I want to know exactly what I want. I need to know what will happen when I get to it. I need to feel absolutely sure that I am doing the right thing. I want enduring and forever.
I once was able to manage all of these worries with control. Behaviours that gave me a tidy house, well planned activities and time spent thinking about all of the possible consequences to every decision. What I had was a real sense of perceived self assurance. I often felt that I knew what to do and was unafraid to state my intentions; to do what I’d want. I had spent so much time thinking; how could I ever get it wrong? Even when I made errors I could turn life around.
I don’t trust myself anymore.
I change my mind all the time about how I would like things to be. There seem to be way too many variables. Opportunities I would not have had before. Choices. Endless paralysing choices that I don’t want to be in charge of making. Everything takes longer; the whole process of thinking exhausts me. I am terrified of getting it wrong. I am afraid that now faced with more decisions than before I simply won’t do a thing. Instead just live in this state of wondering.
Perhaps it is because before, most things were decided by me. I wanted to get married and have a child, I wanted to leave London, I wanted this house by the sea. Seb let me know best; I was the decision maker between us and he was rewarded with my dedication to making everything just as you might want it to be- calm, cosy and safe. Everything was okay until it wasn’t. I want to know what’s next without having decide how to get there. I want to wake up in a really good tomorrow.
I’ve not changed all of the clocks yet. The heating is on a funny setting and the light timers are still optimistic that it doesn’t get dark until six. What I know is that I absolutely do not want this. The acres of stuff.
Of course you can argue that nobody knows; because they don’t. However it is pretty much a given for a great deal of folk, as it was once for me; that someone else will be home to move things around, to stick the telly on, to wonder if a midweek drink it pushing it a bit, to add to the chorus of family living. I want to wonder if someone else has locked the door or replenished the loo paper.
I turned forty at the weekend. I celebrated. I laughed my head off. I knew that I needed to have fun and I embraced it. Friends were kind and I was glad to seize the occasion. I came home to our newly adopted cat and her unwavering affection for me; she is the welcome addition to our home that makes the quiet less so.
It appears that in grief it is possible to be both stationary and moving. We are all doing okay until we stop; then we stop and the gravity of it overwhelms us. Still The Patricks are trying really hard. We have formed our own defences- shuffling like policemen against the riot; keeping each other upright. I believe we will continue to do so- but there is a certainty that can’t be promised; we know this too well.
It is hard to age when he won’t. It is unspoken between those who loved him. We watch him stay the same in our minds; our grown-up boy in the t-shirt and Converse shoes.
LP is ever changing. Her voice in our ensemble is clear. We have mini adventures and she tells me how she will do the same things with her own little girl when she is a grown up. She imagines coming to visit me when I am the granny. It seems that she wants to know what will happen too. If that’s all we have will she find we need nothing more?