All manner of thing shall be well

All that bit in the previous post about not wanting to be in a relationship? Is perfectly true.
Nevertheless, I am faffing about on the outermost corners of internet dating.

I may not want a whole ‘nother person cluttering up my precious dwelling-space and assuming they have rights and duties thereunto, but I would like, you know, a little [a LOT excuse me thank you]romance and cuddling and sex and such-like. All the people I actually know are prancing about in the Venn diagram of TAKEN and DOES NOT FANCY MAY. So internet dating it is.

At the VERY LEAST, there should be anecdotes. Many many lots anecdotes. The things I do for my public.

Where are we? Where are we going? What are we doing? Is this a handcart? I think we all deserve an explanation.

Let me explain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Home is where the suitcase is

So. In January 2014 I discovered Hex the Ex was being distant, depressed and difficult, not to mention disrespectful and dickheaded, not because he was Drowning in Woe over my extremely bloody expensive near-death experience AKA IVF segueing into tenth miscarriage, but because he was a dirty filthy treacherous lying scumbollock. 

Because of the state of my finances and the state of the lease on our flat at the time, we carried on living together for seven months. In separate bedrooms I HASTEN TO ADD. 

Then Hex moved out quite suddenly and I realised he’d left me with most of the packing, all of the paperwork, and no internet. His parents had to come and help me pack his things and take them away for him. And I was in such a state my Mum had to come and do likewise for me, because I’d degenerated to the point where I’d pick up a mug to put it in a box and start weeping in to it instead. 

By the time the lease was up, I’d moved to my parents’ house. All my belongings were shoved into the basement and I was relegated to the attic and there I lived for over a year.

Eventually the sporadic and frustrating house-hunting paid off. I left off blogging again just as I was moving into this new flat, this very one I am currently sitting in as I type this. I have lived here for over a year now. 

I have only just retrieved the final suitcase of random crap from the parental attic, mind. There is also the matter of quite a few books, and a bookcase that cannot possibly fit in this new flat and yet my mother is oddly reluctant to dispose of. My sister’s cat is currently using it as a jungle-gym.

Ah well.

Up up up the ziggurat, lickety-split!

Meanwhile! Just as I was regressing to the Parental Attic of Having All My Dinners Cooked For Me, my boss announced that she was leaving, and would I care to act up for a few months while the entire department rearranged itself? Well… Yes? I think? You mean I haven’t backed my career into the cul-de-sac of nerdulence? Wait, you mean I have to manage people? 

So that happened.

After quite a few months, I interviewed for the permanent upgrade, got it, and have been the manager of a small team ever since.  

Back in my married days, I was not really that interested in my career. I had a job I could do well, I liked it, my place of employment were (are) mercifully generous with sick leave, Hex the Ex earned a great deal more than I did, and I was praying I’d be on maternity leave any minute… Alas, poor May. 

Now I need to earn more money. I also have the mental energy to dedicate to the stupid job, so I may as well do a good job. I’m not one of life’s natural managers, I can’t delegate, and there is a project I have buggered up and am therefore delivering late which is preying on my mind (oh damn it, there it is again, nibbling away at my cortex, May screwed up May screwed up munchmunchmunch), but hey, CAREER I have now. A career. I went to a conference and everything.

I am not who I thought I was.

Cobwebby heart

I have not dated, I have not kissed, I do not think I have so much as flirted since my divorce. Since January 2014. 

I have thought about it. I don’t want my last sexual experience to have been with Hex the Ex. I miss sex. There must be someone out there who is a) decent, b) single, c) attractive to Mays and d) attracted to Mays. 

Anyone? Beuller?

My peer group is pretty much ‘married, possibly with children’. I shall just have to join OK Match Single Soulmates Automat or whatever they’re called.

Eventually.

The truth is, outbreaks of randiness aside, I don’t really want  to be in a relationship. Because of the Year of Living Adolescently at my parents’ I am still in the giddy divorcée phase of sheer, blissful, relief of being on my own, Queen of the remote, Princess of Pyjamas, Pharaoh of the Fridge, Duchess of Dinner, Sole Absolute Ruler of Cinema Plans, and Folder Of No One’s Pants But My Own (Sometimes). Nobody sulks at me, nobody picks fights at stupid times of the night, nobody ignores me, nobody insists on watching snooker when I want to watch Columbo, nobody rolls their eyes at me or refuses to clean the lavatory (no, wait, sometimes I refuse to clean the lavatory. I always give in, though. Eventually). Do I really want another adult wandering about in here, complaining that I’m listening to Shostakovich with my feet over the back of the sofa instead of washing the dishes?

