a book, which will also be a challenge. As well as my usual clerking work. But I will get my head down and it will all get done.
My siblings are coming tomorrow – I think. We’ve never been close, but since our parents died, ten years ago, we have tried to make the effort to meet up at Christmas, rotating the location between the three of us. Last year it was due to be at my sister’s, but there was some bad feeling between my brother and brother in law, and I had a phone call the day before from my brother in law to say that my brother would not be going, but that we were welcome to if we wanted. This year, I have had confirmation from my brother to say that they will come, but although I’m expecting my sister, she hasn’t called to say whether my niece and family are coming too, and she’s been staying with them over Christmas, so I haven’t been able to call her. So I don’t know how many to cater for. Given what happened last year, the fact that she hasn’t called is making me uneasy.
Why do people do these things? I don’t like my brother in law and I never have, though I’ve tried to tolerate him for my sister’s sake. But I don’t understand why people get into petty feuds with one another and hold grudges like this. They hurt themselves as much as they hurt each other. I try to be tolerant, and to keep away as far as possible from those I find intolerable. I try at least to respect everyone’s point of view, even if I don’t agree with it, to acknowledge that they have their reasons for their feelings and behaviour. I have spent a lot of anger over the years to no good purpose, and made myself miserable in the process. I have realised that I don’t have to like everybody, and I don’t have to spend emotional energy on people from whom I get only grief. I can accept that they are who they are and how they are, and I try to do so without judgement, of them or of myself. And so I step a little further along the path.

Every day is a new day. Wake up and start again. Whatever has gone before is in the past. Remember the good things, but don’t try to hold on to them, be glad for them and let them go.
I’m drifting through these limbo days with no real plan of what is going to happen, what I’m going to say, what I’m going to do. This situation is so bizarre. Just a few more days. Not before Tuesday, because my sister, brother in law, brother, sister in law and possibly niece, husband and children will be here, we talked yesterday about the cooking arrangements. Not before Tuesday. And Wednesday? New Year’s Eve? Bring the curtain down? Tell him and then go out, leave him here alone? What about Thursday, New Year’s Day? I am holding on to it all, but what am I holding? Am I procrastinating still? Sometimes I think I’ve been procrastinating for three years, longer, even.
I pull off my rings. They are irritating me, there’s an itch just below the knuckle.
How will he react? Will he understand, acknowledge, give me his blessing? Will he retreat, hide himself away again? Or will he explode? That seems unlikely, it has never happened before. But if he does, I have nowhere to escape to, so I will have to stay and face the consequences.
Yesterday I was thinking of Paris, of how good that felt, good and real and strong. Life cannot always be about sitting on the Left Bank sipping coffee and listening to the bells. I’m not so naïve. I know there will be hard times, black times. I need to keep a point of light burning.
We cannot always be ruled by circumstances. We cannot always wait for them to fall into place. Sometimes the universe is telling us what to do but without showing us how. We have to make the decision before we have the means to implement it.
Take it gently, was Mary’s advice. Start by making a room for yourself. I have my own rooms, my study, my sitting room, he has his. The spaces we share are the kitchen and bedroom. It is the bedroom which is crucial, symbolic. Last time, I sent him elsewhere. Perhaps he will offer to go this time, but I must be firm, I have to be the one to go. What will I say to make him realise, understand, that this is not a test, a trial, a game, a bluff, I am serious this time? Or should I not even try, just let it happen gradually?
I must stop speculating like this. The only thing to do is to do it. Let it happen, whatever might happen. Whatever happens, I will still get up every day and find the world there, in its usual place, waiting for me, the cats waiting to be fed, work waiting to be done, correspondence waiting to be dealt with, dust sneaking in and settling while I’m not looking, waiting for me to come and chase it out again. Day after day.

