Under Contract

I decided to take on a contract this week. Most of all, as a way to get myself out of the house every week day. When I'm not working, I can happily stay inside for months on end, fiddling around on 'projects' and ''creative stuff' - surfacing only when I run out of Duty Free cigarettes, and need to fly to the US or Norway to pick up some more.

I often forget how to converse with to people during these long periods of self-exclusion. I have to look after Mom on a daily basis, but that's just functional talk: "Have you eaten?", "Have you taken your pills?", "Are you ready for bed now?".  Occaisonally I'll venture to: "What's this programme on TV you're watching?" or "What are you reading?", but it never leads to a long conversation.  

I needed to practise being around people again. Realising it had been three years since I had anything even resembling a 'routine', and that the only given in my life was that I always seemed to be awake at 7pm, I decided to venture back into the world of contracting. 

Contracting has always worked well for me.  I simply don't have the staying power to stick at one job for more than a few months without getting bored, so knowng that I'll be able to leave at the end of a fixed period is ideal. Because of the risk and uncertainties involved, contracting pays about three times as much as a regular job, which is also a bonus - the way I see it, it means I can work for a year, then take two years off as holiday - and that's pretty cool.   

It's also extremely high pressure: this particular contract is with a Government organisation, so I'd planned to come off all social media for six months to focus on the work - I created the SixMonthsofSolitary hashtag, and told those who needed to know I was going off the grid.

It didn't quite work out like that, though. The first responsibility I'm given is to monitor Twitter activity.  Like I didn't spend 18 hours a day doing that anyway. Then, I realised the office hours weren't so bad, either. With an hour for lunch, and the gym next door,  it feels like I'm barely working at all.  

I'm just having to get up early to leave the house, and occaisonally I have to talk to people. I'm actually quite enjoying it. And, by December, it'll all be over, and I'll be many thousands of pounds richer. You can't get better than that.

The Issue of Insecurity

Other people’s insecure partners are the bane of my life.  I’ve never understood the issue.  When there isn’t a guy on the planet I want to sleep with right now, you can pretty much rest assured that I don’t wanna sleep with your boyfriend or husband.   Even if he wants to sleep with me, which I very much doubt, it isn’t happening.

Still, there’s this whole bunch of other women who are scared of me, which annoys the crap out of me, because, what the hell is there to be scared about? I’m a forty year old who lives with her mother, for fuck’s sake.  Sure, I can be smart and funny sometimes, I have this weird cosmic child-of-the-universe thing going on that some guys find attractive (and, okay, it is my house that we’re living in)… but that’s the sum of it. I’m a moody, unpredictable, narcissistic bitch, and you’re probably not. There’s nothing to see here.

I like men; I like the friendships I have with men, I like the dynamics, the rapport and the different flavour of playfulness they offer. Yet, I just found out there’s someone else who’s been banned from talking to me because of the Lil Miss Insecurity hanging on his arm.  I’m so fucking angry and upset about it, but what can I do?  I’m not talking a once or twice thing here, this has gotta be the twentieth time or more it’s happened, and it sucks; it fucking sucks, and I’m the one who ends up getting hurt and losing a friend every single time. 

I have so much respect for Anna, and this is yet another reason I think so highly of her.  No matter how weird things got between me & John, (and boy, did they ever get weird), she somehow knew that neither of us would act on it.  They got together so young, he was 24, she was 21, I really didn’t expect it to last. She seemed the opposite online: her profile picture on Facebook always had John in it, and the majority of her statuses started with ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. She was an infatuated kid in my eyes, and I was sure I had this one in the bag. but I needed to know for certain

I insisted and insisted that John introduced me to her, until, eventually and reluctantly, he did. And she was so beautiful, and charming, and intelligent, and so goddamned perfect in every way, I wanted to smash his nose into his stupid face for ever starting our strange flirtation (hey John; hope you’re taking notes here).  I only met Anna once, but I simply cannot imagine either of them with anyone else, ever again.  Even if he got so wasted he persuaded reception to give him a key, and I found him naked in my hotel room bed, it wouldn’t happen…  (hey John; hope you’re not having any flashbacks here). 

The two of them were meant to be, and no matter how tempted I may have been at times, there was no fucking way on this planet I could ever consider messing that up. They've been married for 5 years now, and even though things still get awkward between me & John sometimes. I've no doubt whatsoever that they'll happily celebrate their 50th anniversary without either one of them having strayed.

Not everyone is like Anna though, and I’m left in the suckiest situation I can be in. Seems like the only thing I can do is wait for the relationship to end. If you’re dictating who your other half can and can’t talk to, at least that’s the one thing I can hold onto with some degree of certainty: your relationship is gonna end. And, when it does, I’m gonna be there, laughing - ready to welcome him back into my world.

…I did mention I was a bitch, didn’t I?
Try a little trust.