Aversions

Ocean Bream The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

I am off coffee. Off standing in a little coffee bar in some obscure coffee shop somewhere in Italy, ordering an espresso with whipped cream and one of those triangular pastries that are a hundred layers of thin crusty sweetness filled with a delicate custard. Off an iced spanish latte on a hot day. Off a hot Americano in a paper cup from a self-dispensing coffee machine which, for the equivalent of £1.75 in this country’s currency, is actually pretty spectacular. Warm, roasted, hints of dark chocolate and a tiny whiff of berry, nutty and slightly butterscotchy, gives you just enough shakes for a one hour weightlifting session during which you gulp down 1.5L of water and after which you have a high protein avocado, cottage cheese and egg toast. Balance.

I am off a small cappuccino with the perfect medium roast espresso, milk whipped till just creamy froth, not bubbly like they always manage to do in the UK. UK coffee is awful. my jet-setting self has learned. But nobody does tea like the UK. A solid mug of English Breakfast with the right splash of milk and on the side, chocolate chip shortbread. ASDA does a great version, and so does Tesco. But if you’re feeling fancy you’ll get the Walkers one because that, my friends, is the original. Custard creams, Fox’s Golden crunch creams – delicious! A digestive if nothing else avails itself. My husband introduced me to his post-gym snack which I fear is heavily Americanised but I cannot fault it. A plain digestive – McVities of course, nobody does it like them – with a smearing of peanut butter and a little dollop of jam. A PB&J digestive! Horror of horrors, but horrifically good.

Anyway I am also off tea.

Speaking of tea, nobody does sweet tea like the Pakistanis. Sweet black tea, I mean. Boiled with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, peppercorns, milk, a generous heap of sugar. Some people use evaporated milk and now that is fancy! Chai. Not a chai latte although I am partial to that. But chai, cooked in a pan, strained into a flask and taken to the top of Mow Crop on a cold and icy Christmas day in Cheshire. That is where we were last Christmas. We had homemade pasties to go with it and we saw one other family and the icy wind bit our faces and fingertips but our bodies were warmed with the rich spicy sweetness of chai.

I am off all of it, folks. Because when my body is preparing to grow a child, I become averse to my favourite beverages. And that is what is happening.

Am I OKAY?

No. I am shocked, scared, confused. Crying, screaming, throwing up – literally to the latter. I am not prepared, physically nor mentally. Why, I thought to myself this morning as I walked my two children into school, I only have two hands by which to hold my current kids. Do I have enough love for three?

Of course I do. Of course I do. I have enough love for as many children as I may have. Just right now I miss feeling well. I miss feeling okay. I am just tired and sick. But it will be okay. We will be okay.

My Sunshine Girl

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Daily writing prompt
Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.
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You know, I always tell my daughter that she is my sunshine girl. The sun shines out of her large beautiful eyes and beams out of her gorgeous big smile. She always thinks good of others, even the mean little four year olds at school who say hurtful things to her. ‘I think she forgot she was my friend Mama,‘ she says, ‘or I think she just didn’t know I liked her.‘

‘Did what they did to you hurt you in your heart?’ I ask gently, and the little half smile vanishes from her face and her mouth turns down against her will. ‘No Mama,’ she says stoutly, ‘in my FEELINGS.’

Okay okay. She is such a sensitive little soul. If you tell her off she backs away with a big smile on her face but when you inspect it further her eyes are brimming with tears that are on the cusp of falling over the edge of her lashes, and her smile is wobbly. I ask if she is okay and she nods and if pressed about it the little tears pour down her cheeks in tragic rivulets.

But she is my sunshine child. Her laugh echoes through the house and if she wonders off in a supermarket her high cheery little voice is my beacon to her. She is loud and clumsy and full of ringlets and chubby cuddles. Whenever I looked at her when she was a baby her fat little legs would cycle into a frenzy and her smiles became little squeals of excitement. I never saw such happiness in someone when they looked at me, my heart would rise up with my own joy to meet hers. She is still this way when we have visitors, when she spies me after her day at school, when I surprise her while she is out shopping with her dad, when her grandma comes to visit – little dances of joy and rapture, hugs galore, never stingy with her affection. I missed you! You’re my favourite person in the whole whole world… everyone is her favourite.

People say about her – she is the spreader of joy. Where is my happy little girl, my mum always asks. We named her after the night, a night of sparkling stars and a glorious moon, only made so because of the generosity of the sun.

So when I think about what I hope people say about me, I think, I want them to say ‘she appreciates the good in others’ – and only so because my daughter taught me when she came into this world 26 years after I did, to only seek the good in others.