I changed my picture again. I changed it on MSN first, and someone said he liked it, so I thought I would change it here too. I only found it quite recently, in Facebook. It was taken in Paris in May by a Czech friend who put it on her Facebook page but somehow I missed it at the time – there were so many people posting so many photos from that trip. It was outside Sacre Coeur on Saturday evening, I was with Petra (Czech), Eduardo (Spain) and Arto (Finland), and we had just walked up through Montmartre. In the full picture, my elbow is resting on Edu’s back, and Arto is standing behind me – Petra, of course, took the picture. Later we walked back down and found a restaurant, the others came to meet us from the other parts of the city where they were scattered, and we had a final dinner together before flying off (or training, in my case at least) in our different directions the following day.
Actually, that’s not strictly true, because at least some of us had lunch the next day as well, a picnic on the Pont des Arts. I’d spent the morning on my own in the Latin Quarter, listening to the bells of Notre Dame and exploring Shakespeare & Company. Falling in love – in love with being myself, with Melinda, with detaching myself from the limitations which hold me back and stop me from finding my own way. I was still a little in love with someone else at that time – or not such a little (not anyone connected with Paris, BTW) – I didn’t realise then that it had just reached the point which was as good as it was ever going to get, but soon the process of detaching myself from him would begin, too.
And so I sat in a café with my notebook and listened to the bells and drank Sunday morning coffee and sunshine and people and magic. Bought a poster from the stalls on the Left Bank. And when I was ready, I met my friends outside the Louvre.
I guess I’ll always have Paris.
I went back to the start of this blog again last night. A sense of time folding and doubling back on itself, taking me back, and yet, I am so different now, I am not that woman any more, I have reinvented, recreated myself, I have seen myself at last through others’ eyes, others’ lenses, and I can let her go, that lonely, fearful woman, and stand alone. I have resolved the contradictions of Belinda and Melinda by truly becoming Melinda and acknowledging her strength and power. For now, at least.
‘It was late in December/The sky turned to snow/All around the day/Was going down slow./Night like a river,/Beginning to flow./I felt the beat of my mind go drifting into/Time Passages./Years go falling in the fading light./Time Passages/Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.’
The last train home? But where is home? Where will the train take me?

A bizarre Christmas, but then, how could it have been anything else? And, honestly, not so different from many others. Our presents to each other were just about right – not so trivial as to seem mean, but nothing so extravagant and personal as to cause awkwardness in the weeks to come. His card to me – and he has a history of giving me ‘for my wonderful wife’ type cards with long mawkish verses about how I’m the centre of his universe and dee dah dee dah – was a simple picture of a cat (what else?) on the front, and inside, ‘Merry Christmas’ and his name with three kisses. Mine to him was a humorous cartoon, with just my name inside – no kisses, no customary ‘All my love’. The morning passed without incident, everyone was relatively relaxed, except that Laura and her boyfriend had to leave early to see his parents before her shift at the pub started. We had dinner when they got back at 5, which was rather a strange time to eat, but it passed OK. In between, hubby took control of the cooking, as he usually does, I helped out as needed, mostly we went our separate ways.
Laura and her boyfriend were planning to stay here again last night, but at 9 his mum rang to say that the dog, who has a tumour, couldn’t stand up, and they were trying to decide whether to call the vet out then or leave it till this morning. Laura took the call, then told me in a whisper. ‘I don’t want to go, but I’ll have to for him’. I hugged her. The death of a dog doesn’t mean much on the scale of things, but when you’re 19, it is another part of childhood to let go of. Like the flawed fantasy of Christmas.
The other fracas I’ve been involved in still rumbles on. My attempt at reconciliation was accepted briefly then rejected again. So be it. I tried reviewing, honestly my part in the whole thing, and though I don’t claim to be perfect, I can’t really see what I did to invoke such venom.
Over the years, I have occasionally attracted the attention of strong personalities who offered friendship but then attempted to control me – the result, I guess, of the ‘little me’-dom to which I can be prone. Such people have given me a lot of grief in the past, but I’m tougher than I look. I remember a toy from my childhood, inflatable child size plastic figures which were weighted in the bottom with sand, so that they could be used as punch bags. Push me too hard and I’ll bounce back and put your eye out. Well, no, I wouldn’t do that, I try not to. But I won’t roll over for you to walk on me either.
