Divorce is a complicated thing when you’ve got kids. My parents loved each other, for certain. Mum wanted a divorce though. She had an idea about a glamorous London student life that she had never had. She tried for it, realised she was mostly still just as unhappy, went back and was wonderful with dad as he was dying, cos she loved him, and then carefully and totally took herself out of the world.
I was 12 at divorce time, just confirmed to go to Harrow when “Boys, come to the morning room,” was called out. That warm room where I set the fire every morning. “Mummy and daddy still love each other but…” etc etc. It’s a shock to the system. We construct these peaceful narratives where everything is perfect, as children. It’s the happy way to live. Nobody wants to have to see the edges of everything positive. Isn’t it lovely to just assume that everything is safe and happy? Oh children, it isn’t.
In retrospect, I am happy for the timing of that small event that I refer to as “the first crack”. It started the process that rounded me out. I couldn’t eat so much shit thereafter. I distrusted everything. At the time that divorce trustbreak was the only big thing I had had in my safe safe life. It helped me be the person who didn’t fit in, and consequently the person I am now, half jaguar, living between the fire and the woods, aware that the fire is built of the ruins of the woods, that the woods are older and deeper and stranger than we can know. And yeah my parents both went before I was thirty and I lost my shit but now there’s perspective. The biggest thing we’ve had is the biggest thing we’ve had until we get something bigger. There are people my age for whom the greatest hardship is still just a lost teddy bear. Some of them are high up in the Tory party. They still miss that teddy. We only know what we know.
Anyway I met with the man I still kinda wish mum had stayed with post divorce. A kind man, 73 now so … guarded as kind people have to become over time in a world where too many people are on the take. His habits were life positive. Mum was life positive when with him. I still like him. He sent back his steak and had the lamb and didn’t like it, so he’s particular. But I can take fussy, if it comes with a generous outlook. I paid for everything stealthily so he couldn’t try. I catalysed the meeting. He’s a nice man and has been a doctor all his life so he’s probably used to people expecting him to pay.
Mum liked glamour though. He wasn’t glamorous. Arse. I’m good at that shit if I absolutely have to be, but I detest the bullshit of it. He even googled me pre meeting and told me I should improve my online profile. He wanted me to buy into the glam world for my own good because he’s kind. I just see that world and see children pretending. It’s a shared hallucination, the notion of being glamorous. You just shout your name at people and try and dress like people who are dead. If you identify towards it you are being sucked into a black hole, because the actual poster children of the idea of glamour didn’t give a fuck about glamour and that’s why the deadliving ideate towards them. They were living their life and dealing with their mental health and generating art that was an expression and an outlet. They largely died badly at 27ish after generating a burning amount of something. By pretending towards it though you are merely courting oblivion.
You’ve got no business trying to imitate someone who died unhappily before you were born just because … shopowners want you to buy their clothes?
But I was happy to see mum’s ex. He’s well. He beat some cancer. He walks with a slopelurch, but I’m pronated on my right and it isn’t a limp. He’s pretty damn healthy and perky for 73. If I make that age it’ll be a time for celebration. Hopefully I’ll see more of him.
AlBarclay 