Half term. Do you know, it is six years to the very day since I first met Rochester. Our date was by the steely and icy sea during blackberry week. Blackberry week: week of sea-frets, falling leaves and unyielding grey Northern skies. Rochester, unlike every other inter-web blind date I'd encountered (and there were many back then, back when I was a little younger and an awful lot braver), was exactly as I imagined he would be: darkly witty, curmudgeonly yet urbane. He sported a look rarely seen outside of a 1960s Soviet Bloc undertaker convention. Oh. And he rescued a dog on our first date. My little dog, Boo. Damn the cunt for being all swashbucklingly heroic and that: an animal-loving, Geordie Errol Flynn in a funereal overcoat. It all seemed pretty darn perfect (if you ignored the farcical mischance that was Señor Boldon).
I finished my last blog post with an email. I'd written down everything that I wanted to tell him, but could never seem to verbalise in his presence. What would his response be? Would he bother replying at all? He didn't, really. Not with any great conviction or candour. In the end, I ended up texting furiously one night at 2am.
'Yes, but do you love me?'
It was degrading. Even as I sent it, I was aware of how deeply unattractive the message's fatal undercurrent of desperation must seem.
He replied, with forced patience, that he did love me. But the declaration was accompanied by several pages of analysis of what 'love' meant to him. It was bamboozling. It was like unravelling the small print of a double glazing contract. Bastard. Usually I curse the oaf for not saying enough. However, his first (and only) declaration of love was undoubtedly ruined by the inclusion of a set of comprehensive emotional 'terms and conditions'. Sometimes, less truly IS more. How I'd longed for the solemn purity of a simple, 'I love you'.
And nothing since, really. These last few weeks though, I began to feel like something had changed within me. I don't know how or why that happened. I wasn't floundering, drowning in sadness or loneliness. I kept going. I rarely thought of him. And when I did, the brutal, unflattering reality of our situation was sharply illuminated. Like a bleak and stony landscape suddenly revealed by cruel yet brilliant sunlight, I could see everything: I'd spent years waiting forlornly for a man who picked me up and put me down like a a pair of rather dull, but undisputedly reliable and comfortable shoes. Work was awful, awful but absorbing and exhausting. I was fighting for my job. Python in a Pencil Skirt had made it her mission to get rid of me (and several other members of the school leadership team). I had little time to moon about swarthy cads.
But then half term arrived, with its comforting gurgle of central heating pipes, cold night skies scented with gunpowder and lurchers giddy with squirrel fever. The solitariness of my days has undone me again. I am now missing him terribly. But maybe I am just sorrowful for the emptiness of the world he has left behind. Because, if I don't have Rochester, what do I have?
Talent, wit, style, a passion for your career however challenging it is and lurchers, that what you have. You really are a gifted writer and you certainly deserve someone in your life who is not a cad. It is immensely better to be single than wasting time on the likes of Rochester.
ReplyDeleteWhat Ganching said.
DeleteI agree with Ganching, above. Rochester keeps you from your best self, and he also keeps you from someone who will appreciate you. And love you, without pages and pages of justification. This is the bad part, right now--you'll miss him, and it will hurt. But it will pass. Sit with your wonderful self and let the inevitable sadness wash over and through you on its way out. And then you'll be free.
ReplyDeleteYou have yourself. And that's pretty fantastic. I know all the other stuff, been there, got the T-shirt. I think it's appalling that there are so many utterly wonderful women whose lives can -- only occasionally -- feel blighted by the lack of love. I've thought about this a bit later: it's not about having someone love you, so much as having someone on whom one can dote, think about, save up little things to say to, send postcards to, share jokes with. It's about "permission" to love someone else.
ReplyDeleteIt's tough, being socialised as a woman as a "relational creature."
But you have you and writing.
I agree with everyone - your talent for writing is enviable. Do you pursue a literary life? You might think about joining a writing workshop? Or a book club? Sorry, if that sounds bossy... maybe you do it anyway. But you sound as if your life is split between work and Rochester and if you can fill in some bits in the middle with things you like you might find you miss him less. (I once found myself in a similar position and although I'm a hermit by nature I did force myself to join an organisation with like-minded individuals, in this case it was political but it could just as easily have been literary, or knitting, or whatever, and found that I made some new friends, and one thing led to another, and suddenly the man that was my Rochester was much less important...) Anna
ReplyDeleteI think these are all wise words. I recommend a repeat prescription of Civil to Strangers and The Whitsun Weddings, to be taken at least once a day - and make sure you finish the course (as if you wouldn't). Your talent, guts and guile will see you prevail over Python, Rochester and all else. He is a damned fool. But a damned fool with potential (if only he would stretch himself to realise it) and they are the hardest to let go.
ReplyDeleteEmbrace the sorrowfulness. It isn't all about him anyway. Blackberry week is a sad yet beautiful time of the year, autumn's high tide: with the "comforting gurgle of central heating pipes, cold night skies scented with gunpowder and lurchers giddy with squirrel fever. "
ReplyDeleteJaniva Magness - You Were Never Mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK1RgJzMgwc
You've written one of the most moving, heart-rending, literate and often very funny accounts of a doomed, one-sided love affair that I've ever read. It's tragedy in the true sense -- in that there is nothing either of the protagonists can do to alter themselves in order to make the affair succeed, given such an imbalance of feeling, apparently from the beginning. I do feel for you, in an ineffectually sympathetic way.
ReplyDeleteEverything that Miss Underscore has painted is beautiful. She can make the inside of a cow shine like a casket of jewels. If you ever go to the Laing Gallery in Newcastle - take a close look at the painting 'Isabella and the Pot of Basil' - you'll find both Underscore and Rochester in there.
ReplyDeleteAs long as it's your head in the pot, Rochester, all is as it should be.
ReplyDeleteHow are you doing, Ms Underscore?
ReplyDeleteYes, how are you? I notice you are no longer on Twitter. I hope all is well.
ReplyDeleteWe are wondering how you are ... where you are?
ReplyDeletefan in Cambridge (the UK one)
Yes we were wondering too... where are you Miss Underscore?
ReplyDeletefan in Hastings (the New Zealand one)
Hello, miss your blog. I see you are active on twitter. Would love for you to update your blog so it moves on from (barf) "Rochester"
ReplyDelete