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I phoned work and said I can’t come in I’m sick.
I thought about what my mother would say if she saw me skiving like this, I remembered what she said when I was a child and stuck indoors over rainy weekends.
There’s no use mooching and moping about it she’d say, it’s just the way things are.
Why don’t you play a game she’d say, clapping her hands as if to snap me out of it.
And I’d ask her to point out all the one-player games and she’d tut and leave the room.
I wonder if that’s what she’ll say when I finally tell her, that it’s the way things are, that there’s no use mooching and moping about it.
It doesn’t seem entirely unlikely.
She used to lecture me about it, about taking what you’re given and making the most of it.
Look at me with your dad she’d say, gesturing at him, and I could never tell if she was joking or not.
But it’s how she was, she would always find a plan B if things didn’t go straight, she would always find a way to keep busy.
If it was raining, and she couldn’t hang the washing out, she would kneel over the bath and wring it all through, savagely, until it was dry enough to be folded and put away.
If money was short, which was rare, she would march to the job centre and demand an evening position of quality and standing.
That was what she said, quali
ty and standing, and when they offered her a cleaning job or a shift at the meatpackers she would take it and be grateful.
She always said that, she said you should take it and be grateful.
And so I tried to follow her example that day, hemmed in by the rain, I sat at the table and read all the information they gave me at the clinic.
I tried to take in all the advice in the leaflets, the dietary suggestions, the lifestyle recommendations, the discussions of various options and alternatives.
I read it all very carefully, trying to make sure I understood, making a separate note of the useful telephone numbers.
I even got out a highlighter pen and started marking out sections of particular interest, I thought it was something my mother might approve of.
But it was difficult to absorb much of the information, any of the information, I kept looking through the window and I felt like a sponge left out in the rain, waterlogged, useless.
I was distracted by the pictures, by all these people looking radiant and cheerful, smartly dressed and relaxed.
I knew I didn’t look like that, I knew I didn’t feel relaxed or cheerful.
I didn’t feel able to accept what my body was doing to me, and I still don’t.
It felt like a betrayal, and it still does.
And I kept trying to tell myself to calm down.
To tell myself that this is not something out of the ordinary, this is something that happens.
This is not an unbearable disaster, a thing to be bravely soldiered through.
It’s something that happens.
But I think I need somebody to say these words for me to believe them, I don’t think I can speak clearly or loudly enough when I say them to myself.
One of the leaflets mentioned telling people, who to tell, how long to wait.