I know that people who try to use others in those ways are also victims, and in the end they hurt only themselves because the rest of us can shrug them off and move on. A friendship which can be so easily broken has only shallow roots.
I reached out in a small way to another friend, a genuine friend, last night. I know the dark places, I’ve been there enough times, sometimes they can be very dark, at others just a little gloomy, but they pass. Everything passes.
And I got through the whole of Christmas Day without a single tear. Now, that’s an achievement.

I was angry yesterday. Very angry. I felt I had been misinterpreted, misjudged, mistreated, manipulated, by someone I have tried very hard, against my deepest instincts, to like and feel loving towards. My compassion, trust and tolerance were stretched so thinly that one more word could have snapped them completely.
We cannot control others, and we cannot prevent others from trying to control us. Often we cannot even control our own reactions. But at least the potential is there. To look at how we react in certain circumstances, and try to find the ‘best’ way of responding, the way which will lead to greater peace for ourselves and others, rather than perpetuating the old cycles and playing out the old stories.
For me, there are two old stories in cases like that. One, the oldest, the most primeval, is to lash out, to try and inflict as much hurt and damage as possible, to tell that person over and over exactly what I think of them, force them to face up to the truth about themselves (as I see it, but then, what else is truth other than that which we can see?), to make them understand. I abandoned that approach decades ago. It never works, how can it? We cannot control other people’s minds. We cannot control their way of seeing the world. We cannot make them see what we see.
It is always, always destructive, and what it destroys is the person who is trying to use it.
So, if I cannot change others by my anger, what else do I do with it? Turn it on myself, of course. Always. This has been the pattern throughout my life. In so many ways. The world is against me, everybody is against me, nobody wants me, I’m going down the garden to eat worms. This was my instinct yesterday, to run away, even though I knew it would be no more helpful, positive and constructive than unleashing my anger. The lure of the old patterns of behaviour was almost overwhelming.
So, how to find a third way? How to step back from the fire and the flood and stay on the firm ground?
Distraction, first. Do something, anything, get on with it. Lose myself in practical action. Fortunately, there were plenty of practical actions to get on with. And look for guidance.
I read about forgiveness, that forgiveness is not something to be handed down, but an openness towards the other person, a willingness to stand here in this moment, to let go of the past, not to assume that the future will always replay what has gone before. We can’t force change, but we don’t have to assume that it is impossible.
I won’t hide any more. I will show my face. It is a lovely face, a pretty face, a sexy face, I know it is, I have been told so. No more false modesty, no hiding away, no ‘oh, I’m only little me, nobody wants ME’. That’s not true. It’s a beautiful face, and in real life, it can be even better, more captivating, more seductive, more loving. It can be all those things. And it can be strong, too. It can face a new day, a new year, a new life. It can let go of the past.
Happy Christmas, my friends.

Maybe it’s time for Linda to beat a retreat from blogland. She has been used, battered and bruised, cast aside like an old sock, apparently. So be it. Leave the place to the beautiful, glamorous, passionate people who are here as of right. She doesn’t expect to be wanted, loved, desired, admired, cared for, appreciated. Why should she? She belongs in the ranks of the eternally ordinary and everyday.
There are some friendships, some people, which are just too difficult to handle, too hard to please, no matter what you try to do. And she tries, she always tries, to please people. The awkward kid on the fringes of the group, who doesn’t know what she’s expected to do, how she’s supposed to make friends. She doesn’t push herself forward, she always waits for them to come to her, not out of arrogance or stand-offishness, but because why would they want her, why should she try to impose herself on them, what a joke that would be, imagine, her of all people, trying to find a friend. She doesn’t mean to upset or antagonise or disappoint anyone, but somehow she always does, and she ends up back here, alone and despised.
