Self portrait

Well, I won't start this post by formally acknowledging the fact that I haven't posted in months...over a year...oh hell, a really fucking long time, because that would be stating the obvious. Suffice to say, I'm really sorry that I abandoned my readers and subscribers the way I did and, despite a false start last year, I intend to keep Disasters In Dating running for a long time yet. Now, on with the show...

 They say that mistakes are there to be learned from, and it is a mantra that I try to pass on to my son as often as I can because, at the age of fourteen and a half, he has entered that wondrous time of life where a shitload of mistakes will inevitably be made. Most will be minor errors in judgement that, while earth-shatteringly significant at a time when your entire existence seems to hinge upon popularity (it is a perception I am doing my best to break, I assure you), will loom about as large as a dying sparrow's fart in a hurricane when he's forty. Then there are the big ones, the colossal cock-ups that have long lasting and far reaching ramifications which, fingers crossed, I'm confident G won't be making anytime soon because he is neither a) chronically neglected nor b) an ego-maniacal bully or a blind sheep. He has his little crises of conscience, and has even admitted to me that he might 'experiment' one day, (oh shit). But 'Not with drugs,' (oh, bless), but for the most part, he is turning out to be the wonderful human being I always knew he was. Lucky for me, he has a fully functioning moral compass, (thank you, G's Dad), but still accepts everybody equally and without judgement (that one's down to me, *self high five*). Long story short, while his year twelve year book probably won't contain pictures of him kicking the winning goal in the inter-school footy final, I'm certain his class portrait won't be used twenty years from now as a before shot in a Sixty Minutes story.

 Most people wait until their adult lives to make mistakes that will haunt their daily existence. G won't be one of those people, but that won't be because I've been such an impeccable example. On the contrary; I have made quite a few errors in the last twelve years or so that no amount of mashing on the delete key is going to erase. Some of them he knows about, some he doesn't - and for good reason. The most serious of these was a "relationship" with a guy that I, for some unfathomable reason, never quite seemed to get over. I wrote three posts about it, (What I left on the ocean floor; Re-gifting the ruby slippers; and Two exes, no waiting). My long term readers will remember these posts, and will have undoubtedly noticed by now that they have been deleted. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I recently started seeing him again, and because he was there for me recently when I needed him, I didn't want to take the risk of him reading the posts and being embarrassed by them. No, you are not being at all harsh if you are sitting there calling me insane. Please feel free to screen-print my picture from Google Images and scrawl several more harsh but nonetheless accurate derogatory names on it in red marker. The second reason I deleted these posts was that, despite any personal aspirations I might have to the contrary I am, for the most part, full of shit. I thought that I was displaying some sort of artistic and moral (there's that word again) integrity by removing the posts in which I oh-so-eloquently waxed on about the self-loathing and emptiness that accompanied being involved with a married man in a relationship that never really existed above the waist.

 Yes, I suffer from depression, but I'm old enough now to know that it is not an excuse for deliberately perpetrating an act this heinous. What am I getting out of it? Attention, affection, the ego boost that comes from the fact that someone can look at my non-mint-condition body and say how beautiful it is. I can assure you, I find all that as incredibly wet and pathetic as you do. I won't make the argument that because I'm not actually cheating on anyone, I'm only half as culpable as he is. That would be like saying that taking someone to a box factory, handing them a lighter and a can of turpentine and letting them decide what to do with them makes one person less of an arsonist. Whatever Aaron gets out of this thing we have, good or bad, isn't for me to contemplate. As I said, he was there for me recently when I had a crisis (my landlord refused to fix my central heating and my radiator broke, so rather than see my child and I spend the winter huddling together in front of the TV under a quilt, Aaron went out and bought us a brand new heater). Considering the risk he was taking, this was an incredibly selfless act.

 He is not a bad person.

 That would be me.

 My definition of a bad person? Someone who continually displays selfish, self-indulgent, feel-good-at-all-costs behaviour without regard for any damage that might be done, because their needs are more important than anyone else's. For Christ's sake, I sent my son to his Dad's last Friday night so Aaron and I could have a dirty weekend while his wife was away. I put shagging my non-boyfriend ABOVE spending time with my own child! Not that I told G that. What I told him was that I went to a birthday party with some friends from high school. A child's self-image is largely dependent upon his image of his parents. My portrait has been censored with a rather large black sticker.