That is how you be a sunshine girl.

What on earth are you good at?

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I have had to ponder deeply on this because, like many of the folk who grew up with dysfunctional parents, I can’t seem to think of things I am good at.
It’s a thing some like to call ‘low self esteem’. When I was a teenager, I used to call it my ‘inferiority complex’ and I nursed it like one nurses a scatty pet that they are ashamed of but cannot live without. I made jokes about it to my friends and it was almost like a shield disguised as a badge of honour behind which I shoved all my insecurities like dirty laundry.

I am good at cooking. Mostly because I love to eat. Flavours and ingredients, I was told once by a dear old friend of my mother’s, are like paints on a palette. It takes a true artist to weave them together to make something that truly inspires emotion in the people who eat it. She told me this one day when she brought a box of spaghetti bolognese over. My mother had been hospitalised for three weeks because of a retina detachment – the horrendous result of yet another dysfunctional altercation with my father – and so this friend of hers would pop by everyday when we got home from school and bring us some of her delicious food (oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!) and check in on us. What she said that day, about cooking being like art, really stuck with me. I like to think I am a creative, and some of my best creativity has come through in delicious meals I have prepared for people. My favourite thing is when people eat food I have made and are in raptures over it. Yes, I think to myself, this piece of art was well enjoyed.

I am good at drawing – I used to wake up at the crack of dawn before my family. Reflecting on why I did this – being around my family wasn’t a restful experience. I always felt some sort of discomfort or urgency. Discontentment from either of my parents that I wasn’t working hard enough or I was reading too much and neglecting my school work, or I ought not to be sitting around I ought to be doing a chore… So I would wake up at the crack of dawn before anybody could bother me and I would get my paints out (someone had gifted me a set of acrylics – real artist acrylics – and I truly felt I was a renaissance painter!) and paint away on the balcony for a few hours before it got too hot to be outside. I moved onto pastels after that and then discovered a love for watercolours. Then I grew older and became depressed and stopped all that for a while. But whenever inspiration hits me and I take up a brush, I am always pleased with the result and I know I can do it really well.

I am good at writing – but I don’t often make time for it, and that is on me.

I think I have good intuition and am good at deciphering people’s emotions – but I am not certain of it. I think I am good at analysing a person and understanding them on a fundamental level. Their whys and wherefores, so to speak.

What are you good at?

[25]

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Twelve years ago on this day I created a blog on WordPress and published my first post ever.

I was nineteen years old and starting a new chapter of life. Now I am 31, and I believe I have turned the page on a fresh chapter. Not such a happy one, but there is some sweetness. Like the thorn in the stalk of a rose.

Now I have been privy to the darkest parts of the human brain, and my eyes have been prodded sharply to the grim reality of mental clarity. One must feel pain, I have learnt, in order to be mentally healthy.

Feel vulnerable, folks. Feel afraid. Feel lonely. Feel the feelings. It’s the only way to heal yourself and grow in a healthy way.

I am, as they say, a ‘grown ass woman’ and Lord do I feel it – in the spongy crevices of my brain, which, frankly, feel awfully mushy and soft right now, as well as in the crevices of my face, which are gradually getting deeper with each passing year. Soon they will be grand canyons through which the memories of the years will ricochet, etching themselves ever more firmly into my skin.

[24]

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In the darkness of the night, the stars tear holes in the black canvas shrouding the earth so they can peep through, decorating the sky with twinkling lights, playing hide and seek with each other and shooting at each other through the silent vacuum of the universe.

A shadow slinks behind the walls of houses. It creeps through the stinking back alleys where rubbish bins line the brick walls neatly, oozing bin juice. It pauses, sniffs, and slinks into an open bin. It guzzles, and slips out again, prowling for more. Its breath rattles in its throat, almost like a death rattle, and as it climbs out of yet another bin, its large, round belly glows in the dim light from the street lamps just outside the alleyway.

Another creature, with the same protruding belly and glowing eyes, slinks around the corner. It stops, eyeing its counterpart on the bin, and a low snarl starts in its throat. Hunger propels its forward, a deep, prolonged ache to fill an unknown void, and it rolls into the dustbin and begins to scavenge for food.

The rattling sound echoes through the alleyway, and a window above is thrown open. Light floods over the cobbles, and a low hiss emanates from the dustbin, as both creatures shy away from the brightness.

‘The cats are in the bins again, Hank!’

[23]

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Ten years ago, I lost myself.

