The day today

Weeks and months and days and more than a year goes by when
you get to a point in your life when you feel everything has turned to absolute shit and you realise things should actually be so much better for me than they really are. So why aren’t they?

This morning I heard a discussion on the radio about the presenter’s
girlfriend reading ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ asking
listeners whether he should be worried, when I remembered the importance of my mother in law once referring to this book and how true it is that men are most definitely wired a different way(and she has a degree in psychology along with being clever enough to be a Mensa ‘mens’ – it’s Dutch, forgive me).
I believed then that they are - which wasn’t a bad thing - but now, I fully understand they most definitely are and wonder why I’ve never had that knowledge in this way prior? It is a bad thing.

One single damaging factor within all the shit in your own life has to be yourself – you’re the only person that can make or perceive life for what it is; either a happy, moderate or a sad experience. And everything in between. This even goes from moment to moment but overall, when most of your perception of your current existence is a sad one for most of the time during a period longer than you’d like to remember you start to wonder why it is like it is, and what the hell you’re doing wrong.

Take yesterday. A normal day at work where things went right for a change even though Damocles’ sword is hanging in the skies above tied up on a tiny piece of fraying rope barely strong enough to hold it, which is slowly but surely about to snap in approximately 8 weeks from now.

It was nevertheless a better day than expected. It was bitterly cold and the air entering my nostrils hurt at times as well a sniping wind around my shins and ankles. Blowing cigarette smoke around my phone screen filled with lovely messages from my favourite man about normal things. No weirdness, incomprehensible sentences nor loaded questions. No pressure.
Just nice.

He’d become my only ‘normal’ (and only) point of contact in my daily day-to-day – but he’s probably not aware nor all that normal. (Normal is mediocre. Mediocres are jokers – but this? No idea. Baffling). ‘Not long now till home time’, I reassured myself.

The clock strikes 5 and I feel like Cinderella. Run for the hills. I’ll just finish off this email. My colleague starts talking to me about one of our clients and in the back of my mind I tell her to shut up, kindly, as it’s not her fault, and as I pick up our coffee cups having finished the email and put my laptop away now carrying my bags looking like a Peruvian donkey I cut the conversation short and dash out of the door down the stairs for their daily wash. Quick quick, or it’ll be wrong and it won't be worth it.

I get to my car and disappointment strikes... AND it’s 10 past already.
I better ring her because if I ring the office phone for the colleague that has stupidly blocked me in, there might be unnecessary suspicion. “Hi, it’s me. Can you please get Graham to move his van because I’m blocked in?” and in response “Hi, yeah, no problem” and a quick thanks.

I come up with the brilliant idea to take a picture. It’ll have the date and time logged as well as the factual scene and after that I think, ‘I best send a text to say I’m going to be a bit late because of this arse blocking me in’, so at least he knows, hopefully understands…

Graham turns up and jokingly says in his best Yorkshire
accent “I thought you were actually going to work a full shift today” before
stepping into this van and driving it 3 metres down the car park. I quickly hop in and drive off.

Halfway through the endless road works going at the speed of
a slug I check my phone.
“U joking? How long have you been waiting?” (…no kisses… bad news...)
and I say it like it is:
“Already en route now, just thought to let you know in case you started
stressing if I was a little bit late Xx” - and here we go: “Not surprising I
stress is it? Your always home late for some reason or another”.
Here we go again. Stress has commenced.

I’m not always late. I don’t think he’s ever understood what’s involved in my job at times, nor being stuck in traffic in a car - or how long and slow these road works go on for, but this? Surely, this should be understandable?
Minutes and seconds and more minutes and mili-seconds of pondering go by of whether to reply and what. ‘Let’s not this time….let’s leave it…. Whatever reply It’ll be wrong. It usually is’.

I come home and look at the clock. 3 minutes to 6. ‘Not bad, considering’ and walk through to the bathroom to face the music.
“Hello” I try to say lovingly but his face paints a picture underneath those shower drops and soap. I take a wee. I look at him and ask if he’s alright.
“Nooo, I’m just a bit pissed off I suppose. You’re always home late and I’m fed up with your stupid excuses”.

“What?!’
No, really… “what??!!”
'Such injustice' I think. 'Is this man from Mars or is he really talking to me ‘in alien’ from yet another planet?'