I worry for a moment that a TV programme has broken me. It was something stupid and utterly manipulative, a throw-away 60 seconds handed over momentarily to a father-daughter relationship that leaves me howling and concerned about how to do the school run when my face is contorted and leaking, but another 60 seconds pass and the howling stops and another 60 seconds pass and I’ve missed the train again; the crying didn’t take, as usual, and instead the echoes have simply shattered something within me, so I’m just smashed shards chink-chinking about within my skin.
Friends are good. Daylight or easy meet-ups are perfect - anything else and the sadness of my SAD-ness (something I thought I’d shed a long ago) makes me cancel, excusing it in my head even if I don’t tell them I’m not coming. Many years back, a friend and I defended to our group the practice of friendship-culling, scraping off the vampires. These cheering, beamish people who drink coffee with me and share a pizza and knock for runs and make Christmas park plans will be beloved forever. I do my best to not vampire them.
I crave someone to bring me a nightly box of hot, good food: spiced rices; lemon-zest chicken; broth; invalid food. In the absence of that, I wish yet again that I could fold over the dotted line on those family relationships which drag me down, and tear along the perforated dashes.
I lie down next to my daughter and read to her about Bruce Bogtrotter, and fall asleep to the sound of her insisting she won’t fall asleep.