Valentine's Weltschmerz

Valentine’s Day is an annual torture specifically for the single and lonely that far surpasses anything MI5 or the CIA could come up with. For weeks now, every shop, and many other businesses have been displaying hearts, flowers, sex in their windows with frightening focus and intensity. It has become impossible to ignore, and the ache engendered gets worse every year. Even a visit to the supermarket for a mundane bottle of milk or loaf of bread becomes a psychological torture cell at this time of year, weaving between the couples loading up their trolleys with champagne and luscious meals for two, and the tempting displays of flowers, cards, chocolates and other romantic indulgences.

Many try to blow off Valentine’s Day as a cynical commercial exploitation of an old tradition that makes a fortune for chocolatiers, florists and greeting card manufacturers, and yes, it probably is. But that doesn’t comfort those of us who are without love year after year after year. It would be the highlight of my decade if someone sent me a Valentine’s card this year, or even just gave me a hug, wished me ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ and told me I was beautiful, or that they cared, in whatever sense. Hell, I’d be over the moon to have someone to do those things for - in fact, in many ways it would probably make me even happier than receiving one myself.

Today, having avoided all the magazine Valentine’s specials for weeks, I picked up an article, mostly by accident, that talked about ‘settling’ for Mr Alright, rather than waiting for the proverbial Prince. This article suggested that if one hadn’t married by 30, or found the right guy by then, then one ought to consider making the pragmatic, anti-romantic decision to take what you could get. It also pointed out that by the age of 30, a woman only retains 30% of her eggs, severely limiting her reproductive capacity, and gave the statistic that happiness peaks at 28 for a woman. All I could think was “God help me!”. I can’t convey on paper how much terror and desperation was in that thought. If this is as good as it gets, then I can’t face the next however many years, because frankly, I am more miserable now than I think I have ever been in my life. It physically hurts, and I can barely move for sadness and grief. Another article in the same magazine said that the average woman sleeps with 4 men in her lifetime, but wondered what was so great about being average. This evening, I am so lonely, and starved for physical contact and affection, that for the first time in my life, I seriously considered going out and getting drunk enough that I would fling myself on some poor unsuspecting male and hope, hope beyond all reason, that he was cad enough to take advantage of me. This is not normal. This is the product of weeks of build-up to an event from which I am utterly excluded, like so many other single people, an unsubtle drip, drip, drip – a Chinese water torture of the soul – of the importance of relationships, and the implication that those who are alone are in some way defective or unworthy. I really don’t need to be reminded of that – I already feel like a freak – twenty-seven, unkissed, virginal, never the object of any real flirtation or physical interest from any man. And so, so alone.

Our feminist forebears insisted that women should not feel the need for a male counterpart to feel complete. Logically, that’s fine, but physiologically, biologically, psychologically, the need exists at a deeper level than could ever be expunged or wholly suppressed. With the occasional exception of our lesbian sisters, women need men as much as men need women. We are equal, but we are not the same – we are designed to match up, two different parts of a whole. Love at first sight, love that starts as hate, love that grows and builds, pure, simple lust – these things are written, depicted, sung about time and time and time again. They are so much a part of the human conscious that it is not possible that they do not exist. Why then have I missed out so entirely? What is wrong with me that I have never experienced the moment of mutual want and/or attraction that seems to define the lives of so many? I only wish knew. Tomorrow, or rather, today, by the time I post this, publically, I will try to be magnanimous – I will wish my loved-up friends a Happy Valentine’s Day, and exhort my fellow singletons to keep the faith that next year will be different. Underneath, I will be screaming in pain. I am tired. I am stretched to the limits of my endurance, and I’m not sure I believe my own exhortations any more – the rantings of extremist hope against the torture of an impenetrable secret society.

None of this makes much sense, I’m afraid, and it’s not exactly erudite or overly articulate – the torture of terminal loneliness messes with the synapses pretty effectively. Valentine’s Day will soon be over until next year, but for today, I could give Werther a pretty good run for his money.

