The lesson I had to learn - 1 of 3

Here's a new one for you, gentle readers - a multi-parter. I'd written the lot up, intending to post it as one chunk, but at 2414 words, it would be a bit much I think, so I'll split it up into three parts, which fits the subject matter perfectly, as you'll see. Don't worry, this first part is only a couple of hundred words.

As I was driving in to the office this morning, Madonna’s ‘Power of Goodbye’ came on the radio. I’m not really a fan of Madonna, but one of the lyrics stuck in my head, “You were the lesson I had to learn.” It got me thinking about my ex-girlfriends, and I thought I would share them with you.

First up we have Jill. I think I was 20 when we hooked up. She was the youngest sister of a woman, Elaine, whom I worked with at the time, and we’d met at Elaine’s birthday party. We chatted for a while, but I didn’t really think we ‘clicked’ or that I’d made an impression. Turns out I was wrong, and on the Monday following, her sister-in-law asked me if I wanted to meet Jill again, I said yes and handed over my mobile phone number.

Jill was a year or two younger than I was, and fancied herself as a bit of a Goth. She was also pretty hot, and I had no idea why she was interested in me. I think the fact that I had my eyebrow pierced at the time made her think I was a bit of a rebel. She wasn’t really that bright, either. She was obsessed with Keanu Reeves, believed she was going to become a witch and start her own Coven and all manner of strange things. I really should have clocked that it wasn’t going to work out, but I was still struggling with the tail-end of the depression I’d been dealing with since my teens, so I wasn’t exactly au-fait with how to handle relationships – Jill was in fact the first ‘girlfriend’ I’d had, I had to pluck up the courage just to try and kiss her.

Things just kind of petered out, I suppose. We actually broke up, then got back together for a few weeks, then broke up ‘properly’. I can’t remember if it was me or her that broke it off, and I suppose it doesn’t matter now.
 

What's wrong with me?

That’s kind of a rhetorical question, to be honest – I don’t really think there’s anything ‘wrong’ with me.

Sometimes though, when I peer into the inky black depths of my mind, I wonder if I might be ever so slightly ‘wrong’, because sometimes I get the feeling that I’m hooked on drama. For example; a while back, when my mum was in hospital, there was a very real danger that she wouldn’t survive her surgery. If I’m brutally honest about my thoughts, there was a small part of me that was hoping that she wouldn’t make it.

Deep down, there’s a little nugget of Snakemeister which would revel in the heartbreak, trauma and depression which would result from the loss of my mum. There’s even another part of me which would welcome it, given that the death of my mother would make it easier for me to cut all ties with my father.

And it’s not just that. Say, for example, my girlfriend had been cheating on me. Depite the fact that I’d be utterly heartbroken, and my world would fall apart around me – while I was sitting around lost, wondering what had gone wrong, there’d still be part of me deep down giggling like a schoolgirl, happier than a pig in s**t.

I’d love to know where that comes from. Is it something to do with a desire for sympathy from other people? Is it due to a lack of attention from my parents in my formative teenage years?

It doesn’t surprise me that I’m a little weird this way – I’m emotionally stunted at the best of times. My girlfriend and I used to have arguments about my not being able to open up to her when we first started dating, and the fact that I struggled to convey my feelings, even though I knew how much I love her.

We weren’t big on touchy-feely emotional stuff in my house. I can count on one hand the amount of times I remember my mum hugging me, and my dad has never actually said out loud that he loves me.

I know it’s a bit of a cop-out to blame things on your parents, and I’ve tried hard to work through the issues I’ve got. I’m happy to report that I’ve got no problem holding hands, cuddling, snuggling or being touchy-feely with my girlfriend, and I suppose that’s the important thing really.
 

ADD

Can you suddenly ‘develop’ ADD just before you hit 30?

Recently, I feel like my attention span has a length of roughly 10 minutes, sometimes even less than that. I find myself avoiding articles and columns online that I’d normally read through with relish, because I’ve skim-read them and weighed them up to be too long to bother with.

It extends to pretty much everything else – listening to music at home, I’m slicking through playlists constantly. When I’m watching movies, I’m ready to jump out of my seat if they don’t grab me right away.

Even writing this short piece, I’ve clicked out of Word and back to Firefox several times. It’s extremely annoying.


P.S. It turns out the seal around our bath has been leaking for some time now, and the flooring under the bath has been seriously damaged by the water, but I’ll talk about that another time.
 

Warts and Verrucas

I've got a cluster of 3 verrucas on the sole of my right foot, most annoying they are. They've been there for a while, but they haven't really bothered me too much. I was at the Wart Clinic at our local GP a month or so ago, and the nurse there whacked some liquid nitrogen on them, but it hasn't done much. I've been using one of those 'home freezing' kits, but it's been equally useless.

It's not the first time I've had a run-in with warts or veruucas. When I was a wee boy, no more than ten, I had warts all over my hands. I literally had at least one on every finger of each hand. It was terrible - I felt dirty and unclean every time my fingers rubbed against one of the warts. I nded up trying to hold my fingers at weird angles so they didn't brush against the warts I knew were there. I had them for about a year or so, I think, during which time my parents tried the usual creams and ointments from the doctor. Eventually the doctor burned them off with liquid nitrogen, although it took at least 2 visits.

Ever since then, I've had a slight case of OCD when it comes to keeping my hands clean. I've got a very particular ritual when it comes to washing and drying them, which I do several times a day. That probably wasn't helped by my mum accusing me of having 'clammy, rapist hands' later on in my life, when I was hitting puberty, which also gave me a bit of a complex about my hands getting sweaty.

Fun times.

Writing

I like to think of myself as a writer. I may be kidding myself on, given that doing one column a week (usually) on a gaming website - however popular that site is - does not necessarily constitute 'writing'. For almost as long as I can remember, I've enjoyed writing. I've always had a fertile, active imagination and I've always tried to scribble down ideas and thoughts as they come to me.

As I've got older, this process has stalled a little. I've had ideas for a novel or two and more than a handful of short stories floating around my head for years now, but I haven't done any more with them than some half-hearted outlines and maybe the odd scene or two. I'm not sure if it's a lack of motivation, or procrastination or just plain old laziness, but I can hardly seem to get started on most of it, let alone get them finished.

My girlfriend called me earlier to say she'd been talking with one of our neighbours. Her sister disappeared around 10 years ago - her body was never found and no-one was ever charged with her murder. Then, a few months back, a guy called Peter Tobin was charged with the murder of another girl and during the investigations, her sister's remains were discovered buried in the garden of a house Tobin used to live in. Anyway - Morag (my girlfriend) was speaking with our neighbour, who mentioned that she's written a book about the whole thing, which is due to be published in the next couple of months.

I suppose I'm a little envious or jealous. If I want to be a 'writer', then I need to get my finger out and start writing. Part of me doesn’t want to write because I'm rarely happy with what I've written when I'm done. Another part of me slaps myself in the head and points out that 90% of writing is re-writing, and that I should just get stuff down on paper, and take it from there.

I've been playing WoW a little too much lately and I've neglected my painting, so I've stopped playing altogether for a bit until I clear my painting backlog. Maybe I'll focus on writing once I'm finished with painting. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating again.