Dirty Laundry

I’ve not written for a while. It’s been a shitty year. Not shitty in the grander scale of things –compared to the year of a close friend battling cancer and divorce with bravery and humour, or the friend whose abusive marriage ended, coming to terms with how much of herself she almost lost, with creativity and hard work. “Shitty” doesn’t describe the year’s points that ruptured the lives of a Bangladeshi Blogger or music fan in Paris. Mine was a universal problem; a simple heartbreak.

We all have them at some point, and they can leave a mark. I thought I was better, but I let mine take seven months to seep in, five to absorb, to grieve for times before the rot set in, to build again, watch it topple over and build again. The world has bigger things to deal with than my break up. This post is for me to put the whole sorry mess in a jar with a neon “Don’t you DARE do this again” label, place it on a high shelf and leave it there, and come back amd truly smash it when I’m grateful for what I have in future. This is a purge. A catharsis. A Fuck-You.

I had my heart broken before, so when I did it to someone else, I felt the sharpness of knowing exactly what I put him through. I’m grateful we’re friends again now, because I don’t think you stop loving someone, even when your lives cut different arcs.

Of course heartbreak is ripe for creativity – everyone staying at the hotel thinks they’re the only one. Beautiful songs spring out its intensity, and multi-million-selling albums say the world wants to hear. I write songs. Perhaps this time I should’ve done an Adele… But when you treat art as therapy, unless its earth-shatteringly incredible, you risk putting the audience in the position of having to verify your pain. I’ve sat through tedious acoustic gigs where the subject wasn’t able to defend their corner, while we colluded with the ‘victim’. And I didn’t want to trade emotions for Likes. So I wrote an album about Bees and Ants, made portraits of people I admired, abstracts of emotions that were positive, but still, this angry prose is about to come tumbling out of me like a lava flow at a children’s party.

In August 2014 a smiling individual (we’ll call them ‘X’) sat beside me on the sand and asked if we could spend forever together. I called my mother, then wore a diamond for 13 months. I’d spent at least 12 years in relationships before this one, and am still in touch with each of them. I felt the gleam we had now was more than enough for the rest of our lives, enough to throw an engagement bash for 300 people on our roof, sponsored by two drinks brands, and we were blithely happy.

There were warning signs, and I trundled through them gleefully in the passenger seat. In month one, X said, “You’ll have to get used to the kind of attention I get when we’re out”. I laughed it off – I’ve never been the jealous sort, and somehow my blindness stopped me laughing at a ridiculous phrase. Friends smiled, and stayed quiet.

I shrugged off Promo girls holding a little too tight for photos, or messaging later in the night. I vilified the ex who spent six months talking to my partner every day, who glanced at me with a sadness I didn’t try to comprehend. I placed blame on the others, like a daytime chatshow host would have us do, when two girls are goaded on while the man-in-the-middle slouches, shrugs and smirks at the audience and the cameras.

Together, we gorged on Netflix, held one another close, wrote notes on the mirror and grew into habits: a shared love of good music, presents for no occasion, foot-rubs, weekends away, the odd headshave. We cooked each other meals, shared laundry, chores, opinions and dreams.

Then mirror notes became motivational quotes not for at me. Cuddles in one arm, Facebook in the other. Presents became IOU-concert tickets that never materialised. Meals I made were never right, and stopped being made. Decisions started with a choice from what my partner was willing to do, and I carried on hanging soggy pants on the balcony.

Then bigger questions loomed, like children. My fiancé wanted me to have our babies, and talked about it often, but there were Pinterest boards with bespectacled toddlers in bowties, tweed or mohawks, and not a blonde hair in sight. I pictured barefooted smiles, muddy hands and messy hair. We argued hypothetically about fundamentals – I  felt it was unfair to think it was fine to love your children more than the partner you have them with – that creating a family meant not having children as extensions of yourself, or clothes-horse insurance policies to love you unconditionally. I felt children are a part of forming a unit for life – in which parents are there for each other first; the rock that carries the whole thing. It’s not always possible, sure, further from it now than ever in these times of Tinder-from-the-toilet, but I was lucky enough to take that rock for granted all my life – to have two parents who were not just rocks for the three of us, but for every stray we brought home, and there were plenty.

I’m hanging out my laundry here, and playing the victim is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I struggle with voluntary or continual victims – it’s a state you’re the only one that can shake yourself out of, and my family is not brilliant at sympathy. My mother grew up tough because she had to. She was never, ever cold, but she wasn’t going to let us go soft. As a family, when our friends need us to listen, we often don’t know what to say – we want to be pragmatic, to fix, when, as a therapist will verify, often, all people want is an ear. Only now, in my thirties, I’m learning how to listen. I’m not very good.

But my family listened, and although they tried, I couldn’t see a way up or out.

X was not a villain. Just as music is both an individual meditation and a shared consciousness, so is Love. No two people experience it the same way. You might both identify with a song, or place, but you process those feelings in completely different ways. Nobody can love you the same way you love them, but they can compliment it – understand, respond, reciprocate. X did feel a version of love, but couldn’t demonstrate it in day-to-day things, express it verbally, or defend it when it got difficult. Despite sharing a bed, Whatsapp became our main means of communication, and in that, we were both guilty.