Grief and arrested development

Last week, I came to the sad conclusion that the man I have been pining for since the summer has absolutely no interest in me at all. He may have been willing, in passing, on the rebound, to sleep with me once, but that, however much I wish it otherwise, however much I fooled myself into thinking there was more, is/was the extent of his interest. In all honesty, I knew this some time ago, but knowing and accepting are two very different things. It is rare for me to meet a man I find appealing, and this man was more so than any other I’ve ever encountered. So much so, that I felt certain that he would play an important part in my life – perhaps the most important part of all. More fool me. No matter how many of my ideals he matched, no matter how much fun we had – the banter, the sly ‘in’-jokes, the silly dancing and the laughter – for him, I am no more than a passing acquaintance who insists on maintaining contact. I’m probably a nuisance. I hope I’m not a joke.

My reaction to the acceptance of this has not been fun. I feel like I am grieving for something that never happened, for the beautiful, joyous moments I had in my head with him, and for yet another episode of self-delusion. Grief seems like the right emotion, though somewhat overblown for a relationship that mostly existed in my head and heart. In truth, perhaps my grief is not just for this specific man, and what I hoped might be, but for a lifetime of loves that have never existed in reality. I am truly grieving the loss of all the experiences that should have been mine – the first, shy, tender explorations of adult emotion as a young girl, the angst and passionate emotion of a first serious love in later teen years, all the tumultuous, joy-filled happiness and freedom of youthful love affairs. I have missed so much, and I will not have those chances again. I cannot turn back the clock. And I am afraid – terrified of a life spent alone and longing for the reassurance, the intimacy, the sustenance of loving human contact and the comfort of being truly understood by another human being. I have lived that way for so long already, and I don’t think I can survive an entire lifetime like that. I feel cold and empty, and for all its’ promise, the future has a great void in the centre from this vantage point. I want a husband, a lover, a friend. I want a family and a home, and I cannot face the prospect of being alone like this forever.

But why have I missed out? From an external perspective, it doesn’t make any sense. But I have no concept of how to be appealing to the men I find attractive on any level other than friendship. My development, as a sexual being, seems to be arrested at an almost pre-pubertal level. I don’t know how, but almost every other girl I know seems to have acquired some knowledge of how to attract romantic male attention at some stage. Was there a class I missed? I have no problem making male friends, but absolutely zero ability to inspire a less platonic approach.

I started school early, and was moved up a year when I was thirteen – in retrospect, I suspect I missed out on the crucial early-teen experiences and experiments where my peers learned how to interact boy-girl. I ended up graduating at sixteen – academically set for life, emotionally unready for anything at all. It does not help, socially, to be two years younger than your classmates. I didn’t get invited to the parties where I might have learned these things, and I never found a close group of female friends who might have rectified the omission. I just have no concept of the way to act. Case in point: on Tuesday, I went to a dance class – something I enjoy very much, though find utterly daunting, because of the partner aspect (in fact, I nearly left earlier in the evening, because I really wasn’t in the mood for what felt like another round of social rejection. No one asks me to dance, so I find myself doing the asking, and that can get dispiriting after a while). Nonetheless, I stayed, and enjoyed the last dance with someone I danced with last time – an experienced and very good dancer, which makes the whole undertaking so much more pleasurable. Afterwards, at the pub, we got talking. It was great fun, until I realised that I was sitting with a man who had bought me a drink, and I was talking to him about our respective jobs and about biotechnology - not exactly small talk. Next to us, another pair had moved past the small-talk stage, but they were definitely not talking science or work! And I have absolutely no idea how I could have engendered their conversation, and not mine. Whether or not I would have wanted the conversation I was having to go another way is a moot point, as I rather enjoyed it as it was. The point is, I don’t know how to have any other sort of conversation. I don’t have the first clue about how to appear femininely appealing and in need of protection, which seems to be what most men respond to. I haven’t the first idea how to make small talk beyond the weather, or how to talk of inconsequential things. Basically, I don’t know how to be anything other than my public self – confident, intellectual and apparently utterly aloof and unapproachable – and in one way, I shudder at the idea of trying. It seems so dishonest.

