I would have blogged this, my final entry, sooner, but I was disrupted by the habitual life-clutter that arrests my time and energy. And which this week included me popping round to the corner shop one afternoon to buy potatoes and coming back to find a huge great sodding alarm wailing from a carrier bag beside my house. My state of nervous tension being what it is, my brain went into hyperdrive and I presumed it to be a bomb. Well, not exactly. I am of course a woman of perception and intelligence. But I just wasn't sure what the protocol was for dealing with a situation like this. And the noise was embarrassing. After clumsily sending out a round of quickly-fired e-communcations, I decided to take the advice of the first that arrived back in response, which was, 'Run!'. So I did. Only to rush outside the house and hear the alarm disappearing into the distance. The device had been nabbed. And in it's place? Well, a pair of black leather male slip-on shoes of course. Worn in the sole. Size, I don't know, eleven? If I ever free myself from the shackles of this particular home-ownership, please, dear friends, remind me never again to go for an end-of-terrace property in a part of town like this.
Moving on to issues on the home-front (entirely the right terminology to use here) well, OH has been flailing around a bit, kind of acting like nothing is wrong or going on. Since 'usual' for our dynamic is constant criticism, anger and abuse from both sides, that's what I, at least, have still been getting a fair bit of. He, in turn, is getting quite a lot of cold shoulder as I have been trying to disengage, to withdraw, to choose my battles and keep the peace for the sake of the boys. This is very, very hard. But I have been blessed with a new feeling - don'tcareverymuchanymoreness. This helps me control my anger, walk away, ignore things that don't really matter. To a degree at least. My theory was that if I could change, then that that in itself might be sufficient to make OH try and do things differently too. But since the impulse behind my change in behaviour is detached disengagement, rather than a desire to make things better, it might prove to be too little, too late. And let's be honest, genuine change is hard! I'm not sure that I believe change is even possible. Unless the words, 'a' and 'of clothes' are wrapped around it.
Literal, physical change can be a great stimulant though, and it was wonderful to get away to Dorset last week and into the fresh air and, amazingly, some sunshine. Hills and green and breeze and laughter. I am blessed to have the family that I do. We have such a great time together and the boys provide the icing on the cake. They are so lively and energetic and interested in everything. Pure joy! (Well, a lot of the time at least...)
While I was there my mum and I went for a drive around some of the urban beachy areas further east along the coast from Purbeck, where I am from, as for some time now OH and I have been thinking about re-locating to be by the sea. One of our (few?) shared aspirations. Purbeck itself isn't a go-er on account of poperty prices, job prospects and most importantly, the fact that neither of us are really that keen on living in a small community. Sadly, the places we looked at only made my stomach lurch. The beach is wonderful but it reminded me how much I enjoy living in a city. I love that there are buildings I can go to for inspiration and elevation. I really value the fairly left-wing credentials of the city and more specifically the community where I live, both of which have a significant alternative scene and lots going on. A place that is shaking and moving, that is aspirational, innovative and with relatively strong eco-principles. Well connected and only a short journey to get out of, into the green. I have purposefully concealed where I live during the life-span of this blog, but it might be obvious from that description!
I came home on the train alone - a rare luxury, wow! - as my mum and step-father had offered to have the boys for the weekend some time ago. OH picked me up from the station near where he's working at about half past five and within five minutes of leaving, his brother had called and broken the awkward silence between us. OH did of course take the call and for a scary moment I thought we were on the way to pick the brother up from work, despite having checked earlier with OH that this would not be the case and having been told that he had cycled to work. I think (think - because my Albanian is not great) I understood OH to be saying:
'Hi, DBrother, aren't you on your bike?'
'Don't worry, I expect he'll pay you tomorrow?' and
'Are you going to come and get your food?'
Indeed, when we arrived home it was clear from the smell when I opened the front door that DBrother had been cooking there while I was away. Not unexpectedly or unreasonably, I suppose. There was also a box of groceries on the floor that were clearly for DBrother (he has a passion for milk chocolate digestives, I believe) and I surmised that they had gone shopping together the previous night.