Not unless they are as ornamental as Idris Elba and cutely funny as Sue Perkins, thank you. 

*stares expectantly into the near future, because of Narrativium*

There, I’ve said it.
Hello, blog! I missed you!

Why did you stop blogging, then?

 Good question.

 Firstly, I was a paralysed mess of fear at the thought of putting anything too recognisable on the blog, and being recognised, which may sound foolish, but I was haunted by the fear a Relation or Acquaintance or God-help-me a colleague would pop up and say: ‘Oh! I didn’t know you were related to [insert parents’ names here]! You must be May, right, because this blog said, and then you said in the tea-room, and it was OBVIOUS!’. And then try to talk to me about my divorce.

 Truthfully, my parents, my ex, and myself all have wildly different surnames, so this was no doubt quite footling, but then my parents, my ex and myself are all quite startlingly original. And I once did find the blog of an old school friend, who I recognised instantly as being old school friend, despite all the pseudonyms and redactions, because that shit couldn’t possibly have happened to two different women in the same year… (I quietly backed away, for if I could recognise her she no doubt could recognise me and… and… eh).

 This seems to have been some kind of neurotic reaction to the divorce and surrounding circumstances, because quite suddenly I no longer give a shit.

 Secondly, a great many of my favourite bloggers had also stopped blogging. Blogging no longer seemed to be The Thing That Was The Cool Thing. I felt a bit foolish. I felt a bit lonely. I’d never entirely recovered my nerve after ending my first, Infertility Adventures blog. Starting a new blog in this cold and empty future? May, are you nuts? (ahahahaha I am so funny (sorry (stop it (sorry (oy vey with the parentheses))))).

 Thirdly and actually chiefly, I stopped blogging because there was no narrative arc any more. There was no quest, no adventure, no goal, no point. The infertility blog was extremely driven by the narrative imperative – try, try again, try something else, more trying. There was always an update to give. There was always a ‘and then….’ to be adding to.

 Recovery from divorce, whereas, had no ‘and then…’. Well, it could have – there are people who can and have made a good narrative out of the whole process. I couldn’t. I was in survival mode. I can see it quite clearly now that I look back. I was just surviving. I had no plans and no goal and no quest beyond ‘just get through these next few days and maybe have a bath tonight.’ I didn’t even think about what my future should look like. Even the house-hunting was driven by vague guilt about camping out in my parents’ attic forever rather than by a genuine desire to Go Forth And Live My Life.

 I simply had nothing much to say. I had not much of a mind to say it with.

 I was keeping a paper diary. This has been invaluable, as my poor tired battered brain simply didn’t want to hold on to anything much, let alone anything upsetting, for more than 36 hours. I wrote it down, there it is, my past is not a black hole. I actually did stuff. I got promoted and I did lots of adulty managerial crap at work without losing my shit and I bought the flat I now live in and I furnished it with the help of IKEA and a couple of good friends and I went abroad more times in 2016 than I’d been abroad in the previous decade and I went to the theatre and the cinema and concerts and museums and saw friends and family and after a while I woke up and realised that I was getting bored.

 I was no longer in survival mode. I had, actually, survived. It was time to turn up to my own life and live it again. It was time to say hello to the world again.

Two weeks of moving into my new flat sock by sock. Two weeks of finding I’ve forgotten the other box, you know, the one with useful things in it. Two weeks of sorting through paperwork looking for Important Documents (this is officially one of the Ten Great Annoyances). Two weeks of arguing with self about urgency of plumber. Of waiting for days until someone with a car has the time to drive another three boxed up for me. And shuffling boxes about. And packing and unpacking and repacking and depacking all these… things? Some of which I don’t even recognize? To whit:

• A pair of ornamental salad servers, with curlicues, that I have never seen before in my life.
• A bag of handspun yarn, with serious moth, that smells of dead goat, that ditto I never saw in my life I swear.
• A towel with palm-trees on it.
• All the mugs we ever did own. Didn’t Hex take any? Is Hex going to pop up again in the near future and demand his fair share of the mugs? Will we have to meet in a branch of Starbucks for the Exchange of Custody?
• Ditto chopping-boards. What?
• A whole sub-category of old, broken, holed, cracked, chipped, stained, bashed, torn items I bloody well threw away over a year ago so why the HELL are they in my new flat?
• A packet of paper napkins with hearts and moose on. Hearts? Moose?

And then the boiler turned out to be Absolutely Dead And Very Broken, which was wildly expensive. I managed to get it repaired before the British climate suddenly remembered it was November and covered my windows with frost, so yay, but OW my wallet. Ow.