It’s really a self-fulfilling prophecy: If I don’t ‘speak’ the right language, I can hardly blame the men for any failure to understand. When I try, it seems that I miss the reciprocal language – why I didn’t understand when Mr Summer suggested that I was going home with him, for example. He’d replied to my clumsy attempts to communicate in syntax too sophisticated for my elementary understanding, and so I failed to translate, until I was halfway home in my own, separate taxi. And I’ve been kicking myself ever since. Logically, I ‘m pretty sure I would have had my heart broken fairly irreparably, and I’m not at all sure what I would have done if I had understood. On the other hand, I might have been brave, and I might have been introduced to physical intimacy by someone I genuinely liked, and who I suspect would have been a very, very good instructor.

It also doesn’t help that most of the time, and particularly if there’s an interesting conversation in the offing, I am inclined to forget that men can be seen in any way other than potential friends and sparring partners. Don’t get me wrong – I certainly notice attractive men – far more than I should. It’s just that, in social situations, I almost always forget the attractiveness quotient, or that I should be behaving in a prescribed fashion if I want romantic/sexual attention, and just get on with the conversation. Actually, I’m not one hundred percent sure whether I genuinely forget, or subconsciously repress it – that injunction that “boys are friends” certainly stuck with me.

My mother said to me the other day that I needed to “be myself”. The truly scary thing is that I’ve been putting on a show for so long, in so many different ways for so many people, that I don’t even know who “myself” is without one or other of the personas I’ve created to fit the situations and vastly differing worlds I find myself in. Whoever ‘me’ is, in none of my characters do I know how to be approachable, and as for flirtation, for gentle encouragement, for open-ness, I may as well still be ten years old. And for that, for all the lost loves and lost chances, I grieve.

Unusual women

It’s been a long time since I posted, and for that omission, my apologies. I don’t have an internet connection at home, so these posts have to be written for later posting, and I don’t often seem to have the time or energy these days. It’s been a particularly difficult six months or so on every possible level, and just getting through the day often seems to use every last bit of energy, not leaving very much for extraneous activities like blogging. To be brutally honest, I’m in need of some serious support, and the options seem to be very few. I will be trying to see the doctor in the next week or so, to see what counselling and support is available in my area. Once I have some backup, these posts might come a bit more frequently!

The subject of this blog normally comes back round to Love at some point or other – not just my preoccupation, but that of virtually every writer, musician, artist in history; one of the dominant preoccupations of human life, in fact. However, so much literature, art, music, portrays love as a simple thing. Films and other visual media are particularly inclined to this presentation; girl meets boy, boy meets girl. They fall in love, whether they know it themselves or not, overcome one or two challenges, and live happily ever after – or at least happily for the foreseeable future. As much as this Arcadian perception is attractive, I do not believe it to be the whole truth. In fact, increasingly, I begin to understand how difficult and complicated love can be. For those who actively think, who aspire beyond societal norms, who grasp life by the scruff of its’ neck and shake, Love is very far from simple. Without wishing to wave a giant feminist flag, I think the difficulties are even greater for those who are unusual women.

The experience that triggered this blog chapter, though the idea has been building for some time, was seeing Jane Campion’s new film Bright Star, about Fanny Brawne and John Keats. For those who don’t know, Fanny Brawne was the love of Keats’ short life, and the inspiration for several of his most beautiful poems, including the eponymous Bright Star. From all accounts she was also a rather extraordinary young woman – intelligent, gifted, intellectually combative – particularly so for an era which prized female docility very highly. Representations of historical figures in film are always subjective, but as a representation of a type, rather than a specific person, Campion’s film, and the acting of Abbie Cornish, is acute. Love is not easy for a woman like Fanny Brawne – it risks the sublimation of her soul, her intellect and gifts, beneath a flood of preconceived ideas and societal concepts. But I am getting ahead of my own thesis.