We started to empty the car and from inside the house I realised that DBrother had arrived outside on his bicycle and was talking to OH. Soon after OH came inside and explained that he was going to take food and groceries round to DBrother. He then added half the contents of our fridge to the box on our floor and disappeared with the car keys. So much for a romantic evening in. Couldn't they have just taken the food round the night before? I asked - jaw clenched - if DBrother had slept here while I was away and OH smiled guiltily and said no. It may not have been a guilty smile, but more one of those smiles you do when you don't want to look guilty and then find your face impossible to control. But either way, I felt incensed that I didn't know whether I could believe him or not.
I drifted around the house a bit, waiting for him to get back. When he did, he said,
'Just as I was leaving, Mr Khan's boiler broke.' I completely ignored him.
'He's there with his kids!' he continued, 'And it's cold and there's no hot water.'
'I know what a boiler does,' I retorted. 'If DBrother is a plumber, can't he have a go at fixing it?
'The problem is inside the boiler,' he replied. 'I told Mr Khan that if you could find someone to fix it for him, I'd call him back. I hold my hands up. I was on the point of exploding. Like said boiler.
'Mr Khan was, until recently, a builder.' I said. 'He knows everyone up his street. I am sure he has more than one property and will know some-one who can help. I don't. And I'll be effed if finding someone is what I am going to spend tonight doing.' I am sure the above is probably true: I know he has electric heaters and only has the kids for an hour or two at a time and I don't have a contact number for a boiler-fixer, in fact I need to call the guy who installed ours to come and look at it and can't find the number anywhere. But do I need to justify myself? Gee-whizz, surely we had greater priorities than Mr Khan's boiler to attend to during the precious time my mum having the boys affords?
'You could look on the Internet,' OH said. 'That's what a nice person would do.'
I slammed the dining room door shut and we spent the evening apart.
After a stonkingly amazing lie-in - friends who are parents to young kids will know what this is worth - we spent several hours on Saturday talkshouttalking at one another, going round and round in circles before going to the shops late afternoon and getting a takeaway on the way back. And watched a film together in reasonable harmony. It is insane how you can slip in and out of complete and utter row mode and then in and out of let's act as though nothing is going on mode. Perhaps it's a survival technique.
On Sunday morning we spent another few hours doing the same thing. I was trying really hard to hear what OH was saying, and accept some, at least, of the responsibility for the mess we are in. OH refuted point blank almost everything I was saying, did his level best to continually deflect it all and abnegate himself of any responsibility whatsoever and then suggest that the only problems in our relationship are down to my issues. I will draw the line here at sharing the tawdry detail of what we feel one anothers' issues to be, but what we did agree was:
1) He wants us to go to counselling and although I do not want to, I have said I will think about it. I suspect the money would be better spent on paying for a spa weekend and takeaways as I have just remembered that we did actually go to counselling quite early on in our marriage as well as the other two occasions before the kids were born, none of which were very successful. Thus making this counselling attempt number four. Hum.
2) He wants to go and see his mum in the Spring, when it will be a year since he has seen her last. This is only fair. But he wants to take the kids. Which is not exactly unfair, but, golly, I'm finding this hard. Having decided that I will not spend another 'holiday' in Albania, clearly I have to be reasonable. I disagree with OH that Babe2 would be alright on his own with him (I know for a fact that he would be totally freaked out as he is very clingy and it annoys me to death that OH can't see this for himself), so I found myself agreeing to OH taking both kids with him. Bottom line, he is at some point going to expect to take the kids with him to see his family, and the sooner I accept that this is going to happen the better, I guess. Once we made this decision, I went ahead and bought the tickets (on our overdraft, DBrother had better pay us back...). OH knows what a big deal it is for me to let him take the kids abroad alone. And he knows that in refusing to come too, I am drawing a clear 'Things are Different Now' line in the sand.
3) We do not respect* one another.