I turned sixteen, you see. All kinds of things were happening to me. My mind was foreign, alien. My body was a trap. It was a tumultuous time. When one is sixteen, one’s senses are heightened. Sadness is multiplied and happiness is mountainous.

I chose to let someone in my life when I was seventeen. I say chose, because I did choose. I chose to contact. I chose to text. I chose to call. I chose to visit. I chose to allow someone to violate me. Mentally. Physically. I chose to let them into the most vulnerable parts of my brain. My self. I let them rearrange my mind as they saw fit.

I became sparrow-like. Withdrawn.

They told me I was naive, and I acted so.

They told me I was not intelligent, and I became dumb.

My bubbly self bubbled as I was submerged in a water so murky and black that I could not see my hands when I stretched them before me.

I rode on waves of anxiety, and sailed down roads of relief.

When I finally disentangled myself, in a moment of sudden clarity, the world suddenly became black.

I stood up, in that moment. I remember. I stood up and I shouted, ‘Who do you think you are!!!???’

I was shaking in fear, but I did do that. And all those years (2 years) melted away from me, and I woke up, groggy, shocked, and astounded that I had let myself wonder so far. So far from the path. So lost in the woods.

I told myself I was brought up properly. I told myself I had a healthy and happy childhood. I told myself, all of this, was my own fault. And yes, of course it was.

But I am 31 now. And my mind is more clear than it was even 2 years ago. Things that would have terrified me even three years ago – a phone call, an email, a letter, a message. A ringtone. A dream. A hacking laugh… These things only make me angry now. And sad.

I am so sad that I let that young, innocent, bubbly, happy little girl into the hands of a devil.

I am so sorry and sad.

I wish I was taken care of. Listened to. Heard. Protected.

I wish I had a better story to tell.

If I had been my adult, I think I would have hugged my little self. Held her. Told her she was worthy and important. Not told her it was her fault. And she should know better. Sometimes at 16, you don’t know better. You can’t.

And if he reads this – ever, I hope he knows that I wish he would die. I would revel in his death.

[21]

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There is a quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt that goes ‘I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm’.

And I think that just about sums up what I think about luck – that it simply does not exist. Things are meant to happen to who they happen to and when they do happen. The things we want will come to us when they are ready to come and when we are ready for them.

Also, if we really want things, we have to work very hard for them. We have to do our very best and if they don’t happen despite that, then it was not meant to be at that time because we were not ready for it. No matter how much we think we are.

Another thing I have realised is that we humans love to cling to hope, and always look towards positivity. Life WILL get better, things WILL improve. It’s in the human condition. It’s how we keep getting up for another day.

If we go on and on thinking of things in terms of good luck and bad luck, we become enraged at the universe. Why does the worm deserve the bad luck? What did he do wrong? Nothing. He just woke up earlier than usual and went for his daily walk, only that morning his walk happened to benefit the bird. It just was the worm’s time to go, and I am sure he lead a good life and did all he was supposed to.

Life is supposed to happen.

What do you think about luck?

[20]

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Hundreds and thousands,

Atop white icing,

Atop a cake,

On a plate,

Covered in foil.

Wrapped in a plastic bag,

Shoved

Mercilessly

At the bottom of my schoolbag.

For I was ashamed

Of the cake

My mother toiled all night to make,

for the school fair.

Don’t ask me why.

It was perfectly lovely,

Soft, yellow vanilla sponge

Simple, perfect flavours,

And the sparkly fun of hundreds and thousands decorating the top.

I just didn’t want to be

That GIRL.

WHAT girl, pray tell?

The one who carries a cake onto a bus where the boy she secretly crushes on sits coolly at the front, NOT carrying a cake.

Don’t ask me what nonsense goes on in the minds of twelve year olds.

When I got on the bus..

That boy was carrying a cake.

And most of the other kids

Had some kind of home-made concoction in their laps too.

I felt stupid

And sad.

For my cake,

On it’s plate

With white icing

And hundreds and thousands

Was a flattened, crushed mess.

And my heart, now, today, at 31

Wrings in sadness

At the thought of the love and care

That went into that cake,

As my mother,

toiled through the night

To see a sparkle

in her daughter’s eyes.

I love you mama.

When I was 11, my mum made me a classic school cake to take to school with me. Vanilla sponge, white icing, hundreds and thousands. I was embarassed because I thought I would be the only one taking something, so I shoved it into my bag so nobody – especially not that ‘bad boy’ on the bus – would see me being so ‘wholesome’. As an adult, I laugh at the absurdity. And now, it hurts even more, because my mum was well back then. She is not well now. It’s heartbreaking to remember her in her good times, because will she ever be like that again?