Full Of Life


I never really wanted life to turn out like this. I desperately wanted our son to grow up in a stable, loving family environment. I wanted him to live with Mummy And Daddy, and to think that this is both utterly normal and that we were happy together. Peacefully co-existing at worst, happy and confident together, taking on the world as One at best. I wanted him to enjoy that.

I didn’t have that growing up : I had two people who had grown apart. My father a perpetual adolescent, every Saturday watching sport and drinking, every Sunday morning fishing until lunch time. As I read about a Presidential Home, his absence was in itself a presence. There was a space where my father should have been and even when he was physically present, he was mentally absent : he was asleep in front of the television with it at deafening volume. After a few attempts to switch it off - to which he always told me “I was watching that” - even if it was the post-closedown assortment of grating static, I ended up just tiptoeing downstairs and slowly turning the volume down so he wouldn’t notice. He never did.

My mother worked her hardest to give us a good quality of life. Whilst we never had the best things, we never had the cool trainers, never had the shirt with the picture of the crocodile on or the Swooshed logo, she tried her best. Unfortunately what I could never forget, even if I wanted to, and boy, did I want to, was the realisation that my parents were welded and chained together and there were things about each other the other hated. Frequently were the rows and, on occasion, the throwing of plates and milk jugs, the screaming and the shouting.

Slowly, we came to the realisation, E and I, that fundamentally, our lifestyles and personalities were too different to peacefully co-exist. In an argument I can be very quick, very stubborn, very tenacious - a logical pitbull that does not know how or when to quit. I see my opponent in an argument as something to be decimated. To take apart their every statement and every belief, analyse it, isolate holes and iconsistencies, and exploit them mercilessly until they see the logical correctness of my argument. Fundamentally, I have what everyone else has in their personality : the belief that we are right. I believe that I have analysed the evidence at hand, reached logical conclusions, and anyone who disagrees with me is at best a nincompoop, at worst a deluded amoeba. I’m not nice to argue with, but I never threaten people, and never use violence. Probably the worst thing I ever say is when I call someone running away from an argument with me is that they are a coward. That’s a belief I still hold : if you pick a fight with me you better be sure you can stay the course. If you retreat at a certain point, that, for me, is the equivalent of tipping your king in chess : it’s a resignation and thus, a victory for me.

Some of you may know I’ve had a very difficult time with my former employer - so much so I felt very much forced to change jobs. The matter is still not resolved : I am still a dogged fighter with my jaws clamped around the issue seeking an answer. I will not stop until either my every possible avenue is exhausted, or until I seek satisfaction. Fundamentally what I seek from them is not major : a recognition that due process was not followed but that a procedure was misused with full knowledge of the actual impact it would have, an apology, a rectification of the process so it could not be misused in future. And money. I deserve to be bought off.

They shouldn’t be surprised. This type of commitment and dogged determination to achieve results was what they wanted when they hired me.

And now here we are. Since E moved out, I’m living in the wreckage of a life I used to have. My son slept every night for two years and four months in the room next to mine. Now, that room is silent. Whereas I used to see him the morning, rolling out of bed contentedly with a yawn and rubbing his eyes before we started a day watching television and rolling around and doing housework and hunting donuts at the garage, now I see nothing. I miss the notion of family that I used to have. It’s not that I do not have an OK home life, but it’s very different from what I wanted and what I hoped. I recognise that our seperation was very much the right thing to happen, and that we are happier in our separate states. But on the other hand, the realisation that a marriage has come to an end, that a relationship hasn’t succeeded, that the great dream that we hold of two drifters off to see a world that we’re not sure deserve us, that that dream failed, is hard. Everything I worked for over the past four and a half years was ultimately for nothing.

What have I got? I’ve got a millstone of a mortgage with 22 years left to run on it, I’ve got a four hour commute to and from a punishing job every day, I’ve got financial slavery and a fair dose of poverty coming right up, I’ve got the emotional repercussions of divorce that mean that if the house has increased in value since I bought it, I’ve probably got to find half of that money and pay it to someone at the one time I can least afford it. If you own property, and are planning on staying there, then it’s probably best to get divorced during a recession. That way you don’t have to find thousands of quid you haven’t got to pay out half of an imagined and irrelevant value.

I’ve got a beautiful son I love being with. Me and him were talking today at his third birthday. Talking about his friends, and the colours, and the cakes, piggys, owls, faces, ears. I bought him “Ratatouille” and a Lightning McQueen t-shirt which he loves. We had hugs and cuddles and giggles. As I went to leave, he pulled on his shoes and looked for his coat because he wanted to go with me, and he took my hand in his and said “We’re holding hands.”

“Daddy stay new house” he told me in his most serious and grown up voice.

Wherever I was going, he wanted to go. He loves being with me and it breaks his heart when I am away from him. My heart too. He’s one of my best friends and every time I see him he gets more interesting and more brilliant and more fun. It saddens me that there is so much of his life I don’t get to see because I can’t be there. I can’t be there because I have to work for a living and I can’t be there because his mother and I cannot co-habitate. It’s not what I wanted, not at all, but I have to accept that the only workable solution for any of us is if we separate and work on a life from there.

Being an adult is hard. Grow old, we must. If you can avoid growing up, it’s probably best if you can. Nobody ever said it would be easy, but this seems so much harder than it needs to be.

I sit in this house that used to be full of life, and I wonder sometimes about my life, because this certainly didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to.
- posted by Mark @ 10:56 pm