Meltdown

The party’s over. The tree has dropped and been packed away. My waistband is too tight. I’ve smoked sneaky fags out the back. There’ve been tears; mostly mine. My kids may have all but stopped having meltdowns but they’ve been replaced. No one believes in Father Christmas anymore. Not after our Christmas Eve row, the one after a wobbly day, where I’d turned up stressed to the kids’ party at Tom’s work – the one where the kids get to pet snakes and play giant Scalextric – while I quietly fume at how much there still is left to do and how little time left to do it.

This year, overwhelmed, I got on the wrong tube, made a bad call to switch trains and arrived late. Of course Tom, trying to do the right thing, went to the wrong station, then hotfooted it over to me, by which time, the tipping point had been reached. I, fighting tears, couldn’t face meeting his be-tinselled colleagues, and abandoned them to a packet of fags and the biting wind, hating myself. Only to be harassed by a bearded god botherer called Eric, who told me, as I huffed on minty slims with angry eyes wrapped in faux fur outside St Pauls, looking the definition of over-privileged, that he’d pray for me.

I told Tom I was leaving him sat on a bench outside the station while he ate traditional post-party sushi with the kids and tried to keep it light. They’d all but missed the party. With nowhere else to go, I slunk home, grabbed the dog and a bottle of prosecco and met Reprobate Kate in the caf, hoping she wasn’t busy. Luckily for me, she wasn’t. Between her and Reprobate Laura, who happened to be there in the villarge with her daughter, handing out Christmas cards that, this year, I’d refused to write, along with the Secret Santa I’d refused to partake in, gifts I avoided buying  and wrapping I’d refused to do, and with tea and fizz, they almost turned it around.

I went home fragile, with my tail between my legs, to Tom and the one friend he keeps up with making merry over cheese and wine. I slapped a smile on, and fed the kids candy canes. But, later, having laid out the presents – a relatively modest pile this year since the kids are older and need so much less in the way of stuff –  I’d dug out a small haul I’d chosen for Tom (unlike previous years, I’d had the bandwidth and the finances to go a bit mad on nice pants and socks in Paul Smith). And, having felt a tiny bubble of excitement that, perhaps, he’d done the same, I decided to guess what was in the suspiciously large package he’d laid out for me. Sadly, I was right.

It was a slap in the face. A confirmation of the state of our relationship, which is functional, rather than, often, fun. And, what with the wine and everything else that has gone before, the argument raged into the night and my hope for a nice Christmas, dispite all our efforts, was dashed.

I cried through Christmas morning for the second year in a row, though last year I had better reason. I could not pull myself together for unwrapping, breakfast or fizz but disappearerd back to bed having clapped open my eyes at the crack of dawn with churning stomach and puffy eyes. I couldn’t reason with myself when Jonah told me he’d not only heard us arguing, but often did. My spoiled inner child could not parent the emotionally unstable adult I’ve become. And full knowledge I am passing on the wound only makes me feel worse.

But, himself growing up, and recognising nothing happens by magic, my son equinanimously said it was the best Christmas he’d ever had in terms of presents. But, having had a hand in so few of them this year as I buckle down to yet another new role it’s hard to have hope when you feel none. So, in for a penny, in for a gold coin, I carried on arguing with Tom through Boxing Day, despite a head-clearing walk where he spent more time looking for Pokemon for the kids than talking to me – and then as usual, he was back to work and I am left reeling – still tearful, my kids avoiding my eyes, and not quite knowing what to do with myself, except maybe go for a run. Or file for divorce.

In a broken nutshell, I don’t feel lovable, angry as I am all the time. And I don’t blame him either, for no longer knowing what to do. It’s not that he doesn’t care about me – he does every day through persistent kindnesses that keep me going, but sometimes not what I want. It’s that he can’t make me happy. Not by himself and that’s the problem. Society’s broken; not our relationship which has withstood some of the toughest challenges – job loss, financial difficulty, disability, depression, scraping me up from the ruins of my family – that anyone could face. He can’t fix my childhood, or whatever else is wrong with me that makes me so prone to losing my shit and hate myself, that over and over again, he’s left to pick up the pieces of someone else’s drama.

None of us can exist as an island, and this year, stranded in London with nowhere else to go – our families, such as they are, absent or otherwise occupied, the thought of spending more time having forced fun with the ones I love when actually I just want to feel sorry for myself and smoke, got too much, so, instead, I sabotaged it all, knowing full well I am repeating the cycle of misery that has got me here in the first place, but completely powerless to stop it.

The thing is, the only person I’m hurting is myself when a meltdown takes over, but that’s what happens when you can’t love yourself – no one else can either. So what then? Counselling? Hard drugs? Talking – when it all so often turns to shouting? Exercise? Just carrying on doesn’t always seem possible after such a storm, but the sun is out and I have things to do, so I must accept and move on.