All you will need are your internal organs and a blender

It’s brilliant that the day that should have been my sister’s 53^rd birthday dawned bright and frosty because, together with remnants of a cold, it gives cover for the tears which are idly progressing down my face, the total bastards. As I arrive at my place of work, having walked seven minutes in the beautiful, freezing air, I dread meeting any of my colleagues, because although they mostly know about Kate and her flamboyant exit from this tedious coil, I am well aware that nearly fourteen years on I should be able to cope. Fourteen, ha! A piddling amount.

Well, I AM coping - I’m dressed and at work and making chat about Brexit and everything - what’s more copey than that? But under my business suit, my business skin is providing just about enough surface tension for the screaming abdabber inside me to be contained. I have an official job to do. At some point today my work will be appraised, live, as I do it, and people’s actual careers actually depend on my being able to deliver. And deliver I shall, because, largely, deliver I have, over 40 years. I have delivered the performance of a somewhat anal, pretty whacky, but also very serious-minded person who uses too many metaphors and who is bright and capable and all that. All I have to do today is churn that out again: one more spin of the facsimile handle.

One excellent corollary of Kate still being murdered after all these years, yet her birthday still thundering into the Christmas season, is that being recently dumped by someone slides into the background a bit. It’s a relief. As I recall, a change is as good as a rest.

But I am ruminating about what a dear friend said to me last night, which is not restful. My friend’s best friend died less than a decade ago, but more than five years. We talked about her friend last night, and about it - his death - and about it - their friendship - and about it - her grief. And during this conversation she removed my stomach and my heart and placed them in the blender, together with the emergency sachet sense of self-worth which I had brought with me, just in case. And all these ingredients went into the container and she put the lid on and she whizzed the fuck out of it all, leaving me breathlessly emptied and struggling to focus on the words which were happening in the room.

Want to know how she did this? Because I doubt you’ll guess. I mean, you can have a guess if you like, but do it now as I’m about to tell you how she did this.

(By the way, I love this friend so much. She is a great person and if she reads this she should know she is da bomb and I am a whackster).

So, ready? This is how she did this incredibly organ-lacerating trick. She pulled it off utterly unknowingly, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. She said to me, of her grief, that she’s basically fine now. Of course, sometimes there are songs she has to turn off and moment which remind her, but basically she’s okay now, she said.

And I am so happy for her. She has passed into a place I have heard of but which I cannot access. Am I envious? Yes. I mean, I’m not now. I was last night, in my shock and delight, I was envious. Now? Well, not long after she told me, right back then, last night, the envy passed. I would have no time for any other emotion if I spent my time getting hooked up on why other people suffer terrible loss and other trauma and pass through, and I am stuck in some bizarro, dysfunctional hell because of something that happened 40 years ago, driven to blogging this miserable stuff right in your face, dear reader.

My dear friend met her husband less than a decade ago, but more than five years too. They are so, so happy together, they are fun and funny and generous and human. More than many relationships I know, I stare at theirs, I guess because she was the last of my school/university cohort to find someone to be with, and so I suppose I think, when I’m with her, I might meet someone too. And I observe what a wonderful difference the relationship, the man, all the changes, have made for her. Life is not perfect, dear reader, but it is much better. Very much better indeed.

Then I remember I’m a terrible mess who’s just been dumped (for good reason), and that though people like me as a chum, my father managed, I suspect, an absurd restructuring of my self to make me unfit for purpose. I fear this means that the endless, crazy little thing called love which, when it miraculously comes my way again, will take away my pain, and then leave me (and someone else, of course) up where we belong, and which, given half a chance, I’ll make said person feel, goddamit.

So I can’t really rely on love making a difference. In fact, the thing that would make such a difference, as it has before, is beyond my grasp. And the major love which sustained me for so many of these 40 years, that of my dear sister, is cold to the touch - like the grass today. And I really am grateful to have been dumped recently, because that loss makes sense to people; and I’m grateful, in a way, to Kate - or rather the guy who shot her - (given that I can’t get her back) because murder is so horrifying, that it kind of explains my obsession with my still-39-year-old sister; these things make sense to people - that’s why I’m a bleak, un-comfortable, soul. It makes no sense, to me or to anyone else, that Dad’s death lives on and on and on and won’t let me move to something else, in that way my friend has found. And other people have found, because that’s what people do.

I spoke to Mum earlier. She said she’d thought of Kate a lot today. I asked how that was, and she provided an answer with no content, but then she’s good at grief. She asked me back if I’d thought about Kate today, and I replied a lot. But it has been expanding and screaming and drooping inside of me all day, my sister, my dad, the endless questions about why I’m not able to move forward: unbearable.

The takeaway? That I have this dear, old friend. I have her and she has me. That's what I want you to take away. That I have this dear, old friend whose life is much better than it was. That’s what I want you to take away: she’s the usual thing. If you’re extra-hungry, you can also take away that I have more excellent people in my life at this moment than some people get for the whole of their lives: I am a very lucky, very screwed-up, soul. And please take away that because I am, I am not afraid of other people’s mess and misery, and that, dear reader, is an unwanted gift, but a gift nonetheless.