4) I can't remember what no 4) was. Oh well. It might have been him agreeing that DBrother is welcome round here when I'm out, but to encourage him to turn up while I'm in, when our disagreements are still unresolved is not really fair. And I have, somewhat childishly I know, not put forward a schedule for resolving said disagreement with DBrother (or been asked for one) because I don't want him turning up all the effing time anyway. Ho hum.
*This concept of 'respect' is simply HUGE in Albania. 'Te respektoj shume' - 'I have a great deal of respect for you' - is one of the first phrases I learnt. I'm not quite sure why so many people felt the need to tell me that they respected me. The cynic in me felt they were lining up afterwards to ask favours. The humourist in me suspected they were commenting on my amazing and possibly foolish strength of will in persisting in the challenge I was taking on in hooking up with OH. Most likely, I guess, is the fact that since respect matters so much, as I have said, people thus bother to communicate the fact that they are feeling it.
But I still haven't really got my head round the extent to which is completely and utterly pervades everything. I do know that it means younger siblings will do anything, right down to letting their marriages disintegrate, for elder siblings. And their fathers. I know it means that there are many situations when women should be seen and not heard. I know it means a great deal of hand-shaking when you meet and take your leave of people. I know it means that if you see people you know and they invite you into their home, it is very rude not to go, no matter how fed up knackered or possibly needing the toilet you are and how unable to understand the three-hour smoke-surrounded conversation that then goes on around you. And I know it means that to have a hell-blazing row in the middle of the street is completely and utterly unacceptable. Even if the person you are yelling at had disappeared at eleven pm with the kids when he said he'd drive them straight back from his brother's house and your parents who had made the effort to come over to Albania and who were waiting at home with you to put them to bed and getting anxious and pissed off....
So although OH and I have agreed that we don't really respect one another any more, I only half know what it is that I am agreeing to and I guess the same applies to him. I know that we repeatedly and frequently fail to trust in one another's judgement. At times we do not respect one another's opinions. We each do things that totally annoy one another time and time again (but him way more than me of course!) and I guess this indicates a lack of respect. To be honest, I'm not really sure that I understand what the concept of respect means in English any more. After so many years of speaking Greek at home and being so heavily influenced by OH's culture and languages, there are times when I feel strangely dislocated from the semantics of my own.
One last conclusion I can offer on respect, is that blogging about our problems and our relationship probably amount to quite a significant amount of disrespect.
Hitherto, the need to write all this down and get it out and laugh about it have made it worth it. Massively helped, in fact. I still think there's content here that other women in similar situations would find helpful that I might make use of in another format in another place and time. But for myself, I feel I'm reaching a new chapter in my life. I no longer want to be writing from within a context in which who I am is defined by the medium of what my relationship with OH and his bloody brothers makes me. I want to leave that anger behind. I have bigger challenges ahead. Challenges that include making the most of the increasingly sagging parts of me I see when I look in the mirror! Challenges that include overcoming the voice inside me that tells me I'll never be paid to do a days' work again. Challenges that include doing what I need to do to be the best I can be, as a person in my own right, who deserves nothing less.
I have a new writing project in the pipeline, fret not! I'll keep you posted. It will probably be called something melodramatic like, I don't know, 'Rising from the ashes' and include a fair amount of scrabbling around in said ashes and having to spit them out.
And all the crap with the brothers? It won't get any worse, will it? It might get better. It might get repeated a few more times. Whatever... I don't think there's anything left to put in writing about it. I am reasonably confident that no-one else will be expecting to turn up on my doorstep.
Finally, a borrowed offering from Aung San Suu Kyi, who was interviewed by Kirsty Young for Radio 4's desert island discs very recently. What a woman! And these words made me stop in my tracks when she said them: 'When people have chosen a certain path, they should walk it with satisfaction and not try to make it appear as a tremendous sacrifice.' I'll leave you all with that thought. You will guess some of the reasons why it resonated so with me. And I know it has resonated with quite a few friends and loved-ones I have spoken to. Life is for living! Let's not moan about the choices we have made. Polish those boots or find a new map! I'll see you on the journey. Au revoir!
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