I do not believe that one can truly love, wholly, completely, selflessly, unless one loves one’s equal. For a woman like Fanny Brawne, by simple percentages, to find an equal in the first place is undeniably more difficult than for a more ‘normal’ female. For that equal then to be unencumbered by prior commitments or entanglements, to be pleasing and compatible in personality, intellect and appearance, and most difficult of all, for that equal to love back, must surely be a one-in-a-billion chance. When one looks at love from this perspective, it must surely be a miracle that Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler, Mary Shelley or Elizabeth Barrett Browning had fulfilled loves with men whose gifts matched their own, and for each of those successes, though they too had their costs, how many must never have met their proverbial match. Thinking of extraordinary women, very few have had happy, successful, committedly monogamous love lives, and of those few who have managed the miracle, the course of their loves have often been cut short by tragedy or ill health. Those whom the Gods love, indeed.

Say the miracle was to happen, as it did for Keats and Fanny, for Elizabeth and Robert, for Alma and Gustav. What then? Did those other women feel, as Abbie Cornish’s Fanny seemed to, that they risked everything they were, that Love was as destructive an emotion as a joyous one? Were their emotions and thoughts obsessive – getting hold of a new idea and wrestling with it, trying to bend the incomprehensible to the will of intellects used to total, effortless comprehension?

Again abjuring the feminist flag-waving, why is it that women seem so different to men in this regard? Why was love so easy for Keats or Shelley or Browning to accept, and to embrace, without trying to understand it? Each man faced obstacles to his suit – debt, an inconvenient wife, a controlling father – but these could be conquered. What they did not seem to do was to create internal obstacles for themselves. They loved. They did not question why or how, they did not seek to reassure themselves of their own spiritual endurance in this state. Perhaps it is because men have always been secure in their supremacy in marriage – millennia of male dominance, the importance ascribed to his career, his intellect, his ability, in the end, to provide for a family, has left little need or awareness of any need to question whether a man may love and remain wholly himself. Even now, many men seem to prefer to maintain the status quo. Subconsciously or otherwise, they do not seek to love their equal – many unusual or extraordinary men choose partners who are decorative, certainly, but docile, submissive and unchallenging, rather than a female whose gifts or intellect matches their own. Ego and laziness often seem to win over equality and the challenging, exciting, enervating effects of a true partnership. In contrast, an extraordinary or unusual woman whose love for an equal is spurned, or who does not achieve the miraculous confluence of circumstance to meet her match, rarely accepts an unequal pairing – Maria Callas is the first example to come to mind. Spurned by Onassis for Jackie Kennedy, Callas lived the rest of her life alone, rather than accepting a man not her equal. Mae West, Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, the Brontes – I could go on listing for a long time. These women may take a lover, or many, but they do not commit themselves to a man they know is not their equal. Is it because we know ourselves better, or are the risks so much greater, and our history, as women, so full of genius lost to the submission of inequality, that we have grown more wary? Is that why love is so difficult for an unusual woman?

