says:
ya well
says:
shes gonna break u one day or another
says:
it takes what it takes innit
says:
so u get me
says:
was hoping I could take a peek at yr homework tmw :P
says:
ah yes
says:
gna be carnage
says:
rly?
says:
cld u not work it out either
says:
not rly
says:
gave it a try
says:
can i take a look at it?
says:
do u ever like
says:
⋆not⋆ take a look at it ;))
says:
thnx babe
says:
u know it <3
21:34, 09/02/2002
[ IS ONLINE]
[ HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE CONVERSATION]
says:
oi!
says:
u guys on here early
says:
whats up
says:
darling francesca
says:
nothing rly
says:
just homework
says:
o god dont even
says:
i was gonna ask if i could take a look tmw
says:
T?
says:
i mean sure
says:
its not done but like
says:
legend
says:
literally have been sitting here so long I cant feel my butt
says:
hows this shit even legal
says:
ya
says:
remind me who had the genius idea for all of us to take maths instead of science
says:
whatever alanna
says:
bet ud rather be slicing up frogs in science
says:
cuz u were such a princess w options that was the only place we were ever ending up
says:
honestly so fucked up
says:
meat is murder man
says:
they dont actually slice up frogs in science
says:
ure aware of that franks?
says:
ya franks they dont do that any more
says:
also u stopped eating meat like 2 weeks ago
says:
cuz u started hanging w that gross guy jack
says:
his name is jake
says:
and ill have you know
says:
JAKE is a very good person to hang out w
says:
if ur remotely interested in being cool that is
says:
lucky I got u
says:
sure man
says:
what u got is a c- in maths
says:
better a c- than a ⋆C+⋆
says:
i do NOT have the clap this joke is getting tired franks
says:
girls look ⋆im⋆ kinda tired tonight
says:
o are u now poor lamby
says:
ya
says:
u kno from actually doing the homework for all of us?
says:
it’s like being back in primary with u 2
says:
o ya sorry mum
says:
forgot u finally grew tits
says:
taken them for a test run with good old charles yet?
says:
o shut up francesca
says:
ur honestly the most obnoxious person i know
says:
franki
says:
come onnnnn
says:
alriiiite
says:
let me redeem myself
says:
how
says:
fear not my sweet lil nerd
says:
for ur gal francesca is bringing THE GOSS
says:
XD XD XD
says:
finally something I can get on board with
says:
what is it
says:
ummmm not much tbh
says:
actually not worth talking about
says:
jesus franki just tell us
says:
XD XD XD
says:
you rly are no fun tonight T
says:
sooooooo
says:
omg spill it
says:
ok so
says:
u kno i have PE on tue
says:
ya
says:
so
says:
so moobs let his pet sit out again today
says:
moobs?????
says:
moobs pet????????
says:
O_______O
says:
weird rite?
says:
hold the fucking phone
says:
O___________________________O
says:
moobs has a PET??????
says:
never in my life
says:
yep
says:
man is the definition of lack of personality
says:
lack of personality doesnt require a definition
says:
its already a definition
says:
u kno what i mean tho
says:
man doesn’t look capable of keeping a pet fish alive
says:
tru XD
says:
it’s a girl right?
says:
dunno if I can take any more news for tonite
says:
correct
says:
ugh poor gal
says:
do I know her?
says:
its ruth beadle
APPLES
Ruth
Now
Back at the flat, I lock the door and stretch out on the rug, between the coffee table and the sofa. I like it here. It’s a place I have chosen. It feels safer than sitting on my side of the sofa; from here there’s no risk of looking at the other side.
I am reading in the booklet about the Kübler-Ross stages of grief. There are five bullet points:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
They don’t sound like a completely foreign notion. I must’ve studied them in college. But the memory feels very distant, as if I’m reading through old handwritten notes and can barely recognize them as my own. I haven’t thought about the stages in a very long time: when a death occurs in the care home, the emotional aftermath isn’t our responsibility. There are other professionals for that. We need to call in the doctor, confirm the time of death, clean up the bed, get the room nice and ready for the next patient. Life must follow death efficiently. You put your emotions behind you. There is no time for grieving when you’re on the job.
I stare at the paragraphs on the page, breaking down each word into its two-line definition. I study them, attempting the kind of calculations that Neil would make. What do the words mean? What do they want from me? Accountants have lizard brains. That’s what he used to say about his workaholic colleagues. But he kept tabs on things too. On us, evidently: he somehow figured out that ten years was sufficient.
