We Own the Sky(87)
I can’t say I’m happy but I’m surviving. It’s only a temporary solution, though, and I have hit the bottom so many times. I have wanted to slit my wrists, jump off a bridge. I have wished terrible things, things that make me ashamed to be alive. I have wished that this happened to other children and not mine.
So, that’s my story. There is one thing I do, which I think helps a great deal. I try to help people on Newly Diagnosed. It breaks my heart to see these desperate people suffering so much, so I try to help them, offer them support, just be their friend.
When I started doing this on Hope’s Place, I began to notice this world
of support that I never knew existed, where people were contacting each
other privately and PMing each other, becoming friends on Facebook or
whatever. They do it quietly, without fanfare, all these hundreds and thousands of personal connections and bonds that others don’t know about. It is a small thing but it is a beautiful thing. I’ve become very close friends with several people from Hope’s Place and it has meant so much to me. I’m not a particularly touchy-feely person and find it difficult to open up. These friendships, with people who have gone through the same, have helped me so much.
It’s not going to bring your little boy back...but then nothing will.
Take care of yourself and do stay in touch.
*
As I am running, I watch the water hens and seagulls wade across the mudflats,
drinking water from little canals in the sand. I jog past the yacht club on the estuary, the veterinary clinic and the old Methodist church, and then start to accelerate up the path that snakes along the river.
It is late spring, but the sun is blazing, hotter than it should be for this time of year, and my T-shirt and shorts are wet with sweat. I power into a slight incline, through a tunnel carved into the rock, until I get to the railway bridge, a Victorian viaduct that spans the valley. I overtake two swans, slowly gliding, their heads pointed downward, scanning the surface of the water for food.
I come here every day now. To the bench under the viaduct. Perhaps it is the solitude, the calming effect of the red rock, but it is easy to think up here, without the booze clouding everything.
The world has a certain crispness now, like a morning frost, so delicate and pristine you are afraid to take a step. I am noticing things around me, details I haven’t seen before: the worn-away edge of a sideboard; the way the sun, reflected through a lampshade, makes a rainbow of light on the carpet. Because now, when I really listen, when I sit in the calm under the viaduct, feeling the breath of the wind, the tang of river-salt in the air, I am feeling, seeing, hearing the world with a new hypersensitivity, as if a blockage has been removed from my ear and I can hear the crash of a dropping pin.
I should have listened to my dad. He liked a drink, but hated drinkers. It’s all about them, son, he had told me, boring old bastards, always droning on. All them clever thoughts, son, but the boy could hardly stand. Because it gets you like that, the booze. It makes you think you’re unwrapping the world. But you’re not. The world is unwrapping you.
*
I come home and sit in the silence of the kitchen and drink a glass of water. The woman I have been speaking to—naws09—was right. Keeping myself busy has helped. Before, my whole day was governed and punctuated by drink, propped up, like the pillars of the church, or the call to prayer. I have had to find things to replace that, mostly chores around the house: organizing the spoons by size in the drawer; preparing elaborate lunches; spending a week reading various review sites on the best studio speakers to buy for my laptop. I have been doing some extra work for Marc, more than I can handle, but I know I have to keep myself occupied, keep myself off the booze.
The things I have started to remember are still so hazy, I cannot be sure if
what I am remembering is true. Because they tease you, memories, revealing a little bit here, a little bit there, and you are never quite sure if they are real, like an imagined spit of rain.
I remember Anna telling me how I had pissed over her sunflowers. How I
pissed over the memory of our unborn children. I shudder. There are no
mitigating circumstances, no equanimity of blame, but just the sordid truth of how awful I was.
I remember what she said, when things were bad at the end. How I would
never live up to my father. She was right. He faced tragedy like a man. He was not weak like me. He looked after his family to the end.
For the first time in days, I feel an overwhelming urge to drink. I could get in the car and be back home in twenty minutes with fresh supplies. I can think of nothing better now than to open a bottle of vodka, or wine, and hear that glug, that little dog’s cough, as the liquid is poured into a glass.
No, I will not. I will go for a shower; I will clean the filter on the dishwasher. I will not drink. It is the only thing I can do to try to make amends.
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Thu May 19, 2017 3:21 pm
From: Rob
Recipient: naws09