Friday night

I haven’t posted much of what I’ve written lately. It sometimes feels self-indulgent; ‘oversharing’ is the word these days.

Something’s changed in the last month or two for me. No sudden waking, just a slow dawn, and the rising feeling that I don’t feel especially different anymore. Not sure why I felt different, but I felt special in a weird, very much less than optimal kind of way (there’s a weird sentence). Felt that this could make me something more. Felt singled out for misfortune.

I also felt in the aftermath there were lessons that I could share. Thought I’d glimpsed some meaning. Seen a porthole into a part of life that many don’t see. Maybe I could describe the vision to others.

But now I feel things are blurred, the vision less clear, more a mirage. The world was how I wanted to see it. The world’s still how I want to see it, but it feels changed. I’m the variable in this equation.

I remember feeling like I was walking around with a siren stuck to my head. One that no-one else could see. A siren that would blare, like an accidental car alarm, all too often and too loudly for only me to hear and see. I’m transported back in time 6 months ago, 6 months after Mary died. I’m recalling a work training day. An off-site session for a large group. I arrived 15 minutes late, the kids drop-off didn’t go well, the session has started. A colleague is talking about his plans to visit the USA. I recognise the situation immediately. Crap! I so don’t feel like participating in an ice-breaker right now. I haven’t even had a coffee. “Thanks Brett. Trent you’re last up. Tell us about yourself, your role, and something people probably don’t know about you”. Bang. The siren rips my thinking apart. Is no-one blinded by the red flashing above on my head? Right lets see, that’s tricky, something significant, something others might not know (it’s a big company I only know 20% of the people in the room by name and less than half of those know me well enough to know me). The siren screams “go on, tell them your wife is dead, tell them you’re not quite sure what the purpose of being here is, or what your purpose is at all. Hurry do it now. How can anyone understand you if they don’t know this”. The noise is unbearable, but somehow it quietens and out of my mouth comes… some bullshit story about the football team I support.

That siren used to sound almost daily, but tonight the siren’s silent. I haven’t heard it for a while now. I’m sitting here thinking, writing my thoughts, because I don’t know what else to do with them. There’s no-one here to speak them to. Is posting to the internet really sharing? The thoughts aren’t special. There was no porthole, no insights of meaning; just life. Just this empty, wondrous, fulfilling, soul sucking, amazing, loving, cold, world. In this new slow dawn, I feel like I’ve landed. Splash down. Spawned back where I was; still where I am, at sea. But the waters are calmer than they once were. The waves no longer crash with crazy white fury. There’s no sand to be crushed against. There’s a deeper swell. A swell that, if I really think about it, has been there all along. I’m still bobbing along. I’m not uncomfortable, but what I have got to hold onto feels ephemeral, which is discomforting. No-one to hold onto. That’s the hardest part. There’s no one here beside me anymore.

It’s a Friday night. 8:30pm. I’m sitting typing in my pyjamas. At 4pm I left work early and had a drink with Natasha, Tetsuro joined us later. It was fun, people are fun… for the most part. Tash left. Tetsuro and I finished our drinks and left shortly after. Just before we left, a woman walked in and made eye contact. A smile exchanged. She sat at the end of our table, drank only a couple of mouthfuls of the beer she ordered. She seemed so vibrant when she arrived and within 15 mins her demeanour changed, she left – closed to the world. Stood up perhaps? I tend to ponder silently on others’ troubles. It’s probably some form of psychological distraction.

Tetsuro had a sore head from drinking the night before and went home. I was hungry. There’s an idea; go home to an empty house and cook for one on a Friday night? Instead, I caught a bus to the West End food markets. Tried to be mindful on a belly full of beer, watching people come and go. Couples annoy me now. They never used to annoy me. I never used to annoy them. I wonder if I annoy them now. Is my watching conspicuous? His hand merges with the small of her back. She reaches and thumbs the back pocket of his jeans. I say excuse me, squeezing past to pick up my Thai rice and basil chicken. I walk and eat slowly. If I’m moving I blend in (don’t I?) becoming part of the live moving crowd. But even the crowd moves in pairs.

Every second integer is odd; it’s odd that there are so few groups with an odd count. I never used to notice, I moved as part of the pairs, Mary’s thumb in my back pocket.

I stop for a coffee. Chat to the barista. He spent yesterday paddle boarding. The tops of his feet are apparently sunburnt. The water swilling across the board washed away the cream, and now he has sore feet. I feel sore, but I don’t know where, and my story’s too long to expect any sort of diagnosis from the barista, so I listen and learn all about paddle boarding around Scarborough.

It’s just after 7pm. I FaceTime Harry as I walk down Boundary Street. Smile lots and play dad. It’s not hard to play. Play is not the right word anyway, I’m genuine. I’m not quite sure what I would do, where I would go, without Harry and Cara. The’ve spent much of this school holidays week at their Grandparents and I miss them terribly. I tell Harry I’m walking home as we say goodbye, but then I have a hankering for some live music and head back, but then I see a bus. It’s a 196, that’s my bus. So I hop on. Life is random. How do we end up where we end up? Just 10 minutes ago I planned to be somewhere so different to where I am now. Just 10 years ago we planned to be…

The bus is full. People after work, people heading home. Lots of people. A lady makes room for me on a seat. I fight the urge to pull out my phone and randomly scroll through news. Another woman sits at right angles to me, less that a metre away. She’s striking. In the sense that her features are sharp. Sharp nose, sharp jaw. I can see the small muscles towards the back of her jaw moving. I try to work out how you do this. The only way I can replicate it is by clenching and unclenching my teeth with force. Wow this lady is stressed. She rubs her neck. Her red rimmed glasses move up onto her head, then back down again. Every part of me wants to offer up the words “tough day?”  But I don’t say anything. I watch her from the Melbourne to Doornock Terrace, she never once looks at the sad looking bloke puzzling over her jaw from 90cm. And then she leaves. I wonder whether she too feels, in a weird – less than optimal – kind of way, that her troubles make her something more. Or does she just feel different right now. My stop is next. And then I’m home.