To see it like you taught me to

A lifetime of deprivation means that I am hungry all the time. And then the hunger starts to look a lot like desperation and nutella on toast won’t touch the sides. Why did we learn to bend over backwards when they learnt how to get what they want? Why were we taught to make them feel better as they were taught not to cry? How did we get it so wrong that later, at a junction, that feels exactly like a junction we’ve been to before, we take the same turning. And then realise once we go past the French old man’s house a second time that it’s too late to go back. We may as well now just follow this one all the way round, as at least we know it’ll take us back to where we started.

But fuck it this was meant to be the one that took us a different way. This one tasted different. This one didn’t have the alarm bells we’ve been hearing for years, this one just sounded like a church. What did my body sound like? Holding my breath. Another lifetime of waiting, another time to start all over again. Why are you being so hard on yourself Cindy said? Am I, I didn’t even realise. This is just the compensation I learnt how to do when I was born, this is just buttering bread. Is that why my upper back aches like I’ve been working out. I haven’t, I’ve just been carrying bags that aren’t mine. I’ve just been carrying conversations that aren’t about me. I’ve just been listening to everything you say.

Anyway, on Tuesday there was half a street that felt light. On Tuesday there was a maybe in the shop and there was the way I pretended to be choosing which sweets to buy, but I wasn’t because at that point I couldn’t read a thing. My eyes couldn’t see words as anything other than shapes. I could only just about hear my breath inside my mask over the music in my headphones. There was the whole way home of maybe. It’s just a shame that it all crashed down so hard on Thursday. It’s just a shame that I had to write at the top of the page; I didn’t know you could still disappoint me, but you can. I was surprised that’s all.

I was a bit worried when I read that last one, Dad said. Why, what did I say? It’s been two days and I have no idea who I was then. But you don’t need to worry. It was sort of chaos he said, it was sort of everything, a cubist view into your mind. Yeah exactly that - can you keep up? Because no one else seems to understand me. And no one else seems to know how to answer. Not once they get to know me anyway. Before then, when I am only light and look at them like that. But then I say, hi, would you mind just holding this coffee cup for a second whilst I tuck my hair behind my ear. And I look to my right and they’ve gone. And a mad woman inside me lives on waiting. Remembering the name of their friend they mentioned once. Oh - you haven’t been listening. Oh - you didn’t realise Beth was my sister.

Anyway, I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Like it was mine to carry all along. But don’t worry, I’ll still smile at you when I see you because I’ll be glad to see you. Unless you’re him - I won’t smile at him. He took that when he brought me a small tub of ice cream and felt so proud of himself. He took that when he didn’t think I’d probably be needing a big tub of ice cream. Ok where were we, somewhere between the tow path and the garden path we’ve been down before. Somewhere missing home in dreams, somewhere that sick feeling of missing home.

It isn’t anyone's fault, not really, only yours I guess, but the rug is on the short list of all that tastes bitter still. Maybe that and maybe her age. That’s it. It probably just didn’t help how much I was wanted and then how much I was abandoned. It’s probably why I miss home so much now, when I saw the hanging basket on camera last night, I felt how that basket has been there my whole life as I can remember my whole life, the basket has been there. How the stairs know my hands more than they know my feet because I learnt to walk up using my hands and never stopped. And why is it that they are the only set of stairs in the world that I’d walk up that way. That’s it, I can still be a child here, because somewhere I am. But everywhere else I pretend I grew up.

Anyway, I made a risotto last night and making a risotto reminds me of mum because you have the stir it and add liquid slowly and that’s the whole point. And she doesn’t mind much, an hour or two dedicated to making sure we all feel that we are loved. So I make one for me and the steam on my face and the way my feet are on the ground slightly wider than hip width is home. Patiently stirring and waiting till it turns and the rice is cooked and I am loved. You know. It is the same with using the lowest setting on the flame, I am worth waiting this long for the onions to soften rather than brown. A handful of salt flakes. You know how it sounds, you know.

Probably I am optimistic again. Probably I was hearing what I wanted to again - you know how it is.

Anyway, I still don’t how we walk around talking to each other normally when there was the AIDS crisis in the 80’s. And I still don’t know how we came back from everything awful that one person said to another. I still don’t know how people carry on breathing after someone dies like that. And we still don’t know what we’ll say about these days later - we don’t. I am holding something tiny, you are holding something massive, I asked first and you ruined it - it goes something like that. Anyway, you probably feel bad about it today, but I’ve already spent enough days trying to stop you from feeling bad. That’s probably what I was feeling this morning. Oh sorry, I thought we were on a completely different page, I didn’t realise I had been reading ahead of you. Sorry.