I am fortunate, or cursed, depending on your point of view, to come from a long line of unusual women. There’s the great-great grandmother who was a major part of the Victorian literary scene – a close personal friend of both Dickens and Sir Walter Scott - the great-great aunt who attended Medical School before women could be granted degrees in medicine, the great-grandmother who was an early female member of the Royal Academy, the great-aunt who was one of the first women to gain a degree in Physics, the grandmother who ran an essential national industry during the Second World War, and the mother who was invited to the White House to advise the Clinton administration, and who may well be nominated for a Nobel Prize in any of at least three categories some time in the next decade or so. Quite a lot to live up to, when one thinks about it – even when one just takes the last few generations. That so many of these unusual women have had the fortune to meet similarly unusual, and really quite remarkably enlightened men, is a source of immense hope. However, against this legacy, I have to set the first-hand experience of what happens, one way or another, when an unusual woman is committed to a man who is not her equal, even though at first glance he may seem to be a perfectly good match. It seems inevitable – a pattern that repeats again and again, not just in my parents’ marriage. Initially, or even for a long time, the man is supportive, maybe even excited by his wife or partner’s endeavours. Eventually though, as her star rises, he becomes jealous of her success, even if he is also successful, he feels threatened by her enhanced earning capacity and the freedom that implicitly gives her – freedom that he fears, and which somehow emasculates him. Perhaps he feels lonely, or in some way abandoned, and his responses to this are rarely rational – controlling behaviour, unpredictable rage, infidelity. He behaves, in short, like a toddler or baby – incapable of controlling or analyzing his emotional impulses. If he is a particular type of man, he will endeavour to manipulate her, and others around them, whose complicity with his behaviour may eventually “cut her down to size” – a very small size, where she can be dominated, her achievements belittled, her self-worth destroyed and her freedom curtailed. Only the very strongest can escape, and the consequences are far-reaching and long-lasting.

It is over six years since my parents separated – my mother had to change the locks and leave my father’s car, complete with divorce papers, at the airport when he was away on another golfing holiday to be free, he having robbed her of her financial freedom, the company she had spent two decades building, her physical and mental health, and most of her indomitable spirit. It later emerged that he had been preparing too – transferring all assets out of her name, consulting a lawyer to find out exactly what his child-support liabilities would be. Heaven only knows what state she would now be in if he’d got there first. However much it clashed with her ideals – that marriage was for life, and that after over thirty years to give up seemed weak, not to mention the first divorce in family history – she acted. Six years later, my mother is still impoverished, her ability to trust is destroyed, and she will probably never have romance in her life again, while my father lives in luxury with his new wife. He still tries to control all of us, holding his financial superiority, and ability, though disinclination, to help my sister and me over our heads, and our mother’s, as the ultimate blackmail tool.

Some bitterness is inevitable, but Mama feels lighter, happier and more free than at any time in the last four decades, albeit after several years of reliance on numbing anti-depressants, at least three major medical procedures and endless financial trauma for her, and by extension, my sister, and to a lesser extent, me. If a woman like my mother – extraordinarily talented, educated to PhD level, a world-traveller, at the top of her field, with business acumen, family money and high earning ability – can be broken to this extent by an unequal match, is it any surprise that other similar women recognise, even if only subconsciously, the inherent dangers, and approach love with such caution. From a logical perspective, from my experience, I would say they are wise to do so – the same, or a similar scenario plays out over and over again, sometimes privately, sometimes in the public eye – but how overwhelmingly sad, and frankly, depressing, the necessity. And how can we even begin to know how many do not escape, and are lost?

Fanny Brawne was right to fight, right to doubt until she knew beyond doubt that her match was her equal, and that he would not seek to subdue her. An unusual woman, for whom love is more difficult than for most, but for whom, when it is right, when the match is equal and the spirit is whole, Love is inspirational - not just for the two most intimately involved, but also for the rest of the world, who can look on in wonder, and derive awe and pleasure from the miracle made real.

An unhealthy relationship

No posts for ages, then two come along at once –like buses, or, theoretically, men! I’ve had this ready to post for some time, and then the next followed before I’d had time to post…

Food is both my best friend and my worst enemy. I love it for its’ ability to uplift, to distract, to elicit memories and stir the senses, to nourish both body and soul. Simultaneously, I loathe it for its’ guilt-inducing properties, ability to make me even more self-conscious, and for the effect it has - expanding my waistline, hips, thighs, upper arms; obscuring my collarbones – and the knock-on effect that has on my self-confidence.

