A Horrible Vicious Circle

I feel sick. I can’t eat, and my stomach hurts - all the time. Also I can’t sleep and it’s really quite hard to concentrate, and I feel hot. I think it’s some kind of bug - mostly.

And another thing: you know how when you feel awful – like I do now - and you walk past a mirror and catch a glimpse of your face, and you realise that you also look dreadful. Then of course, you feel even worse. It’s a horrible vicious circle.

It’s not just the bug though. I don’t mean he makes me feel sick, obviously, but I’m fairly sure it’s because of him that I can’t concentrate. It’s certainly not helping.

I try to distract myself by choosing a handbag. There’s a place for shallowness in everyone’s life. Some people watch football; I buy stuff. After about an hour I have a shortlist of five, but then I give up – I don’t even want to buy anything – I still feel sick, and I miss him so much. I drink some coke, because it’s meant to kill everything inside you – good and bad – then I get lost in my thoughts again – and when I go to take another sip, the coke is flat – warm and flat and sickly sweet. Even that doesn’t work anymore.

I have never done this before – never had to make do with snatches of someone here and there. This is all new to me, and I don’t know what you’re supposed to do – how it’s meant to work. I don’t think either of us thought it would be like this.

“I love you”.

He says this, then he looks at me, smiles, and says “won’t you tell me?” and I shake my head. I’m not going to make it worse than it already is. There’s a silence – then he says - very gently - that one day I’ll have to. He’ll need to know.

Two days – two whole wonderful days together in one of my favourite cities, and then we go home, separately. This time I don’t know when I’ll see him again – before, we’ve always had a plan - and that makes a difference. Without one, I feel bleak. An hour later he sends me a message to say he’s at the airport, and he wishes I were waiting at the arrivals gate the other end. Sitting on a bus, shivering, because it was warm when I arrived in London, but it’s cold and grey today, I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about anything.

We are quite different – our lives. He is busy busy busy, always doing something, parties, friends – he has a million friends– and he fills his days with stuff – gardening – exotic things because it’s so much hotter over there – you can grow all sorts. It’s not a bad life – it sounds pretty good in fact. He has everything he wants.

A long time ago I thought I had no choice. You make your bed and you lie on it. My life wasn’t as comfortable as his, but it was okay. It wasn’t unbearable. I learned how to plant runner beans, how to spray them with water – to set the little scarlet flowers – how they twist and turn to catch the sun. I’d work in my garden until my back ached, and my face would be smeared with mud, from where I wiped the sweat away with dirty hands. I enjoyed it, but at night I still didn’t sleep. It wasn’t enough. I learned that eventually. You can’t go on – not forever. I wouldn’t go back to that - not in a million years. I have no security – no anything really, but I’m doing what I want to do, and I’m alive.

The next day he phones and says he keeps turning round to talk to me – that he misses me so much it aches. That’s exactly how I feel.

Zach’s in Paris. We met in London just before he left. We sat outside a little café, and found out that we both have the same favourite film – Pierrot le Fou – and I taught him how to say “fuck off, I’m worth more than that” in French, because he’s going to sell some of his music. When he gets back, he’s moving into the cottage. I’ll ask him. He said he spent twenty years sleeping with married women, so he’s bound to know what to do.. And if he doesn’t, I’ll ask him to get me some opium – Zach says you can still find it in London. Then perhaps it won’t matter so much.

The idea of opium cheers me up a little bit, then the phone rings and it’s him, sounding very far away. Just hearing his voice makes everything a million times better. He says there’s a chance, next weekend ..he isn’t sure yet - am I busy on Sunday?