Bitchin at breakfast

As I have mentioned before, my brother is important to me. In this life of friends that come and go and issues that come and go, my brother has been my constant. We can literally get through the hardest of things and somehow find a way to come through it together. Our most recent rift was all to do with the woman he’d met and married all in the space of two weeks. My doubts about the relationship had little effect on my brother and he progressed forward in it, the result of which was a pregnancy. So with that in mind I had no choice but to jump on board. That board would be a very temporary placement, as less than a year in, his wife cheated on him. This caused my brother to doubt everything about their relationship, and when she unfortunately lost the baby, he knew it was time to bow his head and say goodbye. Being a gentlemen he left her the apartment he had worked so hard to keep over the years and had since moved back in to my parents place, which is probably the most awful thing about this story, living with my parents again! I mean I love those guys but the first time round was hard enough, add a second time with a divorce and it’s all too much to bare.

Now, I knew that despite their helpful and supportive nature my brother was desperate to get out and, when he invited me out for breakfast in Hoxton yesterday, telling me he had a plan, well I assumed it was a new place, a new apartment. Whatever I assumed it was it wasn’t and so began our first real rift ever.

He was there when I arrived which was shocking for him. I was usually waiting around for him in places but there he was waiting for me with to full breakfast platters. Ever since the separation had begun he had always looked bleak, sad, but not today, today he looked at ease comfortable and I like to see him that way.

“So, the man with a plan! Let’s hear it?” I said, avoiding all the small talk that’s not necessary with family which he seemed to appreciate because his response was direct and to the point…unfortunately.

“Yea, well you know how I am, always wanted to explore but never really wanting to cut my ties to London. Well I think I’m going to go away for a while, a few years and set up shop somewhere else”.  He said with ease.

Now, let me first clarify that my response had nothing to do with the fact that the other man in my life had recently left me to go and explore the world and let me also clarify that my response had nothing to do with me not wanting my brother to be happy. It does however, have everything to do with the one trait of my brothers that I hate. This trait is something I never mention because I genuinely never want to think of my brother as having any negative qualities but there it was starring me in the face.

“You’re running away. That’s exactly what this is, it’s not a plan, it’s an escape. Instead of staying here and dealing with the mess that you created when you acted on the most stupid impulse ever to marry and impregnate a girl you hardly knew, you are choosing to run away and flee like a coward!”

That was my response and wow it was much harsher than I ever intended but it was honest. That was what my brother did, whenever times got a little hard he’d escape. The reason he’d gone to Cuba and met his “wife” in the first place was because he was fleeing an ex. He dove from one thing in to another and that was the truth. Now I am no expert on how to live but I do know that dealing with your problems is necessary.

My brother sat there stunned and then did something he’s never done before, yelled at me.

“Don’t come at me because you’re too scared to do anything different. You pass up every opportunity that comes you’re way because you’re scared of change and people like me intimidate you.” He said pushing his plate aside.

I had to laugh, not because he was mistaken, he wasn’t but because I couldn’t believe that he was judging me for staying put for five minutes.

“Ok, well if that’s how you feel, then feel that way and go, flee the city. What really astonishes me about you is you could have it all figured out if you wanted to. You could go back home and stop letting the girl who cheated on you live in your apartment rent free, you could go and get your old life back, but that would mean dealing with an awkward situation which you are incapable of doing!”

Again, looking back I was pretty harsh.

“Sorry I don’t choose to live my life surrounded in issues” he said getting up and running away from the situation, which as I said, was nothing new for him.

So there I sat, alone in a breakfast place, having just argued with my best friend. I wasn’t going after him, so instead I stayed, looked at myself in the conveniently place mirror and thought

“You’re such a bitch”

Although I’m never telling him that!

Will I? I won’t

I packed today! Like actually packed, I packed to leave, to go, to head somewhere else. I packed my bags intending to fly away.

Since Liam, my unspoken boyfriend, left me to go travelling,  I have been getting on with life. It’s what we do, right? When things go bad we get up and we move on, we continue. Now despite the loss, continuing had been a little easier than I’d expected, until yesterday, when he called and it became harder than I’d expected.

I hadn’t been missing him unbearable amounts but yesterday, in London after a weekend of summer, it rained. It was the kind of dark dank day that begs you to do one of two things – cuddle up with your love or be depressed. Well I was depressed, sitting watching old episodes of ‘How it’s made’ being dully fascinated by the process of tyre making, when he called. I hadn’t heard from him since he left and I wasn’t holding my breath. Instead of thinking about him I was spending my days writing for magazines here and there, heading towards the many goals I had in life.

“Hey” he said, with the sounds of bustling Thailand in the background.

“Hello” I said, feeling myself well up, missing him.

He spent five minutes telling me how amazing it was and all the things he’d done and I spent five minutes wanting, but at the same time not wanting to hear it. And then he said something I wish he hadn’t:

“I miss you, I wish you’d come. You can buy a flight out in two days, be here” he said.