My relationship with food runs in swings and round-abouts. At times, sometimes for long periods, I can control my desires, can enforce the self-discipline requisite to eat little and exercise much. For example, from roughly September 2007 until June of 2008, food and I were friends – a little give and take here and there, but mostly on good terms. This period was inspired by the works of Mireille Giuliano – author of French Women Don’t Get Fat and coincided with one of the busiest, happiest and most successful periods of my life to date, and marked a rise in self-confidence unparalleled before or since. At other times, such as now, when I am bored and under-employed, simultaneously stressed and relaxed, when my kitchen scales are broken, my purse empty and my will-power virtually non-existent, when I am lonely and treats are all around me, the fridge is full of sweet things required by the non-existent appetite of my elderly housemate, and I spend far too much time at home, essentially by myself, without many sources of distraction, food wins the battle without even a token resistance.

I’m sure food is not supposed to be a battle of these proportions – few of my friends and colleagues seem to find it so. There are the usual “oh, I’ve been so naughty”, “oh, I mustn’t, but go on!” exclamations from the perfectly slim. There are the ones who seem to eat what they please, exercise not at all and never gain an ounce on their perfect size 10 bodies. There are the girls, and increasingly men, who seem to actually enjoy existing on salad, and there are a few who were my size once upon a time, or larger, albeit usually on much smaller frames, who suddenly, miraculously, seemed to shed their oversize skins and emerge as perfect, immaculate, societally-pleasing mannequins. None of these girls seem willing to share the story of exactly how they achieved this remarkable transformation, but their implication is always that it was easy, no big deal, that one day they just decided to stop enjoying food and start enjoying sweaty, masochistic pain I’ve been on and off diets since I was eight years old. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that it is not easy. I also know that there must be a reason why some see food as a small part of life, and others, myself included, see it as a minefield of emotions to be crossed with enormous care and trepidation.

My mother was very good about food. Three good meals a day, very limited snacking, and certain things – sugary, salty, yummy things - definitely reserved for treats. In fact, so determined was she to avoid excess sugar, colourings and preservatives, that she made our own ice-cream, muesli bars with an excess of nuts (for my taste), and homemade birthday cakes that were undoubtedly the coolest and most creative cakes around, but never, ever, had buttercream icing. Highly coloured fizzy drinks and Coca Cola were banned outright. Even lemonade or ginger ale was for special occasions only. Crisps, when we, very rarely, had them were only ever ‘lightly salted’, gum was out altogether (unladylike) and there was a very definite line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods. As a young woman, she had been impossibly thin – her old seventies skirts and dresses in the dress-up trunk confirmed that – I doubt even Scarlett O’Hara’s legendary 17-inch waist would have got into one of my mother’s skirts. Certainly, I never have, in conscious memory. Photos until around 1989, well after my arrival and some time after that of my sister, still show a remarkably good figure. I remember that she went swimming and to yoga before my younger sister was born, five years after I, but I imagine that the stress of having two young daughters, a business just on the edge of taking off, an increasingly difficult husband, and the ever-decreasing metabolism of a woman in her 40’s probably contributed to the rounder figure I remember consciously and know well.

I don’t consciously remember when I started using food as an emotional crutch. I remember feeling simultaneously ‘special’ and a little self-righteous and utterly deprived by my mother’s seemingly unreasonable stance on mass-produced ice cream and butter-creamed birthday cakes (I still don’t know what that particular issue was about!), and I remember her attempts to help when classmates taunted me for being ‘fat’ – I was certainly a chubby kid, in the way many small children are, but hardly deserving of that derogatorily-toned epithet – by taking me to Weight Watchers, or sending me to school with lunches made up entirely of fresh fruit and vegetables, and cottage cheese, which I still can barely bring myself to eat, unless on Ryvita crackers with tomatoes and LOTS of salt and pepper. I remember occasional furtive forays up the step-ladder to attempt to find a ‘treat’ – more a form of mild rebellion than anything else - and the usual distressing absence of anything appealing in the ‘treats cupboard’ above the crockery cupboard, and the subsequent substitution of crumpets with butter and honey, or English muffins or cinnamon toast. I really don’t remember when it was, but I do remember the discovery that the chocolate chips were kept in a jar on the top shelf in the pantry, and that with very little mountaineering I could reach the jar and devour handfuls at a time, or pour the pieces straight into my mouth, and that they were easily replaced from the packets kept in the ingredient drawers underneath the work bench. Why it never occurred to me just to take the packets, I’ve no idea.