But some elements of Love are fundamental. While people often cheat on the ones they love, and can feel the full spectrum of emotions kind and unkind, Commitment is tangible. It’s bigger than a ring, status or tattoo. It’s what that ring means. It’s not a public statement, but a private, everyday process of little things securing a bigger picture, long-term. Changing loo roll, remembering to buy the juice with the bits, plucking your partner’s hairs, saying goodbye with a kiss, bringing both plates of dinner out of the kitchen, five minutes in the day. Sometimes it’s on autopilot, sometimes it’s a conscious effort – I’m an appalling timekeeper, with a hopeless memory and no organizational skills. But little things embody the base, an invisible coating over the long-term warmth, spasmodic ecstacies and voluntary dizziness.

One night we went for dinner; my partner facebooking as I looked out over the Marina. The wedding came up. “We’ve got to push it back to next year. I’ve got too many things on before then”. “That works for me, my art isn’t making much money right now..”My art was a source of uncertainty too. The roles we were used to when I was in advertising were not the same now. “I’m going to live in New York next year” … Oh. OK. I went quiet and contemplated what decisions had been made.

When we got home, my fiancé went to the shop, returned with one Cornetto, sat beside me on the couch, licking it and watching facebook videos on the smart phone. “Can I see?” “In a minute”.

My sister listened and succeeded in snapping me out of various bouts of insecurity, reminding me of things  an outsider can, and I needed it. We drew up to-do lists, -date nights, other tactics.

But mentions of me disappeared from statuses; solo-selfies and shots of #sockgame #onpoint increased. Winks at waitresses continued, with or without me, and wet laundry was regularly left in the machine. Late nights at work became late drinks with colleagues, with the odd all nighter. I went out more, drank more,  passed out on friends’ couches more.

At the low point, I went for a drink with someone I knew was attracted to me and let him kiss me. It gave me a piece of control I hadn’t had in a while. X said it was the Equalizer – that “it takes two to break up a relationship.” And that was the biggest bullet.

Even the strongest, most equal Love can become cancerous when a poisonous helping of insecurity, or even resentment, become part of the mix. Yes, you should work to fix. Yes you should never give up without a fight. But which fight, if both parties lose? I’d never felt so lonely as I did now, and I didn’t know what I was fighting to save anymore.

I watched all of Breaking Bad, the Matrix… Towards the end, I spent a few days running after my partner across a UK music festival. Sprinting into a tent for one gig, there was no glance back for me. In that act of running after someone who didn’t care if I was there, whatever it had been, this wasn’t love.

We flew back separately for deadlines. I returned three days later, at 7am to an empty flat and unslept bed. Last night’s Facebook status described ‘sexy ladies on stage’, and without needing to discuss, the rings came off.

Days later X was sleeping with someone new. X moved out. I started a new job. Friends in Dubai, Birmingham, Berlin and New York felt closer than ever. I got addicted to getting my hair done every week and dated a few smart, creative folks I now call friends. One almost got under my skin, but recognised that the best thing he could give me was space.

I went to India to paint a school in the foothills of the Himalayas. I found I could still feel sexy, and that it’s determined by the emotional state you radiate. I posed for a shoot, and a brilliant wordsmith wrote a few rhymes about me I’ll always treasure.

I was on track, but rumours of indiscretions kept trickling back. Five weeks into the reconstruction, X tried to address a few stories, but also suggested we give it another go, apologizing for throwing us away. Despite my friends’ loud warnings, I would find that ‘closure’ concept that is absolute bollocks.  There was a second overlap of the same three people in a different direction, and the complacency for this new partner, this innocent party, showed me what a terrible judge of character I had been all along.

Then I got angry, and the real break up began. I wanted to broadcast to the world the kind of person X is, but everyone knew. I got angry when others thought it would help to show me conversations, winks and asides I missed, names of girls I’d never met who knew all about me. And I was angry that I still wanted to know. And when I admitted ‘I’ll never forgive you’, a barrage of elated selfies and #myview tags filled the iPhones of our circle.

When we met after the first wave of revelations, I acknowledged my discoveries with a barrage of drunken swearing. I got the same smirk of the Middle-Man on the chatshow.

People fall in and out of love all the time. Relationships end, people move on. Thankfully this was never a marriage, and no children involved. And it’s boring being angry. It’s poisonous to nobody but the person that chooses to be. It’s a process, and I have to own my mistakes. I can laugh now when friends shout “Maddy! Don’t marry a haircut!” But there’s a cynicism that wasn’t there before. I don’t want to give myself away like that again, not unless it’s reciprocated.

I’ve learned that being by myself is good. That there’s an art to Solitude, and being comfortable in your soul. It’s different to being alone – and it’s good for you, to take time to understand what you’re about.

I’ll still be a golden retriever. I still have an innate capacity for joy that’s loud, bright and easily shared. I want to write, paint, sing, laugh and drink with good friends; and I do. I want to feel intense highs and lows that are mine. I don’t owe anyone anything, but I’ll take care of the folks who care about me, because they are the treasured, most precious things I have in the world. I’m getting back to being my noisy, flippant, huggy, eccentric, spontaneous self, and I’ll stay passionate and able to grab what I can now and whatever’s next.

An article on NPD as a growing phenomenon

 

---