My Petrichor Past

It’s Monday morning, and the day has not started well. When I went into the bathroom for the first pee of the day, I found that my wee blind kitten had managed to step in his own crap again, and had left little shitty kitten paw prints, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, all over the floor. Sigh.

Also, there was nothing nice to have for breakfast. Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day, and I’m always put out of sorts if it’s not good. Usually I like to have something sweet for breakfast, but today I was craving breakfast tacos, which are probably the most perfect breakfast creation ever. They will be one of the few things I miss about this place when I leave. And, oh, margaritas, too.

There were, however, sadly no breakfast tacos or margaritas for me this morning. Instead I had porridge, made the old-fashioned way with just salt and water. When I was growing up and asked my mum if I could have sugar in my porridge instead of salt, she said that I couldn’t because “that’s the way the English eat their porridge”. The implication was that the English were too effete and spoiled to be able to handle salt in their porridge. She may have been right.

I have also run out of my usual organic Earl Grey Tea, and therefore had to slum it with Tetley (one of the most popular brands of tea in the UK), which I had bought once when I was overcome with nostalgia in a shop selling foreign items. God knows why this stuff is so popular…it tastes like warm goat’s piss (or, well, what I imagine warm goat’s piss would taste like).

After my Oliver-Twist-in-the-workhouse-like breakfast, I started to write in my journal, which has become a bit of a chore lately given that I normally end up repeating everything I write there on here. I’ve started leaving out lots of the more juicy things in the journal because I know I’ll just write about them in my blog instead. This makes me worry that my great-grandchildren will think I lead a very boring life, lacking in imagination, when they find my journal one hundred years from now, growing mouldy in an attic somewhere. Perhaps I should put a sticker on the front of my journal with my blog address to avoid such a disturbing occurrence?

You’d think it would be exactly the opposite, though, wouldn’t you? You would think that I would want to keep the most intimate, embarrassing and gruesome truths of my life for myself in my journal, wouldn’t you? Nope. I most definitely prefer airing my dirty laundry online in the blogosphere. Perhaps it’s because I’m tired of being stuck inside my own head, and crave readrers with whom I can interact.

I do find all this writing therapeutic, though. I think I carry a lot of unresolved anger around in me and writing, specifically blogging, allows me to work through my issues far more thoroughly. This morning, for exampe, while writing in my journal, I suddenly felt a surge of anger towards Midwestern Man. It came out of the blue but I suppose I must have been unconsciously thinking about yet another conversation we had yesterday about his inability to finish his art projects. As you know it bugs the shit out of me that he’s nearly thirty-two and that he doesn’t appear to have got his act together.

The reason why I would be a good teacher is because I’m very encouraging and supportive of other people’s dreams, but somehow I can’t manage to be this way for Midwestern Man. I went through a phase when I’d talk to him all the time about teaching, persuading him to train to be one, too. I do think he’d be a good teacher actually, and he already teaches some evening classes in art, but my constantly harping on about it just made him resentful and bitter. I suppose I should just leave him be, but even if I do, and never say anything about the situation to him again, he’s going to sense that I, deep down, don’t really believe he can do it. I want him to do it, but I just don’t have much faith in him. I know that’s terrible, but I really don’t. I realize that my lack of support (whether vocalized or not) will only make the situation worse, but I don’t know how to make myself believe in him. I don’t have any evidence from his past I can use to help me develop more faith. All I see is a long trail of procrastination and unfinished projects.

I even hate the art form on which he’s decided to focus – the graphic novel. Well, that’s not entirely true, as I do like things like Persepolis and Maus but that’s because they talk about real things, important things. Whenever I look at the graphic novels Midwestern Man reads, they’re all fucking fantasy scenarios…bombs exploding; femme fatales with their anatomically impossibly big breasts bursting out of their tight clothes; apocalyptic scenes….It’s all fucking bullshit. Nothing I can relate to because it’s not linked to reality in any shape or form.

Midwestern Man accuses me of “not having an active fantasy life”, which I find amusing because I think I’ve got far more imagination than he does. It’s not really true either that I don’t like fantasy. In fact, my favourite genre of fiction is probably magic realism because it combines fantasy with (guess what?!) REALISM! When I read Gabriel Garcia Márquez, for example, I don’t think to myself “Oh, here is an author who has taken refuge in the world of fantasy and spirits because he spent all his teenage years, and most of his young adulthood, hiding in his bedroom, never getting laid, because he was too socially awkward”. This is exactly what I think when I see the vast majority of comics and graphic novels, however.

I despise fantasy and science fiction because these are genres written by people who do not have a handle on reality. And how can you write good fantasy if you haven’t yet mastered the skill of seeing the fantastical in everyday, commonplace happenings?!

I would say that Midwestern Man does not have a very good grasp of reality. However, as I was writing today in my journal, it occurred to me that this was precisely the quality in him I had fallen in love with, except that I had viewed it in a much more romantic, positive light. I adored the fact that Midwestern Man was so idealistic. There is a childlike innocence and simplicity to him, which was so refreshing to me, caught as I was in my world of handjobs and depression.

I had admired that quality in him but now, if I really examine myself, I think I would like to destroy it. Pluck it out of his heart, dash it to the ground and stamp on it again and again, leaving a crushed bloody mess, completely unrecognizable.

I wonder why that is. Perhaps I am jealous that he has survived so long and managed to remain this pure and free. Perhaps I want to drag him down with me…Whatever the reason, I want to crush him, kill him, drain him. I’ve done it before to men who loved me, and I want to do it again. The sheer depth of my cruelty astounds me.

I hate his fucking guts. I love him so much. My poor husband.