Just The Way You Are(3)
‘How’s she doing?’ Linda grimaced, her lilac glasses halfway down her nose. She shared Mum’s wiry frame and narrow features, but her hair, far more salt than pepper, was invariably wound up in a plaited bun, into which she’d have stuck a crochet hook, or a random ribbon.
‘She’d made an amazing recovery by the end of the evening.’
‘Oh, love.’ She gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze. ‘There’s tea in the pot, and plenty of cake.’ She moved over to the refreshment counter, setting out two large, flowery mugs.
‘What do you think would happen to her if I ever moved out?’ I asked, causing Linda to pause, still holding the teapot in mid-air.
‘I think you need to focus on what it would mean for you, and your life.’ She eyed me carefully. ‘Leave your mum to worry about herself.’
The previous evening, as we’d eaten the curry in front of a romantic comedy that made me feel more like crying than laughing, I had thought of little else.
‘I’m scared to even consider how she’d cope without me.’
‘Moving out doesn’t mean severing all contact. It’s what most people do, Ollie. Find their own place to live, pop back home at the weekend and Christmas, like your cousins.’
‘But if her “pains” are bad again, I’ll end up back home so often it would be easier not to bother leaving.’
‘What’s the alternative? Stay, and sacrifice your happiness for hers?’
‘I’m not unhappy…’
My aunt rolled her eyes. ‘Only because you don’t allow yourself to feel anything much at all. I don’t want to presume that you hope to have a family one day. But it was something you used to talk about a lot, when you were with Jonathan.’
Jonathan.
Hearing his name still made my heart clench.
We took our drinks and cake over to an empty table and sat down. ‘I do want to meet someone. I have a whole list of things I’ve dreamt of doing when I can finally move out. Things I don’t want to do with my mother.’
Linda raised one eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’
‘I mean… like get a puppy. Or camp out under the stars. I want to host a party, full of noise and laughter and the kind of friends who push the table to one side to make room for dancing.’ I sighed, before taking a bite of fudge cake. ‘I have so many dreams about how life would be, once I’ve found the person to do it with. But they seem to just keep getting further away the older I get. How am I supposed to find a partner, when I can’t even make it to a first date?’
Linda sipped her tea. ‘Perhaps it’s time to stop waiting.’
She didn’t add what we both knew to be true – I stood no chance of finding a man who wanted to share my current life, unless he was also prepared to share it with my mother. I had met Jonathan in my final year at Nottingham University (commuting every day from home). Back then, it was probably only natural that Mum and I were close, given that it had been the two of us for so long. It was as Jonathan and I grew more serious that her mystery pains began, and as her illness grew worse, alongside the anxiety, I ended up having to repeatedly prioritise her over Jonathan.
The frailer she grew, the clearer it became quite how much she needed me. She told Jonathan, several times, that I was ‘the man of the house’ and once she reduced her hours at the shop it seemed sensible to transfer household accounts to my name. After a few months, she had deteriorated to the point where she couldn’t drive any more, so also depended on me for lifts.
For three years Jonathan was inordinately patient. When he asked me to marry him on my twenty-fourth birthday, I said that I couldn’t leave Mum when she was still so ill. He asked again, twice more, over the next year, sure that we could make it work, even offering to pay for some home help for her. I dithered and delayed answering, until, eventually, his patience ran out. He said that as much as he loved me, he couldn’t handle always coming second. It hurt him too much to see me trapped in what he called a toxic relationship and if I wasn’t prepared to build some boundaries, we weren’t going to make it.
I was shocked. How could he ask me to build boundaries when she was so ill, and still had no diagnosis?
How dare he make me choose between him and my mother?
When he quietly suggested that Mum had subconsciously imagined the symptoms because she was scared to lose me, I was beyond furious. And when in the argument that ensued he took it a step further, accusing her of deliberately making them up, that was it. We were over.
And yes, a tiny part of me may have reacted with such ferocity because for one horrible moment, I had wondered that, too.
In the days after Jonathan and I split up, as I cried on the sofa, nursing my broken heart with a giant tub of ice cream, Mum’s pains began to improve. I put away all thoughts that Jonathan had been right. She was better now, and that was what mattered.
I thought about Aunty Linda’s advice as I walked back through the murky drizzle, to the street of 1920s semi-detached homes where I’d spent my entire life. She was right, of course – I was earning enough to support myself, if I was careful, so money was no reason to wait until I was married before moving out. Yet, that was the eventuality Mum had always drilled into me: ‘When you get married, and have your own place…’
For the most part, Mum and I had a good relationship. Leaving would devastate her, and I wasn’t sure it was worth it. If I spoke to her and put some boundaries in place, maybe things could get better without me having to move out.