On the plus side, I have the sort of friend who will drive for hours to visit, come to IKEA with me, let me load her car with crap, drive me home again, and spend the entire afternoon putting IKEA furniture together with me and not one cross word was spoken. It was epic. I am verklempt. Also sleeping on a very comfortable and brand new bed with no shitty memories, but chiefly verklempt.

Half my stuff is still at my parents’ house. I still don’t have broadband. My parents are on a business trip next week. I don’t know whether I need to be at Starship Parenterprise for Cat Maintenance duties or at New Flat for, well, for May Maintenance duties.

But I did find a couple of Christmas CDs in the wrack, along with my precious box of Christmas baubles.

Scene: My mother and I sorting through my boxes so we can move them to my new flat in a logical manner:

‘What’s in this box?’

‘Books.’

‘And this one?’

‘Books.’

‘This?’

‘Books. And, err, yarn.’

‘May, do you actually own anything except books and yarn?’

‘I’ve found the coffee pot…’

Scene: The dinner table, with friends:

‘So, May, what are you plans for Christmas?’

‘Oh, I’ll be spending it in my new flat! I’ll get all the foods I like and spend the day watching telly in my pyjamas!’

‘All by yourself?’

‘Um… yes?’

‘But that’s awful!’

‘Is it?’

(Seriously, guys, is it?)

Scene: Office, during tea break:

‘So I need a new bed…’

‘Oh, I have a spare bed I can sell you! It’s my son’s! He’s just gone to Uni! It’ll be perfect for you – the mattress is only ten years old…’

‘Your son’s had it since he was eight?’

‘Yes…’

‘A single bed.’

‘Yes.’

‘No thank you.’

‘But why not?’

‘Why don’t I want a single bed that’s been slept in by a teenage boy for the past ten years?’

I went to a concert last night. 

I have a serious passion for classical music. My mother remembers me insisting on listening to the Beethoven violin concertos LP every single day when I was all of five years old. I remember being caught dancing wildly to Stravinsky’s Firebird by my sister and her hysterically amused little friends when I was twelve. I cried over Madam Butterfly when I was fourteen, and spent my pocket money on Purcell’s Ode to St Cecilia when I was sixteen. 

So last night my Dear Old Chum I went to university with and I went off to a concert that went on for three hours and involved a theorbo.

When I got into work today, my colleagues asked if I had enjoyed myself. ‘Oh yes!’ I burbled, ‘It was lovely! The singing was beautifully done! There was a threnody that actually made the lady sitting next to me cry and borrow tissues!’ My colleagues smiled and got back to work, all except one.

‘You went with Dear Old Chum, right?’

‘Yes…’

‘You know, you shouldn’t have to pretend to like this sort of stuff to impress him. You should be yourself.’

I gaped at her, possibly due to lack of coffee.

‘You should do what you want sometimes,’ she added kindly.

‘This concert was my idea,’ I said. ‘If anyone’s pretending to like it to impress someone, he’s pretending so he can impress me.’

‘Oh!’ My colleague looked at me thoughtfully, and we parted ways. 

So I could sit at my desk and let the mind-hamsters run from ‘why would anyone think I wanted to impress Dear Old Chum? Do I want to impress DOC? Oh God, is he trying to impress me? Oh God,’ all the way over to ‘why is it so hard for anyone to believe that liking Baroque music and poetry is a thing? GAH,’ and back again.

So there’s that.

But I do really love theorbos.

I bought a new bed today.

I had actually rescued the Marital Bed from the wreckage of the old flat, because it was My Bed And I Paid For It, and was planning on installing it in the new flat, as and when I got one. 

In the event, the Marital Bed, having as it did rather flaring head and foot boards and a general elephantiasis of the frame, was uncomfortably large for the New Flat. Believe me, I measured all the measurable things up down and sideaways and the inevitable conclusion was that, if I put it this way about, I would have to stand on it to open the wardrobe, and that way about, I would have to stand on it to open the window. 

At which point, a little voice that I’d been valiantly suppressing in the cause of Economy and Common Sense smugly said ‘well, it’s not as if you want to sleep in a bed contaminated with all that depressing Baby Or (no, wait, AND) Death Sex, and all the even more depressing convalescing after miscarriages, and it having been Hex’s bed too, with a favourite side each and the wonky bit you must remember not to kneel on where a burst of former enthusiasm warped the slats for ever.’ I went down to the utility room which is now frankly mostly Marital Bed Parts and looked at it without much fondness. 

And then I went to Ikea and had the vapours in the mattress department.

And pulled out my credit card. And bought a bed that will actually let me open the wardrobe without acrobatics, but will still be big enough for me, my huge pile of books, my imaginary cats, and maybe the odd special friend, on a strictly no bloody snoring basis. 

