Today after lunch, Romilly made us all icecreams. From Lego. It’s not quite the same, really.
She made me a chocolate icecream with vanilla on top. She made Bawoof a chocolate and vanilla icecream. She made Elisha a chocolate with vanilla icecream. She make Kurt a… er… turkey-ham icecream.
Strangely, Kurt wasn’t impressed with his special treatment.
Alas, Romilly’s stomach bug found its way to me, and I spent the last two days feeling really, really awful. Lots of fun.
You know, some people pay good money to have their systems flushed. Idiots, I say. Just get yourself really sick. You don’t need water! Water is for weaklings!
Okay, I give in. I really like water. A lot.
The old saying, “you don’t know what you’ve got `til it’s gone,” has never been more true. Actually, I think that saying sums up my whole year.
Romilly, this evening, describing her recent illness:
“I threw up in my bedroom, and then I threw up on Mamma’s pillow, and I then threw up in the lounge room, and then I watched ABC Kids.”
This weekend, I don’t have Romilly. For various reasons, she wasn’t able to spend it with me, so I’ve got the entire time to myself. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with all this time, but I was sure that it meant no tantrums, no early morning wake-ups, no cleaning up after “accidents”, and no cleaning up vomit.
And then Genghis vomitted.
So much for the vomit thing.
Genghis isn’t your typical cat. He’s not very capable at anything, other than beating up whatever happens to be closest. His vision seems to be unable to tell that the scary creature making the rustling noise is just a plastic bag. His brain seems to be unable to tell the difference between the neighbourhood cat on the outside of the window that’s hissing at him, the cat next to him inside the window that lives here, and me. More particularly, my rear end. I have a small scar now.
So Genghis vomitted. He does this a lot, but only because he insists on scoffing down biscuits without chewing them. He eats far too many biscuits, far, far too quickly, and then they come right back up, unchewed and whole. He does this even when other food is siting there, as in this instance.
Kurt started congratulating Genghis on his one talent: vomitting in a neat little pile in an obvious place on the easy-to-clean floor. He has honed this skill over the years. It is truely the one thing that he manages to do well. I went to get a cloth to clean up the vomit, only to discover that he had also vomitted all over the cats’ evening meal; a huge pile of partially digested, unchewed biscuits, all over the floor and into a bowl full of fish.
Romilly: 1
Genghis: 0
At first, it was complete confusion; I had no idea where I was or where I was going. Then, after a little while, it became obvious that I was waging a war with reality. What was going on in my head didn’t match what was going on outside of it.
Reality won. It has a nasty habit of doing that.
Once I had come to my senses and accepted that things were the way they were, everything seemed okay for a while. Now, though, I’m not so sure. I seem to be in the middle of another war, but this one is a civil war. There are two parts of me: one that accepts everything and wants to move on, and one that doesn’t want to behave in a rational, sensible or logical manner. I’m stuck with two selves, and they don’t want to agree on anything.
While my rational self is more like my normal mode of behaviour, and has logic, reality, and plain old common sense on its side, my irrational self has loneliness. Loneliness is a powerful force, and not one that I have ever been able to control to my liking.
I’m sure there are some psychologists out there that would have plenty to say about my messed up little head about now. Believe me, fellow fans of the human condition, I do know that having two selves isn’t the sign of a happy and healthy mind.
Perhaps I should work on a third.
Last night I had a dream. For the first time since I met Debs, I dreamt of liking another woman — even kissing her — without feeling guilty. Until now, even something as innocuous as dreaming of another woman would leave me feeling incredibly guilty, both in the dream and after I woke.
I’m the type of guy that devotes himself to one woman. Monogamy and trust are the building blocks of a relationship, and those needs easily override any internal “male” programming to spread my genetic code as far and wide as possible. While I could never quite explain the intense and arguably irrational guilt caused by a simple dream, it always served as a reminder of my attachment to Debs.
That attachment hasn’t been there for some time now, but waking up this morning was the first time that I felt truly comfortable with what that really means: I’m a single guy now. It’s not that I haven’t known and accepted this as my reality until now, but now I find it somewhat comfortable.
Even if one’s reality isn’t wonderful, it’s nice to be comfortable with it.