I knew I could, I knew he wanted me there and I knew that since he’d left, London had become that little bit more lonely. It didn’t feel the way it did when his house was a bike ride away and even though the other Londoners hadn’t been affected, this Londoner was.

That being said, I needed to push on with life, I wasn’t Liam or my brother, the type of person who could just fly away. I wanted a life different to the one I presently kept but running away from it wouldn’t help.

“I miss you” I responded, signalling my refusal.

We spoke for a little while longer after that. I told him how the world seemed loved up and how he should come back, if only to prevent me from being the third wheel. And then he told me he’d be taking a trip away from the mainland and may find it hard to contact me while he was there. If I’m being totally honest I was relieved. I needed the separation and I knew I wouldn’t be the type to ignore his phone calls but I needed to heal, I couldn’t do that if my past continued to mesh with my present. So, as my stomach tightened, I told him to go and enjoy himself and that I looked forward to hearing from him when he returned. And that was it really, a simple phone call.

Yet, somehow, at around 3am this morning, I found myself packing a bag and calculating my spending allowance. I was really going to go and join him, I was going to be with the boy and runaway. It made sense, didn’t it? I cared about him, probably loved him, so why shouldn’t I go? Sitting beside my half packed suitcase I had convinced myself it was the right thing to do, I had enough money to get me there and then, well then i’d be like Liam and go with the wind. This was what I should be doing.

But, when 9am came rolling in, I was sitting beside a half packed suitcase

The Long Kiss Goodbye

Its ok, it is, well it has to be, so it is. It’s ok because this is life, this is love and this is loss. All of these things are elements of being in your 20s and I suppose I have decided to except that all the bullshit is inevitable. I’ll get to my 30’s, I may be battered and bruised when I do but that’s just life.

I’ve decided not to sit here and complain but just to simply tell you what happened. My choice to quit complaining may have something to do with a documentary I watched last night about the abandoned and suffering children in countries not too far from my own, it had an impact. So no complaining just explaining.

He left. This you know. My beau and friend Liam left yesterday to catch a plane to Thailand and go find himself. He couldn’t do it here for whatever reason and so he was leaving. Not leaving me, just leaving. The thing I’ve come to realise in the past few days is that attachments are lovely but they fade, they have to. People break when there’s no growth and he and I have a lot of growing to do, just in very different ways.

It sounds cliche’ but maybe my grandmother was right when she said people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. My season of Liam was lovely but summer is rapidly approaching and it’s a new time.

Do I seem insensitive?

Maybe this is just the way I’m choosing to comfort myself and prevent the huge lump in my throat from becoming tears in my eyes. I love Liam but now he’s gone and I refuse to allow my days to go dark.

We arrived at the train station a little before 10am, it was busy as it always is but in my mind we were the only ones there. So I waited for the train that was going to come and take my boy off with it.

“Will you come?” he asked, four minutes before the train was due.

“Don’t ask me that” I said. I don’t know why but I thought the question was so unfair.

“Would you have if I’d asked? I should’ve asked” he said.

He should have but just as he was saying it, I was glad he hadn’t. Glad because I may have gone. I may have followed this guy around the world living someone else’s dreams. I wanted to go travelling one day but this was not that day, this day was his. I didn’t answer the question, it would have been pointless.

We never talked about our relationship or what him leaving  may mean but in my head this had, as I said, been a season, the spring season and I was content to leave it there.

Our last few minutes went by both quickly and painfully slowly, there was both so much and so little to say. As the train drew in he did something he never does, he engaged me in a PDA. He picked me up and kissed me the long kiss goodbye. And for that moment we were there. And then, well you know what happened next.

The loving heart, that fickle friend

It’s not real, any of what we have in our 20s, it is fleeting, a whiff, a mirage thrown in front of our faces to lull us into a false sense of security. Then it is removed, whatever ‘it’ is, is taken away from of us for the delight of some higher power I can never understand. The things we love in our 20s now to me seem fickle and if I could give this “fickleness” a name there is only one I’d use.

I would not use his name because I feel he will define my 20s but because he is the thing I loved that is  fickle. And, like these early years of my 20s, he will soon be nothing but a memory I may one day yearn to be resurrected.

WOW! That was morbid. I’m feeling morbid today and here’s why:

It has been perfection, or as close to perfection as I consider natural. Its been laughs and tears and I’ve loved it. But, as I am learning through these turbulent times perfection does not last. Only a few days ago my brother ended his short-term relationship with his wife and is now, once again and rather unexpectedly single.

But, with Liam and I there have been no troubles, smooth sailing, maybe too smooth I suppose I should have been expecting a storm. It was 9pm and we were a bed. I’ve come to be so comfortable in his bed. It was his space but he’d made it mine also. There, laying on his chest I sat listening to all his plans. He was apparently done with music, music was no longer where it was at. He’d said something like that to me once before years ago, the first time around. He told me he was done with art and hasn’t picked up a paint brush since.

Now he was done with music. “Ok” I thought to myself, “what’s your next obsession?”.

