You know it’s never a good time when you come home and say to the boy ‘Excuse me but I’m just going to eat the leftover flapjacks that I made for you to take into work as you are leaving at the end of the week’ and you sit on the sofa eating straight out of the not exactly small tupperware.
It is payday. But your online food shop is coming late this evening (hello cheap delivery slot) so as you look in the cupboards you realise you are missing one vital ingredient from every dinner the boy eats (which also explains why you had cheese on toast for breakfast because you had run out of margarine and figured you would notice it less with cheese).
So you have a mish mash of things from the freezer. With bread.
In 50 minutes your father in law is going to call to discuss the weekend (the boy is doing a half marathon) and you will finally tell him the news you’ve been sitting on for weeks which is that your contract at work isn’t being extended. This is one of the reasons why you have vowed never ever to work with someone you already know ever again.
It has been raining heavily and you just want to scream ‘F*** you poetic symmetry, I know your game’ but you reluctantly admit that your lovely rain coat is doing it’s job properly. But your only waterproof pair of shoes are no longer that.
You think your low spirits are why you have suddenly developed a crush on a certain TV chef to take your mind off things and now every time you pull up the internet on your phone your phone might as well say ‘You’re going to google him again, aren’t you?’ and you think ‘STOP JUDGING ME, PHONE!’
And there’s no denying it but you have to face facts you have now spent the majority of your 20’s overweight and the evil bitch in your brain who torments you has suggested a bout of anorexia.
In your counselling sessions your counsellor often talks about there being an adult you and a child you, and the child is emotional and can’t handle the injustices that they’ve been dealt, and they must be soothed by the adult you.
Except the adult you is a t***
You often think about how true what your counsellor says is. What kept you going as a depressed kid in high school was that ‘it’ was all going to be worth it. That you could stand all the pain and suffering because you were going to make a success of your life.
And you do want to soothe the child in you, because all you’ve done is let them down. You want to say ‘Yeah, I’m sorry I failed our degree and you aren’t a success or even have a secure job, but I did take you to see We Will Rock You which you wanted to see since you/we/I was 12…’
You can handle the fact you might have to wait to make something of your life. You just want to be sure it will happen.
