Old Friends: Missing in Action

Sometimes it's hard not to be the grumpy single girl, and my scribblings of the past couple of years testify to that but here its is again.


I'm always delighted for my chums when they find someone new, fall in love, have kids, but it can be difficult to lose them as priorities shift. There's been a spate of folk recently who've found new love, and somewhere in the whirlwinds of their romances they neglect the people who stood by them when they were the ones reaching for the hot water bottle rather than their lover.

I'm happy enough living on my own, and having my freedom -being able to play the fiddle at 2am naked if I fancy it, or wearing bizarre combinations of cosiness as winter begins to bite, eating nothing but baked potatoes every evening for a week and indulging hours in the bath without caring about how much hot water is used.

But, as they're hanging the nursery curtains and sitting down at a table in the new restaurant, you look round for the folk who were once there to share the vestiges of the week and debate the book you've just read. You realise the numbers are dwindling and wonder what you will do do with your weekend.

I smile as I think of the proud father and friend whose man is on bended knee, and wonder if they stop to remember to keep space in their lives for the ones who helped them get there. And, who'll still be there if life doesn't turn into the dream they'd hoped for.

In the meantime, those of us left behind must huddle closer together and keep reaching out for the new.

What will the weekend bring? I don't know but, at least it may still be an adventure.

Lodger

I have a new lodger, a friend of a friend, and I don't quite know what to make of him. In his early to mid forties, he's an intense sort of a guy. A former psychotherapist who's decided to give up the rat race.


He's suspicious of government, systems, taxes and the like. If you don't pay tax, who pays for your medical care or for the roads to be fixed? Surely we're all in this together? I don't doubt that many systems in our world are corrupt, but rejecting them all seems impractical to me. Surely we have a collective responsibility?

I digress....

He's got ME, and I can sympathise with that having had an oft named and unresolved fatigue type illness/condition/whatever in my very early twenties. He doesn't work and has just sold his house in the south, with an ambition to move abroad and live a self sustaining life.

He seems to be a believer in the alternative medicine sphere. And, why not? If something helps you feel better, whatever it is, then we must all do what is right for us.

I just don't know what to make of him. My previous lodgers have been friends or weekday residents. But, he'll be here full time for the next two to six months. The extra cash is nice, although losing my space will be a challenge.

I am a broad minded person, whose life and career are not founded on the material or selfish. Part of me admires his goals of an alternative life, but the other part of me values the society and community I am part of and recognises her need of some home comforts and frivolity. I try not to judge the choices of others.

I think it's good for me to have someone else around. Living alone is a very self indulgent way to exist and really rather too nice! Reminding myself how to share my space and compromise can only be good practice for when the time comes when I finally find someone to rub along with permanently.

In the meantime my flat feels like a health food shop. There are aromatherapy oils and weird food supplements in the fridge whose names I cannot pronounce.

Have I let the right person into my home?

The biological imperative

I spend a lot of time with pregnant women and mums with small kids. They are my friends and I am happy for them. I love meeting their small people.


A conversation with a newly pregnant friend last weekend has rather unexpectedly thrown me into a tail spin. The usual chat about how she was feeling and the like, turned into a reflection on her motivations. She is the person who told her husband a few years ago that she didn't want kids. A conversation with her GP about her age (35) and her fertility got her thinking, and she changed her mind reckoning that it was better to to go for it, have a child and unexpected adventure than always wonder 'what if....'

Being a women can be strange. Our hormones help us measure the months and years that pass. They play with our emotions. Tears can come over nothing, and it's only a day or two later it dawns on you that it was simply hormones that made you weep or shout. It can be simultaneously reassuring to know why you were upset and unsettling that invisible inner forces can have such a strong influence.

The tail spin has come because I suddenly realise how old I am. Of course I know. Of course I understand that my fertility is dwindling. But somehow, this one conversation brought it all into stark reality.

I sometimes think I want a family and sometimes think it's ok I don't really. I suspect I talk myself out of the idea because current circumstances suggest that it is unlikely to happen.

My body is screaming at me. Screaming at me to procreate before it is too late. Those pesky hormones and the biological imperative are begging me to pay attention. No matter what I want or don't, right now what I don't have is choice. Without a father, there will be no children.

My body screams at me every day and there is nothing I can do to silence it. I can only listen and wait.

A rant on bad manners

Today I am pissed off and tired. My next neighbour had a party for her daughter's 17th birthday last night, and I came home to drunk teenagers in the stair well and someone being sick outside my bedroom window. Lovely. Given that I was arriving home at 2.30am, no judgement was passed! Safe to say, not much sleep was had though. So, tired and grumpy as a result.


Grumpy also because three people over the course of the weekend have bailed out of plans. I had a lovely dinner last night with old school friends visiting home for the weekend, but the rest of the weekend's plans have been a write off. It's just rude and inconsiderate. I understand that people's plans change, and there are things need occasionally need to take priority. But, today I'm sitting here doing my accounts instead drinking coffee and lunching and catching up. I had been looking forward to a social weekend after a hard going week. It rather feels like it's easier to let me down than other people. Maybe I need to stop being nice, understanding and accommodating of others' whims and priorities. Arghh!

At least I know tonight's music and chat will be fun.

Rant over.

Electronic Etiquette

Events of the past couple of days have taken from me a decision I needed to think over, ticks No 4 off the 'to do list' http://learningtobeselfish.blogspot.com/2010/02/to-do-list.html

Very sadly the conversation about a possible end of a friendship has been conducted by instant messaging and email. Forums in which tone and understanding will always be lost to a significant degree. Frustratingly my request for 'space' was translated as 'do not contact me again', not only has this prompted hasty and unnecessary responses, and a simple request has been disrespected but it also means that any kind of meaningful conversation has been robbed from the situation. The use of the medium has wasted an opportunity for understanding and mutual respect leaving behind instead a shattered friendship, anger and poorly chosen words.

I love the internet, and facebook, blogging and the like but will it ever been acceptable to adopt these mediums as a replacement for common courtesy and face to face interaction? I don't think so. Sometimes there are messages that just cannot be conveyed electronically. People need to see and feel words from a real human being. There is no substitute.

Ending a friendship by email is vile, cowardly, wasteful and bad manners.

I have just left it be, because a war of electronic words will only result in two people vying for control and trying to be 'right', rather than actually listening with care in a way that compromise, or appreciation is possible. I was daft to engage in electronic comms in the first place, but I will not be complicit in engaging in this damaging game any further.

If I ever get to a place where I don't have the courtesy or guts to face my demons face to face, and I deliver a denouement by text or email, shoot me.

Shopping - A lesson I never learn

Shopping drives me nuts. Shopping drives me even more nuts when everyone is buying as much as they need plus 50% in case their guests are extraordinarily hungry, car parks resemble badly kept ice rinks, and we've all run out of patience......


I love Hogmanay. I am looking forward to having my friends and siblings here, and having fun. If I do it all again next year, please remind me that I can have some nice man with a van deliver all the food and drink courtesy of the internet and that I hate mobbed supermarkets, cash and carries, and the volume of people they contain!

I completely understand toddler tantrums in public places on days like today. Arghhhhh!

Grant me sanity for the the rest of the week, and remind me that it will all be worth it when the pipes have played, the whisky's been drunk and my house guests have at last departed and I'm looking back, smiling and grateful for the wonderful people in my life.