Now what I’m about to tell you may come across in a calm way but I feel the need to clarify that I was in no way calm when it happened.

“So what’s next? What’s your plan?” I asked looking in an excited child-like manner.

He didn’t look at me. In fact at no point in this conversation did we have eye contact. This was unusual for him, he was the kind of guy who believed you could only really understand someone through eye contact, eye’s tell the souls truths but he didn’t look at me.

“Well, I already know what I’m going to do. In fact I cemented the plan today. I dropped £600 into it” he said.

At this point I didn’t realise what he was about to say so I began making jokes in my head. What on earth has he dropped £600 on? A house for us to live in? A crazy business venture?

“On what I asked” waiting curiously for the answer. And then he told me. He told me very simply. He told me in the kind of way I’d expect him to.

“I’m leaving next week. I bought a ticket to Thailand I’m going to travel again for the next year or so”.

I can’t exactly tell you what I felt in this moment, shock really wouldn’t cover it. Shock could hardly describe it. All I know is I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think.

I chose not to ask questions. There was no point. I wanted to yell at him but how could I yell at a lost soul trying to find himself? On the other hand, how could I not yell at someone who hadn’t considered me? I also wanted to cry, I wanted to cry for the time and feelings that I had consciously poured out of myself and into this relationship but I didn’t.

What I did next was use a skill that I have come to realise I need to master well should life continue on this perfectionless route. I grabbed the emotions that were beginning to pour from my eyes, I grabbed the words that were forming at my tongue, I pulled my heart from his tightly clenched fists and shoved them all down my throat. I swallowed them all and as they passed into my aching stomach, I responded without them.

“Great!” I said. Nothing more. Did he expect more? Why had I expected more? This was him, gone with the wind.

Without gifting him another word I left his bed and walked to the grotty roof of his apartment. I sat there alone and let myself feel what I needed to feel. I sat there for hours and he let me.

Of course he did.

Simple days, simple ways

I’m uncertain, that seems to be my thing and always has been. Ever since I can remember I’ve been uncertain about what clothes to wear, which boys to date, whether or not I should quit smoking and generally where I’m going in life. Let’s be honest, we don’t have to have the answers right now but the fact that we’re in our 20’s which is ten years or so closer to our 30’s means we need to have the beginnings of an answer, right? Well I don’t, not at all.  The thing is I’m not even one of those airy fairy types who can float through life never knowing or caring where it will take them, I wish I was but I’m not. However, when I come across one of those types I tend to bask in their glory and today was no exception.

My friend Skylar is an airy fairy type and in many ways the reason I love her. She’s never anywhere for long and ever since leaving secondary school, from which she believes she was “freed”, she’s travelled everywhere and done everything, apart from get a job. I hadn’t heard from her for months, since she called to inform me she was heading to Peru with a guy she’d met in Asia. It was for this reason her text today informing me she was back and wanted to meet was pleasantly surprising.

My choice to meet her in my lunch break was stupid. It was stupid because I know she has no regard for work and all through secondary school lunch breaks with her were two things: an excuse to get sushi and never ending. I can’t tell you the amount of times I skipped school to smoke with her while she drew  horrifying portraits of people we knew. She claimed herself to be an artists without a vision, I believed she was just simply confused and for her that was ok.

I met her at an apartment in Soho, it wasn’t hers but you wouldn’t know it unless she told you. It was full of her mess, her bags from travel and the things she always kept close to her. She was stood in the middle of it all when I walked in, crouching over her latest project while smoking a cigarette. She looked different, having let her hair grow long she seemed slightly more mature and the over sized glasses, that she swore were prescription, added to that effect.

Upon seeing her I was filled with warmth, she was a part of my past that really only played a part time role in my present. She reminded me of easier times, times when skipping school and smoking was cool and a teachers wrath was your only worry. We greeted each other with a hug after which we discussed everything she’d been doing. I found out she’d been travelling through Asia, had almost adopted a baby and was only here from 3 weeks before heading to Africa to do some voluntary work. I loved her stories and the way she told them, I’d missed her chain smoking and the way she could never give you her undivided attention when a pen and sketch pad was near. And then she asked me what I’d been doing. As I began to tell her my stories about work and the recent awful relationship choices a weird feeling came over me, something I now believe I’d subconsciously been choosing to supress, unhappiness. I was unhappy, really unhappy.

“Nothing” I said. And then I did something, something I don’t tend to do in front of anyone. Something I only felt safe doing in that apartment with the comfort of my old friend. I cried.

I’m not entirely sure what I was feeling maybe work, Liam, my bank and life had gotten on top of me. I wasn’t entirely sure. But I was glad Skylar was there. And when I’d finished with that particular moment she was still there.

“So where are we going for Sushi?” She said, lighting a cigarette and handing it to me.

“I have to work” I said, unconvincingly.

“Don’t we all” She said, grabbing her purse and heading to the door.

Today my lunch break lasted precisely four hours, I’ll deal with the wrath tomorrow. I guess today I needed three things: sushi, a never ending lunch break and a friend.