Ep.40: Jealous

I lie back on the bedroom floor, covering my face with my hands.  I’m wearing a tatty old pair of thermal cycling tights, one bright pink sports sock and a crop top.  Tears leak out from round my fingers, eventually the frustration is too much and I repeatedly thump the floor with my fists, surprised at the size of the sound.   I briefly worry it will attract B but then maybe I want to be found. Saved from myself.  I’m awash with indecision.

Desperate to make the most of the day I tried to put a bike up on top of the car so B and me could cycle along the canal path into town, but I couldn’t manage it, the bike was too heavy, too awkward and my reach too short.   I gave up, then decide instead that I’d dismantle my bike and put it into the rear of the car, get changed into cycling clothes, drop B with her dad then go for a ride up round a route we call ‘the lochs’ over to the south west of the city.  But this seems fussy and over complicated plus the fight with the bike and the car already has me heightened and tetchy.  I’m looking for excuses to stoke me, I can feel myself tipping, teetering on the edge of fury.     

I change tack, grasping frantically at the last traces of something rational, I start to peel back out of my cycling lycra with the thought instead of dropping B off, then coming back home and heading up the hill above the house but, but, but, by then half the day will have passed and I won’t have long in daylight and, and, and...  

Too late, I raise myself up, spinning briefly on the rim of my temper then plunge, thumping the floor again. 

I vehemently dislike myself in this state.  I’m wild and wild with annoyance at myself as much as anything else.  

‘Stop being such a dick’ I hiss.  Plan Z – I’m not allowing myself any more fucking indecision - I prise myself off the floor, wipe my face, finished getting changed then hurriedly gather my swim things and wetsuit.  I’ll drop B at her dad’s, and find a loch to take a dip, somewhere alone and unwatched, somewhere to bathe and cool this foul mood. 

At B’s bedroom door the frustration is still rolling off me.  She feels it push into her space and shoots me a look, I ignite, hissing and spitting about the state of her room which I’d asked her to tidy up three times yesterday, then I point at the dirty plate and banana skin she still hasn’t cleaned away AND the box of cereal she’d been snacking on, lying on the floor.  Each transgression winds me up a fresh notch.  Snarl, snap, growl, blame, every single snipping snippet of it pure displacement and distraction from the reality of what’s really totally pissing me off. 

‘Why are you so angry with me’ she says in a small voice, tears threatening.  ‘I’m not angry with you’ I want to scream, ‘I’m angry with ME!’.   She pulls her hoodie up over her head, hiding, then takes refuge in the bathroom.   Its then I feel myself rise up, floating above the scene, appalled a fresh at myself, disgusted I crumple.  I fold myself onto the stairs above her room and through my tears tell her quietly how sorry I am.  None of this is her fault.  None of this should have been brought, quite literally, to her door.  Shit, and now I’m going to take her round to her dad’s for the weekend with little or no time to properly make amends.  I add guilt to the weight I’m already hefting round with me today.  Fuuuuuuck!

I’m surprised at Cancer’s ability to still catch me off guard, even after all these months of hanging out together.  I’ve felt more angry and upset about cancer today than I have for weeks, maybe months.  The size of my capsize feels both directly in proportion and opposition to the beauty of the day which is crisp, golden and achingly lovely.  It’s a day that openly defies anyone to regret being alive; it’s a day I should be doing, being, living, breathing it all in, but for some reason I feel blocked, like I’m repeatedly throwing myself at a wall.  Today I resent all this beauty.  I know what the cause of this is.  I know why I’m feeling so cunty.  I’m not pleased with myself for knowing it, I think it’s an unappealing quality to have, which is why I’m delaying placing it here on the page. I don’t want to admit it.

I’m jealous.    

Ugly, I know.

Each Saturday when David goes off with the cycling club, I’m jealous.  Today on this perfect late November day without a breath of wind, I ache to be on the bike with him and all the others.  I feel taunted, teased by the knowledge of how much the old me would have enjoyed today.  I’m jealous of his freedom to do the things I used to love and I’m jealous of the club cyclists for getting to spend this exquisite day with the man I love.  I hate jealousy.  Its an utterly pointless waste of decent energy but I don’t know how to flip myself back upright.

As soon as I’ve dropped B off, I call Ali to cry and confess.  ‘Tell him’ she says, ‘he has a right to know how sad and difficult you find Saturdays’.  But I can’t, I won’t,  because he works hard all week and he never utters a single word about what impact my cancer has had on him.  Saturday rides with the club are an escape and they’re important and they’re his and I don’t want to taint what they mean for him with the knowledge of how sad they are for me.  I’m embarrassed about how selfish I’m being, I don’t want him to see it in me.

With Ali’s voice still in my head I drive to the loch we swam in together back in the summer, searching for the residue of our laughter to try and lift me.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen the water so still.   I reach for my phone to try and capture the singularity of the moment, the reflection of the sky an impossible blue against the last of the Autumn rust. 

I sit for a moment on the large stones by the edge of the loch, breathe it all in, try to feel my way to a less raised state. Closing my eyes in the warmth of the sun, I recall B’s joy at finding hundreds of tadpoles and newts in this very spot back in June.  It was another too perfect day, I’d begged and pleaded with her to skip lockdown schooling, to come play with me.  Tutting at my blatant disregard for her education and need for obedience she finally gave in and we’d spent the afternoon swimming through the lilies and scooping up handfuls of wriggling froglets.

But the memory of B’s joy jars against my earlier bitching at her and I snap my eyes back open, smarting, swallowing down fresh tears.   In a confused mix of penance and the desire to crack this melancholy, I slowly lower myself down the rocks to ease myself through the glassy surface of the Loch sending out arcs of tiny ripples.  I gasp. Even through my wetsuit the cold steals my breath away, my bare hands instantly pink, hurting.   Pushing myself away from the shallow rocks I try to swim but my body struggles and resists.  I’m a little bit afraid, don’t want to move out of my depth, I feel a tension between the extremes of temperature, beauty and my mood.  I’d wanted stay in long enough to wash away my sadness but after just a few scant minutes already I’m too cold, my hands too numb, I know I should get out and get warm.   Once again I’ve taken myself off on my own with no one knowing where I am and now I’m up to my neck in freezing fucking water trying, trying to what exactly, shock myself into a better frame of mind?  There’s more than a hint of madness here and I know it.

It’s the first time wild swimming hasn’t worked for me and I drag my feet on the return home.  I want to hide from David.  I don’t want him to see me til I can disguise what it is that I’m struggling with.  I consider turning off my phone and continuing to drive somewhere, anywhere, while I scratch around for a way to turn my jealously into something less destructive but it’s no good and I arrive back like a guilty school kid who knows they’re going to get a row.

But of course I don’t.  I walk in through the door, drop a bag of rice from the shopping I’m struggling with, which splits and scatters across the floor then I too split and scatter.  And I know there’s no gain in hiding any of this so while I collapse into a soggy heap on the floor next to the rice I spill it all to David. I tell him how sad and jealous and caught up I am, how furious I am both at cancer for ripping away the things I want and at myself for being utterly selfish and ungrateful for all I have. And because he’s David, and under the surface of this man of few words there’s a man who knows just the right words to pick, by the time he’s finished scooping up the rice he’s scooped me up too.  He doesn’t make me feel selfish or stupid, he makes me feel understood. Already he’s already planning ways to getting me back cycling with the club, and to making it all OK. And I look at this funny, strong, resilient man and our life together and slowly the shattered fragments of my day form back together and my glass refills. I end the day unbroken.