When I was writing that everything is in place for a second I thought, 'Don't write that because it is asking for trouble'. But then I thought, 'Why should I never be able to say that things are all right without something out there then purposely spoiling everything for me. F@ck them - I will say whatever I like'. So - something obviously didn't care for that.

I had decided that although spending my entire time alone might once have been a useful thing and I still enjoy it, it also leads to rather depressing time wasting, brooding and possible eccentricity of the less attractive kind. And eating. I felt and feel a kind of pride that I am capable of this life and I don't know anyone else who could do it. But I also feel angry and jealous of my husband and the way that he has taken over the fun, social way of being that was once mine and that he had no experience of before he met me. He is constantly telling me about the amusing, interesting people he's met and I think, 'But I would have got on with them so much better than you. I would have got closer and maybe ended up as friends, while you are just their acquaintance.' It is so maddening when he meets writers I admire or actors I like and he has never heard of them so it is totally wasted. He takes a stand against 'popular culture' and is unbearably annoying about it. I was watching 'lianhtiW and I' with my son the other night for the hundredth time and if you want an idea of my husband then look at Uncle ytnoM. Remove the hideousness and the gayness and the sexual innuendo and leave in what his house looked like and the tinkly classical music and the expensive wine and the bustling about cooking obsessively and the never knowing what was actually going on and the being really quite boring and the having to bend the facts to appeal to his snobbishness - and then you get the picture.

I can't understand why I react to people being horrible by withdrawing. When the children were still little I was always having screaming arguments with people and crying and rushing around pouring out every detail of everything to anyone who would listen and it was very relaxing. It was when they got old enough to notice and be hurt that I had to calm down and back off and keep everything locked inside. If you can't have screaming arguments any more or encourage people to be in love with you or get really drunk to blot it all out and have to stay at home being a steady, stable mother then naturally your old wild crowd don't find you much fun. And you don't find the people who are drawn to a steady, stable mother are massive fun. So in the end you find it easier to just be on your own. And when you do occasionally go out to old haunts you have to bear your husband, who once hung about on the sidelines, being accepted as one of them just through familiarity, as he has never felt any need to stay dutifully at home, while newcomers to the 'scene' ignore you as some dull hanger-on of HIS. It is so maddening that I no longer go. So actually that is a reason why I withdraw. And the fact that it would not be like this if most of my favourite friends and the old lovers, who would be talking to me and putting my husband in his place and showing new people that I was interesting and worth knowing, weren't all dead...

So anyway, I never seem able to win and it makes me think there is 'something' out to get me. At every tiny level, every tiny plan is f@cked. Why do I now have a weird sinus pain that recurrs whenever there is a holiday and ruins it? Why does my ill cat have a scary relapse every time I think I will go to London and try some new form of life for a few days? Why does my husband decide to fill the house with ugly superfluous parent's furniture just when I was about to make huge efforts to make it attractive and have people to stay? Why did the favourite university have to bring in a positive discrimination policy against private schools this year when otherwise my son would have walked straight in and now he is having sad second thoughts about the other one after all and he doesn't deserve this and I have to keep on worrying and 'being there'. Why did the fashion place have to write to my middle d@ughter out of the blue and say she had to start immediately so that we can't have the little holiday together next month that I REALLY wanted? Why did my computer have to get this virus which f@cks up many of its crucial functions just when I was going to spend time learning how to use it better? Why did my older d@ught3r have to be called for jury s3rvice just when we had agreed that she would come and live here much more while we turned one end of the building into a separate house for the children with a kitchen and they would then have masses of friends to stay and it would be fun. And out of the forty people waiting to be chosen why did they pick her today for a trial that is going to last for TEN WEEKS so that the house plan and the other little plan of her taking her s1ster's place for next month's holiday and her doing her gr@phics course and starting a new life are all totally destroyed?

I don't care if this is self pitying and irritating. There are lots more 'Why' things that I can't be bothered to put. I just feel doomed to rot here for ever with nothing ever happening and each sadly hopeful idea for escape, or even pathetically making the best of it or myself, blasted by fate before anything can happen. I also don't care that my problems are trivial - I have had untrivial ones in the past. Trivial things can also have a devastating effect.





- posted by Iris @ 4/19/2004 10:18:00 PM comment