And then I had a wotthehell wotthehell moment and also bought an ingenious sofa bed thingy, having sofa-to-bedded and bed-to-sofaed it a few times and then lain on it until a passing customer said ‘oy, Sleeping Beauty, let the rest of us have a turn!’

And then I bought a bedside table. 

And then I felt quite faint.

Time for another bath.

Sorry.

I fell asleep in the bath last night. I knew I was getting tired and anxious, but this is ridiculous. I have enough trouble falling asleep in a nice warm bed. The bath? The bath. Prunarama. And that is why no post despite NaBloPoMo. I was unconscious and marinading.

I shall have to post twice in a day at some point, to even things out.

Alrighty then, May, why are you an anxious insomniac wreck who conks out in the bath? It’s very boring. Shouldn’t you be prancing through the sunlit uplands of home ownership and scatter cushions? 

I’d love to be prancing etc., but, you see, I (and every single scatter cushion) am still here at Starship Parenterprise. Though I do have a new bedroom carpet. I cannot get any kind of consensus from anyone about how much they are willing to pick up and shove in a van, on what day. I cannot get the other flooring chappie to give me an estimate, let alone a date. I need a plumber, as DIY attempts to fix the sink merely revealed the extent of the corrosion in the u-bend. There is no broadband. I’ve already had a rude letter from the TV licence people and I don’t even own a telly. Part of the laminate on the side of the kitchen unit just peeled off, causing my mother to freak out. My old bed does not actually physically fit in my new bedroom unless I rip the adorable fitted wardrobe out. The downstairsikeh smoke and it stinks. 

Also, my job is being stressful and exhausting. It might actually be not-that-bad, but I commute four hours a day and I am trying to move house and when colleagues act like entitled arsebiscuits I have to play Diplomat and Peacekeeper, for lo! I am diplomatic! Also peaceful! And I am now in charge of three, no, four major projects not counting the protocols I am rewriting. 

[Twatwaffle colleague made ‘Protocols of Zion’ joke and actually had the fuckfacery to be annoyed when my entire office rose up in their cubicles as one Meerkat of Nope. Apparently Twatwaffle didn’t realise I was Jewish. My name may as well Feygeleh The Jewish Girl Cohen, so that was…believable]

I spent last weekend as catering officer on Starship Parenterprise. It’s how I pay the rent. Holy fishnuts, it’s not relaxing.

I have a probable stress fracture in my foot. There’s nothing to be done unless it goes purple and doubles in size. It hurts. I limp. It gets better. I cater for starship crews. It gets worse. And so on. I don’t have time for a damaged foot. I am moving house. Very very slowly. 

I have been divorced for a whole year – more than a year – now. Hex still takes up a disproportionately large and unattractive chunk of my mental real estate. Oh, I know, we were together for over 20 years, we grew up together, of course he does, of course he will, but it’s no fun. I’d rather spend the energy on having amusing crushes and maybe going on dates. As it is, I feel mostly broken, very impatient with others, uninclined to look, even, irritated when looked at, and bloody-mindedly determined not to go for even so much as coffee with anyone or anything short of the Doctor himself. Hex destroyed my confidence (who would ever want to date me? How could anyone want to date someone so damaged and ugly as me? Thanks, Hex, you absolute shit). The whole divorce thing left me with a brittle, angry feeling that anyone I want won’t want me. That character counts for fuck all. Oh, everyone will be my friend, I’m great company, a good cook, and funny as an improbable cross between Dorothy Parker and PG Wodehouse. Just, no one will ever fancy me ever again. I’ve had my entire ration of prettiness and sexiness and wasted it all on that shitrag Hex and that’s the end of it.

The irony is, what with the weight-loss, the better health, and the generally (maybe not this week, but generally) improved mental state, I am objectively the cutest I’ve been since my twenties. 

Irony claxons! 

I have a house and a job and my health and loving friends and family and I feel like shit this month!

IRONY CLAXONS!

Every time I get seriously distressed by the whole ‘Forever alone!’ thing, one or more partnered friends tell me of their married woes and I cannot think why any human ever would put so much of their life and happiness at the mercy of another. The world is packed to the gunwales with selfish, thoughtless, manipulative, sulky, whiny, stupid, nasty, petty, snivelling, lying, abusive little shitwhistles, of all sexes and genders, who seem to have nothing better to do with their time than try to make the perfectly decent humans they actually promised to love and cherish feel crappy about themselves.

I’m going to bed with a hot water bottle. Frankly, some nights, I feel I’ve won.