How are Things?

Tag: heat

  • Sunday 13th July 2025

    This morning, I awoke. In more ways than one.

    I was married for 13 years, and the divorce took four years to work its way out. That was June 2024, in a ritual in a court that was an anti-marriage. Do you not take this man? I do not. Is the marriage retrievable? Like a precious passenger that fell off a raft on a fast-moving river, with no chance to grab or collect it, or even mourn it being gone- No, it was not. Then it was over and I was travelling home on public transport, my voice and face as mute as other passengers, both sad and free and happy and released all at the same time.

    Then other things came that summer. No chance to rest or retrieve, just keep moving.

    It is really not until the return of Spring that I felt I could breathe out. Music and art, the record of others’ joy, no longer disgusted me. My fears lessened. My panic lessened. My heart became to calm. And now, I find my own music grows at times. My rhythm can contain more than one beat, and my soul isn’t so icy.

    The hot night begat a hot morning. Various thumps and whimpers from neighbors spoke of their desires being met, and I found myself actually understanding, even identifying, for the first time for years.

    And yes, I mean years.

    I’m no one’s idea of attractiveness. And I certainly am deeply uninterested in inviting anyone into my life. But this is another sign of healing quietly making itself known to me, when I feared it was not possible to ever return.

    I’ve just ensured that this blog will always be anonymous, it seems. I hope to write again tomorrow.

  • Thursday 10th July 2025

    A confession; I am as white as boiled rice. The sun and all its works wring me out more thoroughly than linen on a washer board. Yesterday saw me moving across town, until I gathered my son and two of his friends to go see a movie. It went well, which was a relief; as a boy with autism friendship isn’t a certainty. But getting home by 6pm with the weather in the 70s saw me drained far beyond my capacities. I made dinner, and then I tidied up, and then I felt myself more empty than a dry gas tank. I was in bed by 8.40pm, and slept hard until 4am. I want to call it moral decline, but honestly it’s sadder than that; it’s old age.

    Today, with all my hours of sleep behind me, I still felt exhausted. But up and at it, at 5am. Not all things got done, but all things were attempted, even when I wanted to give up.

    I even managed to have lunch with my sister. We rarely if ever get together. Her daughter, my niece, has been through hell and back, and now has had her long term partner break up with her. The weight of the sadness I know she is going through… The gift of today was seeing my sister again, though. Salads and chats, and catching up. Plans and hopes for the future, especially when I thought once it might never happen.

    Afternoon, I had my online session with my counsellor. We talked over the week, my exhaustion, and possible plans for change. I have sought out so much change recently that I hesitate. I doubt myself. I would love new pastures, but only if they’re pastures, not battlefields. I want everything to be All Right. Which of us don’t?

  • Tears on the Pier

    On Saturday, I and my son saw my niece. It was down in one of the seaside fronts along our city, that on sunny days is filled with the need to do, while at the same time is lazy, hazy, relaxing… I have known my niece all 24 years of her life, and she is a rare and precious thing. She’s young, and in many respects knowing about a lot of things, and at the same time still becoming to know. Getting to walk with anyone while they come to knowledge is a wonderful thing.

    I had concluded fairly recently that she no longer wanted me in her life. She’d made and broken several attempts on my part to meet up, and when we had met her again, she’d finished the meet up fairly quickly. The last time I’d tried to interact with her, I had tried to call round with a gift. I wasn’t even going to call in, merely asked her to drop down and open the door.

    She left me sitting there for half an hour before I’d gotten the hint and left.

    My son, all 13 years of insistent love, was having none of it. I’d told him none of this, and he demanded another meet up last Saturday. I watched over text as they agreed to a time, and a place, and before you knew it away we went. I was pleased they were making time for him, but I expected it to be a less than sweet affair, full of social effort and labour; and I wasn’t terribly interested in the labour coming from me.

    We all met up at 2pm, in some artisan coffee house that couldn’t give him juice, and talked about unimportant things. I myself have a bad habit of fawning in social situations, but really did not want to this time. The coffee I’d been served was as bitter as a barren stepmother, so I gave that up as a bad idea. A good idea was to go walk the pier with ice cream, and so we left the crowded cafe and escaped to the fresh air.

    People walked dogs past us as we talked about nothing in particular; the pier needed to offer boat trips. Chips smell better by the sea. Seagulls are dangerous to all life. All the while we were walking on and on, the length of time of nothing conversation getting longer and longer. A sweet moment in the middle of it was when we turned back, and the healing cool wind reached under shirts and napes of necks to make us exclaim in relief; all a bliss.

    The walk back saw us turn to talk of our shared family. Her mother, my sister, is rarely in either of our company. My niece blames her own sexuality and orientation; I blame my divorce and my sister’s husband. Either way, we feel judged. Each step saw us walk back from the water’s edge, back away from the extremity. The fear of judgement came up as a topic, and before I knew it my recent silence was brought up by her. I explained with clear eyes my efforts at reaching out; and her efforts at pushing back. My niece, however, was crying before I finished; I am it seems her only family, the only one she can trust, the only one who will speak to her.

    She actually cancelled seeing me the day after Christmas with ten minutes notice.

    None of it, apparently, should be read into. She took herself off for five minutes to breathe and compose herself, then joined myself and my son in the book shop. There, among the stacks of paperbacks and coffee table depictions of life, we settled our sad souls as best as we could; to regain the possession of ourselves, and our possession of each other as family, and for me to start to imagine the relationship continuing.

    Before long, it was time to go. She and her girlfriend had made plans to see another friend elsewhere, and my son’s social candle was flickering. I drove both of us home, weary and worn from the effort, and we ate pizza without consciously taking it in.

    I still feel myself untouched by it all. I find myself guarded; if she does all this without even trying, fully engaging with her is not without risks. But still, it is more positive than I led myself to believe on that pier. And now we lead ourselves out from it.