In here, it is just too easy to say things, anything, and assume that your words are just marks on a screen, just electrical impulses, nothing more nor less. What happens in blogland doesn’t count in the Real World. Why should anyone care, take anything seriously? It’s all a game, after all, just let it all go.
So, she will go back into the real world and deal with the real world people, and try to get through the next few days of enforced jollity, while the world around her celebrates. How will she hide the tears? How can it be that anyone will fail to notice that she has been crying? Blame the exhaustion. That’s it, that good old stand by, that universal excuse, and it’s not far from the truth either, as she drags through another day on three hours’ sleep.
And she’ll find herself reflecting on that eternal truth, that none of this really matters, that we are all imaginary people, playing at being alive, then putting ourselves back into the box, disconnecting our batteries, returning to the manufacturer, unserviceable goods. Otherwise, why would we be here? Why wouldn’t we be out there, living real lives?
She is rambling again, as she always does when she is tired. And full of self pity. And being unfair on the people who do care, the people who are there, because there are some, some kind souls who don’t want her to go. Perhaps. But maybe they are busy, and it’s not fair to expect them to shoulder her feelings at times like this. Her feelings are her own burden, she must carry them alone, no one else can do it for her. Even though the tiredness is almost overwhelming. She has to keep going, because there is only one alternative, and she has made promises that she will never go down that road. And if nothing else, she keeps her promises.

I have a friend who’s always very quick to warn me off any men of our mutual acquaintance who might show an interest in me, or in whom I might be interested. This one is very charming but cold and unfeeling, he flirts with everybody but doesn’t really care for anyone, except, possibly, his wife. That one is fragile and deeply damaged himself, to be handled with great care. This one is amusing but shallow, I would get bored very quickly. That one is fascinating but too intense and dangerous.
If I were a different sort of woman, I might resent her interference. But I respect her judgement. I will always listen to her opinions because I know she’s right. Always, infallibly, straight down the line, bang on the money, right on the nose.
But do her individual judgements, I wonder, give her the insight to understand the fundamental problem? Which is, that they’re all flawed, every single one of them, there is no one out there who could tick all the boxes, meet all the requirements. There can never be a man to match my complexity, he hasn’t been born, not in this age, at any rate, and if he has, what are the chances of me finding him, or him finding me?
Love is always a compromise, but I have compromised for long enough. I will cultivate friendships, and maybe find sex along the way. That shouldn’t be so hard, should it? Once I used to think it was, but perhaps I was looking in the wrong places.
In the end, perhaps, I will come to the realisation that the one who suited me best was dear old Hubby. He will never feed my passion, answer my questions or fill my empty, gaping holes. But he is there. He tolerates, ignores, never criticises, never complains. Never engages, never listens, never responds. He will never leave. So I have to be the one who will. Or accept that I will never be my own woman. And does that matter? Yes, I think it does.
When I think about Himself, I know it wasn’t him, that he could never be the one to tick all the boxes. And yet, he ticked so many, that I was blind to the ones that still stood empty, I dismissed them hurriedly, as though they didn’t really matter. Oh, they did, they did, and they still do. But now, each time I think about a man, I find myself mentally checking against those same boxes, the ones he ticked... Sense of humour? Dark eyes? Intelligence? Smile?
No, that way madness lies. Get a grip, woman. Think about something sensible and ordinary, take your mind away from those murky tracks.
Holiday starts today. I’ve decided. I didn’t get all the work done yesterday. My brain was still fuddled from exhaustion. I will let it all go, for a few days, at least. No one cares about deadlines at this time of year, do they?
I wrote and sent off all my cards for Europe yesterday. I know, I know, far too late. But they will be there for the New Year. It wasn’t till last week that I got round to sending the annual circular email asking if addresses had changed from last year, if people still wanted to be on the list. I felt embarrassed in the post office, till I realised that the man in front of me had cards for Canada, the States and Australia. Maybe they were Easter cards.