My friend in the Gambia got in touch with me to ask how I was and try and worm his way back in yesterday. I sent him a few computers last year, and I assume he thinks I can send him some more.
“How is your mother?”
“Dead. They killed her at Christmas. They tried to kill her in May last year, and I stopped them.”
“What?” The idea of killing somebody when you don’t have to is astonishing when you come from a country where medical care is administered somewhat differently.
Ex-boyfriend number 1 also got a shock when he asked this question. I’m heading out to see him today.
I, of course have been blasting my head with music pretty much constantly ever since it happened. I am the world’s expert at distraction.
Every so often I think she is here, and I rush off to do something for her, and obviously then I remember. She was not an easy person to get to know, but we figured it out eventually. I wasn’t the daughter she wanted, but then the daughter she wanted didn’t give a flying fuck about her, which wasn’t terribly helpful. She was brought up to be a little Tory, and little Tories don’t get help when they need it. They just assume it happens by magic. She was insisting even when we got to the palliative stage that she didn’t need a carer.
Aside from that, dealt with the work issue as best I could without it hurting anybody that matters. I’ve done as much as I can do, which is more than anyone else would do. Now moving on to better things.
I think the main thing is not to let people get in the way. Whilst obviously the newer short stories are more polished and coherent, I don’t think it was a worthy trade-off. I really liked SB, thankfully not to the point of being stupid, or things could have been even worse. I do wonder about the trade-off he has made. The determination to be invisible and lack of connection is quite distressing.
I used to have an equally beautiful and discombobulated French-Lebanese boyfriend who adored me. He was so shot up by the stuff that had happened to him that lengthy conversations about ‘nice’ things abounded, and I quickly found I couldn’t stand it. I was quite relieved when he moved away. Poor Michel. He had been through a lot.
Unfortunately, what happens to people with PTSD is that other people use them. They use them because they can. I don’t know who is yanking the chain in this case for sure, but whoever it is is not a person you want yanking your chains.
I am going to spend some time catching up with more serious writing, and then I will get back to work on the performance art. At the moment it is more of a case of repairing the damage and trying to limit the amount that can be done in the future. For this reason, I suggest he plays along with my proposed solution, which is by far the least harmful I could come up with. I managed this whilst irate, which is a testament to my logical processing, really.
Anyway, must go socialise.