Here’s what I think: it doesn’t take two perfect halves to
make up a whole. There are many ways to cut up an apple. Throughout our relationship, I’d engineered myself to occupy as little space as possible so that he could be as large as he liked. He was always prodding the world as if it were a piece of fruit, seeking out that soft, yielding spot. I figured out early on that in the unit of us I was much less than an equal half. Perhaps it suited me, it took off the pressure. When we still went out with friends, I would joke that I was Neil’s OQ – his ‘Other Quarter’. He always took it personally.
‘We are one and the same, Ruth. There are no secrets: we are safe inside the same skin.’
I think of that and the part of me that remembers what it’s like to be a part of something splinters at the thought like raw apple. I never liked to think of neat parts with us, because the part of me that wasn’t him always seemed a little frightening. So I haven’t devised an emergency plan for myself – all I have is a handful of truisms I’ve picked up somewhere: from people, from TV. ‘It’ll be OK eventually.’ ‘You are very brave.’ ‘You do you, girl.’ Occasionally, I have said these things to others, although it was always hard to get the tone right.
Neil has been my only partner: my only long-term, proper partner. There weren’t many others before him and what use would it be to think about them now? You may find that grieving, the booklet says, is like crawling into a deep black pit where there is room for grievance alone. On the rug, my body braces for the smack of absence but it doesn’t connect with the impact. I continue reading. So far, I would say, I have done everything by the book.
At first, of course, I was desperate. I felt I’d been cleaved down the middle, the moist pulp of me suddenly exposed. I knew I couldn’t be out in public. I took time off work; I said I was ill and in many ways I was, or at least I behaved like it. I didn’t eat, wash my hair, change my clothes. It was a relief that it all came so naturally. I cried, or I slept, or I clawed the bedding crying until I fell asleep. It was a black wet sea of a week.
And then it was time to go back to the care home. It was as if someone had flicked the switch back on. I pulled myself together, as they say – or at least I held it together – precariously, because simply presenting myself to the world required my full attention. It was exhausting. For days after I went back to work, I’d find myself standing at the foot of a patient’s bed, in the afternoon light, and for a moment the hurt would fasten itself to my bones, threatening to push me to my knees. Often, my arms felt too heavy to lift. I look up at them, stretched out above my head: this feels like a memory.
According to the booklet, I should now be slap bang in the middle of my anger phase. But I don’t feel angry, not at all. Could I be skipping this stage altogether? It’s hard to be angry with someone when the thing they have done isn’t something that was intended to hurt you, but a good thing they felt they owed to themselves. (Doesn’t he have a right to be happy?) Should I even be allowed to be angry under these particular circumstances? (I miss him.) The booklet doesn’t specify. Doesn’t he have a right to be somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else?
But it’s been ten years. Ten years. Jesus Christ. Three thousand five hundred and fifty-something days being a part of someone else’s equation. Ten years enabling Neil’s constant need for change. On a day-to-day basis, the list of the things I did for him was practically infinite. Over the last six months only:
The time he felt the seeds of a sustainable future lay in the consumption of kale crisps and I was the one who brought the cabbages home to desiccate in batches in the oven with olive oil spray and sea salt, like it said on the website he’d bookmarked. The bottom layer stuck to the tray like wallpaper, and the top was too crisp, verging on burnt. Neil laughed and didn’t even try one. I chucked the tray out without bothering to clean it. I began collecting vouchers for Planet Organic. I didn’t give up on him. I was good. I know I was good. I am good at being good to others. I accept that everyone has complex desires.
The time he read that Bikram Yoga offered the only really effective path to true clarity. He yearned for a steam room. We had a box bedroom, where I stored my clothes and magazines. So I got rid of them, buying white cushions and jasmine candles that he said would induce a meditative state. That Saturday, I spent the afternoon in my underwear in our sealed-up flat, the heating and the oven raging. I actually steamed some linen rags on a fucking pot on the stove and wrapped them around his head to provide him with the appropriate degree of heat and humidity.
Anger: I hunt for rage in my brain. I thought I had it, just a minute ago. But it’s hard to recover that spark, lying here, with my limbs weighing down the carpet. I remember it searing through my brain, a blind white shock like the pain of a bone fracture, on the night he left. And then it was gone. In the aftermath, I couldn’t sustain it.
Perhaps because life has resumed. I have kept at it. Two weeks, then three. I listen to the submarine thudding of my day-to-day. I do nothing but go to work, come back from work. I keep to the same path around the house, the desensitized neutral areas: the corridor, the bathroom mat, the hard spaces in front of the soft furniture. Floating in the bath for an hour, my body not touching the sides, mooring myself at the rickety dressing table, handling the hairbrush, the body creams, dabbing on foundation thicker than normal. Everything that is him is still here. I’ve just taught myself to ignore it. The booklet seems to think that’s wrong. I carry on reading.
As an example we will apply the five stages to a small traumatic event some of us might have experienced: The Broken Mobile Phone! It’s 15:10 and you are awaiting a very important phone call at 15:15. It’s an interview for your dream job. All of a sudden, the screen on your mobile phone freezes, becoming unresponsive.
1. DENIAL – You quickly try to restart your phone, several times, trying any combination of buttons, until you manage to switch it off and on again. When the screen turns black, however, it doesn’t come back on. You try several other things, nothing works.
2. ANGER – ‘F⋆⋆k you, phone! I should have got an upgrade!’ Did you just throw your phone against the wall? Now the screen is cracked. It looks like you’ve really broken it for good. ‘I hate these useless smartphones! Smartphones are the ruin of this world!’
3. BARGAINING – It’s 15:12: Realizing that you’re really about to miss your call, you beg your phone to start again, ‘Oh please, phone, start again, please please please. I’ll get you serviced, I’ll even buy you a new cover!’
4. DEPRESSION – It’s 15:16. They’ve probably already called by now. You won’t be considered for the position you’ve been dreaming of. This is it: you have lost the opportunity of a lifetime, all because of a stupid mobile phone.
5. ACCEPTANCE – ‘OK, the phone is dead.’ You have missed your call. You’d better get online and email the company. But before you do that, you must make sure to calm down, so that you can clearly explain your technical difficulties and get your interview rescheduled.
The example depicted here is deliberately trivial: ‘a micro-example’, which demonstrates only a small part of the process we all go through several times a day. Grieving can be triggered by the smallest things: a dead car battery, a favourite dish dropped off a menu, a house move, a break-up, the loss of a pet …
Yes, but it’s not the same as a fucking mobile phone, is it? It’s got fuck all to do with it. I’m not fifteen years of age. I give the booklet a shake, stretch my arms out again, over my head, holding it up high. The key to a healthy recovery, it says, is in restoring one’s routine. Keeping busy helps: you should feel blessed if you’re working a practical job. I do; there’s always something that needs doing, someone in need of help. But what about the holes in the texture? What about the nights, for example? The dreams.
1. Do not blame yourself for the things that cause you grief: any sudden change may trigger the grieving process and this is out of your control.
2. Recovery takes the time it takes: of course, a broken mobile phone will have less of a lasting impact than a seri
ous traumatic event, but grieving time is not quantifiable.
3. Not everybody goes through the phases in order: some subjects jump between phases or go through the same cycle several times.
4. You’re allowed to grieve.
Recovery takes the time it takes: I still have trouble sleeping. I’m a restless sleeper – but it was always that way with me. Nights are difficult but some things will always be difficult. The booklet agrees. My arms are feeling sore, my spine aches from lying here. I grasp the side of the couch and pull myself to my feet.
I know I have to retake possession of the flat, but I don’t know where to start. I’m here, standing, the booklet in my right hand. I shuffle on the spot, like a character in a shooter videogame, paused by the player who wants to take a piss or make a cup of tea. Last year, Neil developed a soft spot for these games. The more gruesome the better, which seemed incongruous with his newly adopted spiritual lifestyle. The looping noise when he paused them irritated me so much that I’d bring the mug to him before he asked. (‘Pretty sure that’s not Buddhist,’ I remember saying. ‘Every man must reconcile himself with his most basic instincts. That’s what Buddhism is all about, actually.’)
I look around. I scan each open door in our small flat. Woollen throws on the sofa, the wheatgrass on the windowsill already going dry. Deflated cushions on the floor, mottled with incense ash, spice bottles fighting for space on the rack. The juice-maker bulging obscene and root-like from the darkened kitchen, its shadow spilling on to the living room floorboards. I’ve been burning his candles constantly but the house still retains its stale air.
The acronym TEAR was devised by Harvard professor J. William Worden to provide grief professionals with a clear outline of the steps that must be undertaken as part of therapy work:
Grief professionals. Is that me? We’re the ones giving the booklets out: the tender authority.
T = To accept the reality of the loss
E = Experience the pain of loss
A = Adjust to the new environment without the lost object
R = Reinvest in the new reality
(J. William Worden, ‘Four Tasks of Mourning’, Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy)
TEAR. What a stupid acronym. For some reason I’m thinking about evidence; I have to remove the evidence. And why do I feel guilty?
‘The only way to stop feeling guilty about something is to make a start at it’ is a thing my mother used to say to me as a child. She’s right. I always feel better when I get to work. ‘You are practical-minded’ is another thing my mother used to say, and it’s true. If I hadn’t wound up a nurse I would’ve liked to be a painter and decorator or an engineer, maybe a potter. I like fixing things. I make myself useful. It’s just that out of all the practical professions, being a nurse seemed the most practical at the time. I enjoy most chores.
Shelf Life Page 3