Soul food

Thanks to the wonders of modern pharmacology, and finally finding a doctor who seems to give a rats arse, I am managing my depression, and the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter by the day.  These days, when I say that I like myself, I can honestly attest that I still mean it twenty-four hours later.  I know what I want from life, from myself and from the people around me, and that is immensely reassuring...except when it isn't.  I know I can't even consider resuming the search for 'The One,' (pardon my Meg Ryan moment there), until I'm at least eighty per cent healed, (I'm nothing if not a realist about it), but that doesn't stop me from wanting it.  This is going to sound uncharacteristically wistful coming from me, but I miss the comfort that sharing space with another human being can bring.  Despite my oft-discussed determination to live for myself first, I must admit that it would be really nice just to cook for someone again.  Relax; I'm not metamorphosizing into a fifties house-Frau, I just miss that gorgeous feeling that used to come over me whenever I did something nice for someone, just because I loved them.  That's not to say I don't feel some satisfaction whenever I do things for my son, but parental love is an altogether different animal and besides, it'd be nice to cook for someone who appreciates the effort that goes into a good hollandaise sauce, and doesn't turn his nose up at anything that isn't flat-packed and delivered.

Creating an appetising meal for someone, nourishing them body and soul, is as much an act of love as sharing your bed, your breath, or your blood.  Perhaps that's what I really miss; the notion that there is someone in the world whose existence I value to such a degree that the idea of sharing something of myself with them doesn't seem at all like a sacrifice.

And yes, it'd also be nice to have sex again while I still remember what goes where.     

        

I don't.

My mother and I are two very different people and, as I have discussed here before, I suspect she's always been a little disappointed that she didn't get the best friend she wanted in me, but there is one issue on which we agree whole-heartedly: marriage or, more specifically, the determination to avoid it.  We came to this decision for different, but equally compelling reasons.

For mum, it was experience.  She married my father in 1968, having had to practically scream her acceptance of his proposal to be heard above the operatic din of friends and relatives trying to prevent her from making the biggest mistake of her life. 

She loved him. 

She knew him better than any of them. 

She could change him. 

Her honeymoon was spent in a sparsely furnished one bedroom flat which was extremely ecologically friendly for the time - thanks to the power being cut off the month before.  She hung in through seven years of utility restrictions, eviction notices, soup dinners and Dad's virtuosic ability to quite literally charm the pants off any female within a ten mile radius (including her bridesmaid and best friend across the street), until he finally exhausted her patience by selling their house while she was in hospital to cover personal debts.  The only man she has even considered marrying since then was engaged to her for thirteen years before the realisation finally hit that he wasn't planning on buying a partner for her lovely diamond solitaire ring any time soon.  Understandably, all of this has left her somewhat sceptical of the concept of wedded bliss.

I have never been married.  The closest I ever came was living with the father of my son in a de-facto relationship for five years, the demise of which, I can admit now, was as much my fault as it was his.  My aversion to matrimony, therefore, can not be attributed to experience.  My motivation for staying single, despite exasperated argument against it by my best friend who, bless her, still believes in happily ever after, is a selfish one.  I am what I am, and I ain't gonna change.  I have been living on my own for twelve years, and have consequently developed a lifestyle.  It isn't always a happy one, but it is a comfortable one.  I keep house appallingly, I shop with gay abandon, I eat like a condemned man, and I raise my son according to the unfortunately named 'Free Range' philosophy.  These are just some of the things on which I am unwilling to compromise.  From what I've observed of other people's marriages, the words 'I will tweak my life until it comfortably blends with his/hers' should be included in every honest couple's wedding vows.  

I suppose chucking the idea of marriage over mid-week chocolate feasts, relaxed bed times and a mild eBay addiction seems trivial, but these little things and many others make me who I am.  Were I to get myself into a situation where I allowed someone to chip away at my little habits and routines, I'd be losing myself, piece by piece, until it wasn't even my life I was sharing anymore, and the man laying next to me would eventually wake up wondering where the woman he married had gotten to.  I want love, but I'm not sacrificing myself to keep it.  I am a slovenly, gluttonous, stuff-addicted hippy.

I am me. 

If you can't see yourself standing with me before a full length mirror without wanting to flip it over, don't bother taking the tux off the hanger.