The Love-down - more than two weeks in Lock-down!

Monday 13th April, 2020: Happy Easter Bunnies to you! I am having an exceedingly lazy day and feel utterly brilliant. 

I didn't feel this brilliance yesterday as I experienced a possibly pre-menstrual/peri-menopausal wave of high emotion, excess sensitivity and anxiety about the future. I cried and cried and allowed myself a large grey serving of guilt-free misery. For more than two weeks I've been doing well because I am really fucking lucky with where I am and who I am with. Now it's at the stage where your partner may get annoyed because you didn't wipe the bench as you went during the making of dinner. Oh dear.

I have never been able to 'clean as I go' when I cook. As the song says 'blame it on my A.D.D baby".  Organization and cleaning are things I've tried to improve on, and I'm actually the best I've ever been. I am pleased to report that despite a little argument, it has actually made us work out how to keep the kitchen from turning into an absolute shrine to fuck-piggery. R slaved away in the kitchen for hours, and now it is clean enough to lay naked on the bench (if you were so inclined). We have worked out ways to keep it from going back to the previous overwhelming hog-fest - and the communication has been kind as well as effective.

Communication is a big deal for me.
I don't mind a bit of disagreement or confrontation as long as someone's intention is to truly understand or be understood. Knowing this also helps you work out when someone is messing with you. I remember a couple of years ago I was dating a guy who seemed incredible 'on paper'.

He was a school-teacher, he liked Rick and Morty and his taste in music was absolutely impeccable. Unfortunately he was very selfish in bed (and lacked stamina) and later claimed that I was the ONLY WOMAN he'd ever slept with who didn't come (from his 2 tentative minutes of oral). I wish I'd told him the truth. Those women lied. Oh my god how they lied!

He was obese and had to use a breathing machine for sleep apnoea. It made the most incredible noise all night. He got angry when I said I'd had very little sleep. He claimed it wasn't his fault, that it was a MEDICAL CONDITION, and inferred that I was unkind for mentioning my lack of sleep.

At one point in our approximately four week courtship, he told me that he went to art school with Stella McCartney, and that she had fancied him. That's when he was skinny apparently. He still had up an old photo of himself on the dating site, one in which his good looks might be intimidating. He acknowledged that it was an old photo but that he was 'working on losing weight'. No evidence of this work ever came to light.

As the weeks went by (and I only slept with him once, in the third week) I saw a pattern emerge. He liked to talk, but he didn't communicate. He didn't seek to truly understand or be understood on a deeper level. If we stuck to talking about THINGS we were okay. Things like the plot of Rick and Morty or music we liked. Sadly, these kind of things are not enough. 

In the fourth explosive week, I went to let him know it wasn't going to work, and that's when I really found out what kind of bat-shit I was dealing with. I think I wrote about it at the time - and it was scary.

 I had already wondered if he might have narcissistic tendencies, and when I asked if he realised how it came across to tell a woman she's 'the only one who hasn't come', he got angrier and angrier. No matter how gently  I tried to get him to understand,  he would take that information and twist it, then fire it back at me in a distorted haze of bullshit. At some point he suddenly LOST it and was screaming at me "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" even though I'd not said anything unkind.

I stood up slowly on shaking legs, but my 'observer' self was really calm. Somehow, by understanding that he really didn't understand, I was able to gently talk him down from his rage. I let him know that I wasn't trying to upset him, but that I was trying to truly communicate. He looked utterly baffled.

We still ate a meal together. He played obscure music so that I could admire how cool he was, and he told me all sorts of stories related to the music that displayed how well-traveled he was. I said nice things to him about the music and his experiences so that he was grounded in something he did understand.

When I left, I would have skipped if the stone steps leading away from his place weren't so slippery. I was completely high with relief.

I have dated so many strange and sometimes unkind men that friends keep saying I should write a book. I wonder what I'd call it?

 I  am so amazed to be with R now, a man who is so kind, generous and gorgeous.

Speaking of communication, I am greatly relieved in regards to something I mentioned in my last bloggie. It was about friendship, and how my ex-best friend had got in touch. Communicating via messenger or text isn't ideal, the chance of a misunderstanding is too great. We all know it, but of course it still happens. When she said she was 'pissed off a lot during our friendship' this apparently meant she was just pissed off in general, but not at me. I  still don't definitely know why she ceased the friendship (though I have been told by my higher self). Other important things have been going on in both of our lives in the last three to four years and I didn't want to focus too much on how hurt and angry I have been. We are slowly connecting again.

 I know it can't be what it was, but maybe that's okay. So many memories, and ones of child hood are so clear. Always going to her house after school, eating cheese, watching TV, dancing in the living room. Avoiding (and yet also fascinated by) her brother, her sister saying "you're such a weird little girl Candy" in this slow, yet high pitched voice. Her father showing more affection to the dog than he did to any of them. Her mother, small, fast moving, eyes wide behind her big glasses. I remember exactly what their washing machine looked like; it was all angles and the top of it slid open like a cupboard. Mum still had an old fashioned agitator machine with a broken wringer, but it did clean our clothes really well.

I hope your 'Love-Down' is going as well as possible. As for me, books are a heaven, and these are some I'd recommend:

The Famished Road by Ben Okri:  

Very poetic, violent, relentless. Told from the perspective of a spirit-child who decides to keep on living on Earth despite the seductive and sometimes cruel urging of his spirit friends to have him back. Good to have another book on the go as you might need a break from this one now and then. Drags you through realms of sorrow and delight and leaves you aching for Africa even if you'd never had much desire or knowledge of it previously.

The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld: 

Magical and also dealing with some really heavy material from the confines of death row. The author is some kind of channel in my opinion - this stuff is absolutely transforming.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:

Liz has written a really uplifting, practical, magical and easy to read book about being creative. It's really inspiring - a perfect read for the Love Down. Her views on the cooperative nature of our relationship with the spark of creativity really did it for me!

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde:

This book is incredibly funny (absurdist) while still being a dystopian nightmare in which people are all categorized and valued according to the dominant colour visible to them. It's incredibly clever and beautiful. One of the best books I've ever read. I wish he'd hurry up and write more of this series.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green:

John Green is best known for writing 'The Fault in Our Stars' which was made into a movie. I've never seen the movie, but the book was very moving. 'Katherines' deals with less weighty issues, but if you can wade past our main protagonist's self pity, it becomes more appealing.

The unfolding adventure eventually moves the self absorbed Colin out of his obsession with girls called Katherine, though we do have to bear with him as he does so.  Hassan, Colin's best friend, is the kind of character you want to see in a movie and gets all the very best lines. Worth reading for Hassan.

Here's something to do if you have a glue gun: