The End

Slid in next to Carol at the table, instead of opposite. Shouldn’t have. That’s how I’d always sat with him. Just stayed still for a moment, waiting for the memory-induced surge of crippling pain to sweep through and past me. With it, always the niggling. Something left unfinished, unsaid. Something I still had to figure out. That made it worse. I hated the niggle.

“I have never met anyone who goes to the toilet as much as you!” Carol had an eyebrow raised. She knew. She was trying to keep my mind moving. A kindness.

“Just means it’s all working.” I opened the menu. Shouldn’t have bothered. Always have what I’m going to order meticulously planned prior to entering a restaurant. He had thought it was cute. Even tried to use it to his advantage by trying to get me to order for him. Another surge came. I waited.

Was in no state to be socialising. Reflected that I should have just cancelled Carol and spent the night in bed watching British Comedy box-sets. Too late now.

The waiter came to the table. “Have you decided yet?” He asked in his slight accent. He was cute. But nowhere near as cute as –

“I’ll have the butter chicken.” Carol again, quickly. How did she always know?

To the waiter’s surprise, I ordered my meal extra hot.

We waited for our food and we talked. First time I had seen any of my Audiology peeps since he and I started going out. Had just had the worst week of my life. Hadn’t eaten or slept in three days. Was a human train-wreck and yet, while we were talking, something happened. I slowly became a different person. I was becoming extroverted, quicker, funnier, completely off the wall. This was me! I had forgotten that this was me! Something almost excited bubbled up inside me, and with it, it was dragging up the niggling feeling, bringing it closer. It was coming to me.

The food came. I offered some of mine to Carol, who took a mouthful, only to quickly reposition it in her napkin.

“Okay,” she coughed, “That is a little hot.”

I was already on my fourth mouthful. “It’s not that bad.” I said.

“Well I’m Asian and I couldn’t finish off a bowl of it.”

I looked at her. “Well,” I said slowly “That just further reinforces my opinion that there’s something very wrong with my taste buds. Either that or you’re a wuss.”

“Hey, hey!” Came the quick response. “My people live and breathe hot food thank you very much! Anyway don’t worry, as long as the rest of your digestive tract is working, you’ll pay for it eventually.”

“Why do we always end up back at the toilet humour?” I put on a fake plaintive voice. “I try to take you out for a nice meal, get us out of the house, away from the kids…”

“You know what?” She picked up my lead straight away “You always have to make a scene don’t you? Well just get in the car. We are going home now!”

“No you know what? I think I’ll catch a taxi.” I crossed my arms. “Forget it! I just can’t face another one of those bloody icy car trips!”

“No.” She mirrored my movement. “You are getting in the car, and you are coming home with me. Now!”

A scared looking Indian man brought us the bill. We giggled and paid. Neither of us had done this in a while. We were both elated.

Came home to an empty house that night. Elation long disappeared somewhere between Carlton and South Morang. Misery returned. It was shallower misery though, and at least I slept. The niggling was still getting closer. I could almost touch it in my dreams.

I woke up the next morning with the words running in my head. I always did. This time it was different though. I sat bolt upright, smacking my head on the bed head overhang on the way. Didn’t matter. I had nailed the niggle! That night I had been “shout it from the rooftops” material. I had genuinely forgotten I could be.

That was what he had wanted. The one point he wouldn’t let me argue down. The one thing I hadn’t been able to defeat with my trademark hole proof logic. The one, winning thought he had left with. Now I knew. My niggles never failed me. I sat down at the computer and opened a new email.

With him, I had felt temporary. Like I was on a tightrope. I never felt cared about or secure. I was constantly panicking about what he was thinking, always brainstorming about what I had to do to fix the situation because I so badly wanted him to stay, and praying to a god I didn’t believe in that he would just hold out. I couldn’t relax and I couldn’t be myself, and as a result, he never knew me.

With my friends I am comfortable. I feel loved, permanent and secure. With my friends I am the girl he had on the phone that very first call. Better, even. She wasn’t just a fluke like I had begun to think. With my friends I can make an acrophobic head for the rooftops. He never knew me. A moment to pause and reflect, in somewhat a smug manner, that he probably had no idea what an acrophobic was. Typed a brief, smart-arsed comment alluding to that. Continued.

I realised now that that was what I had meant when I said you can’t just shout it from the rooftops straight away, you need to give it time. It wasn’t a general comment after all. It was about me. I needed to feel comfortable, cared about and secure, and more tuned in to him. I needed him to give me that through the far less valuable currency of time, if behaviour failed him. That is what I had meant. That. Is. What. I. Had. Meant.

I finished typing. I read and re-read it. The excitement of finally having the words and fluency pumping through my veins again was a temporary anaesthetic. A bit of a self-esteem overshoot perhaps, but the whole point was I hadn’t had a molecule of it the whole way through the relationship and felt I was long overdue some polarity.

I’d wished him well (but made it clear that it wasn’t too well) and finished with the words: So long, and thanks for all the fish. He’d once told me that the meaning of life was 42.

I’d signed it: Fidel. The way I’d signed my dedication on the title page of the book I gave him the last time I saw him. Companiero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. That had made him laugh. I never told him it was because I hadn’t felt right signing my name on such a permanent possession, when I had felt so temporary.

I doubted he’d even read the email. He’d probably look at it, wonder for a moment who -the hell takes one and a half typed pages to do a relationship post-mortem, and hit delete. I had just needed to say it. Partly so that it wouldn’t be one more thing left unsaid, one final, dying tribute to our complete lack of communication. Mostly, though, so I could have the last word. Every one of his reasons had now been flawlessly stitched up with logic. It was a page and a half of one-finger-salute from a sinking ship. It wouldn’t change anything. I had lost him. But now I had won the argument.

Not done yet. Two more words. The way he had always used to finish when he’d been crapping on. I had used to love watching and listening to him when he crapped on. Two more words. Capital letters. THE END

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