Striking a blow for freedom.

Readers, I am about to do the unthinkable and blog angry.  Today, I went on that most dreaded of weekly excursions – the grocery shopping trip with my mother.  The reason I dread it is that, despite the sheer athleticism with which I dart about from shop to shop, ensuring she has everything she needs, I will invariably say or do something to incur her wrath.  Today was no exception.  A couple of friends of mine offered to give us a lift there and I accepted, rather than hire a cab to and from as we usually do, making three stops up and back.  My mother was fine with this.  Enraptured, in fact.  Then, at seven thirty this morning, I got a phone call from her, asking what time we were coming for her.  When I told her ten, she became rather terse (as she tends to do when things don’t go EXACTLY her way), stating that friends she meets for coffee might not be there by then.  I explained that this was highly unlikely, seeing as they don’t usually arrive until ten thirty, and she only lives five minutes from the shopping centre.  Unsatisfied and unplacated, she abruptly terminated the call.  Soon after our arrival there, went to work on my son, dredging up a transgression he inadvertently committed three weeks ago. To the uninitiated, this probably doesn’t sound like cause for stress, much less fodder for a blog about the joys and horrors of dating over thirty, but if you’ll bear with me I will endeavour to explain.

Being the only child of a divorcee, and a none-too-well one at that, I have been the centre of my mother’s universe my entire life.  Sounds like a great gig, huh?  Lavished with attention, up to my armpits in presents every birthday and Christmas.  Well, all that is true, but I’ve found that life is a series of transactions – what you receive today has to be paid for tomorrow.  Those presents I got as a kid were wonderful, but memories of the countless hours I spent making god-awful concoctions with my Barbie Perfume Factory tend to lose their lustre when my mother laments the fact that she spent $29.95 on it every time I happen to disagree with her on something.  These occasions are also used as currency when she says or does something spiteful and hurtful, like, for example, the time she called me an idiot in front of her friends, (‘Well, you got me the wrong deodorant.  I gave you a great life when you were a kid, didn’t I?), and the time she called me a whore when I happened to mention a past relationship I have blogged about numerous times, (You’re just a whore, like your father.  You can’t help it.  I shouldn’t have bought you everything, maybe then you wouldn’t be so selfish). 

These are actual examples of her logic, I kid you not. 

As for all that attention, you try enjoying eight hours a day of it.  Yes, you read right.  Eight hours is the figure I’ve arrived upon by adding up the number and duration of phone calls I get from her every day, (I was in remedial maths for four of my five years of high school, so that is an estimation, but it’s a pretty damned close one).  I received one such call on Tuesday afternoon, during which she accused me of putting my son (yes, my son) before her by not visiting her as much during the school holidays, (I’m there three mornings a week usually).  She then mused that she could lay dead in her unit for days and no one would know, just because I had to give ‘that kid’ a good time, (the same kid she called the c-word this afternoon).

As my regular readers will know, I have been putting off finding love for several reasons. 

The woman I described in the last three paragraphs is one of those reasons.

Up until today, I have placated, cajoled, and cow-towed to her.  I have put all other persons (including myself) after her because, as circumstance would have it, I am the only person she has in this world to count on.  In other words, I have allowed guilt and manipulation to run me like a mass media corporation, and let my own happiness suffer as a result.  Well, dear readers, Mad Mel TV will from this day forward be operating more like ABC1 than Fox.  Today, I let my mother know in no uncertain terms that things needed to change if she wanted me in her life.  She declined, (I’ll spare you the rant by which she communicated this), bemoaning the fact that I don’t care about her and would prefer she die.  This would usually be the part where I would crumble, gather my handbag and my kid and rush over to her house to apologise. 

Not today.

Today, I simply said ‘That’s not true, Mum.  I love you, and I’ll be here if you need me, but not until you change,’ and hung up.

I know it sounds mean, and I’m sure some of you think I’m a terrible person, but this confrontation has been a long time coming.  I would NEVER be able to love myself, and consequently allow someone else to love me, if I hadn’t had it now.  Sure, I feel like the worlds biggest shit-heal at the moment, and will undoubtedly have trouble sleeping tonight, but I think that at the age of forty, I’m entitled to put my foot down, don’t you?