From there, it escalated. Food was an escape, a distraction – something essential to a little girl with a ludicrously high IQ, whose day-to-day school life left her totally unstimulated, despite the efforts of individual teachers, my mother and a raft of child psychologists. A rather lonely little girl, whose family was disintegrating around her, with a father becoming more irrational, violent, and unpredictable by the day, and a mother who was away overseas for several months of the year. Don’t get me wrong – she was right to go away, and I’m quite sure that being a stay-at-home mother would have been deeply unhealthy for both her and us. I understand the need to get out of a terrifyingly small and narrow-minded society – after all, I started trying to find a way out when I was barely in my teens, and moved halfway around the world two months after my nineteenth birthday. Every time I’ve been back – three times in eight years – the insidious claustrophobia begins to get me even as I touch down in the self-important, grotty, provincial airport. Nonetheless, as a seven, or ten or twelve year old, feeling abandoned to the untender mercies of a wrathful father and a string of more-or-less spineless and incompetent nannies, it felt like desertion. Food filled that gap. Food was comforting and increasingly easy to get – increased imports of American and European foods – things I’d tried on our travels – increasing influence over the contents of the supermarket trolley, culminating in my teens when I actually did the household grocery shopping, sparing my mother one of her most detested tasks and fundamentally changing the contents of our cupboards, and easier access to money – pocket money, bank accounts, small change filched from my parents’ dressing table – all meant that my food intake was no longer regulated by my mother’s rules. Being forbidden fruit, naturally all the ‘bad’ foods were the most appealing, and ‘bad’ foods consumed in private, furtively, with the thrill of possible discovery, were the best of all.

To the public eye, even in my worst food phases, I eat normally, well even, with restraint and appreciation. What the public doesn’t see is the bingeing – whether an all-out emotional binge – of which there hasn’t been a major episode in several years – or the more normal consistent day-to-day bingeing – eating too much of something, or a treat, or several, every day, even when my better, rational self is shouting “NO”, even when the motivations that should give me will power to resist are so visible and when I know that my aspirations, my hopes and dreams are not well-served by this behaviour.

Food replaces so many things in my life – friendship, comfort, intellectual stimulation, love – I don’t know how to begin to eliminate the excess from my life. I feel I am fighting so many battles at the moment, that this is one battle too many, yet it is one I must start fighting, and I must win. I’m tall and solidly built, so the fat doesn’t show on me as it would on a smaller person. Nonetheless, it has to go. For my long-term health, for my self-esteem, for my sanity, for my hope of some sexual contact with someone at some point in the future. Unfortunately, I think that the fat has become a defence – that in some way, my mind hangs onto it, and enhances it, because it is a barrier between me and the things I consciously desire most – a successful career, a loving, physical relationship – and subconsciously fear. Somehow I have to convince my brain to let go. In reality, I’m not even sure if it’s the fat keeping me safe, or me keeping the fat safe – how messed up is that!?

Logically, I know that there are people far larger than me with successful careers in my field, and millions around the globe who have full, satisfying romantic and sexual lives. Instinctively though, I do not believe that I can have either while I am still overweight. Why I should be afraid of either is a mystery, and I don’t really think I am afraid of career success – especially right now, I’d welcome it. Sex, on the other hand, and intimacy with a male even more, poses a few terrors, mostly I am sure, related to my very difficult relationship with my father. Although in the last few years things have improved somewhat in that sphere, at a subconscious level, it seems I’m still a little girl, terrified that the man who is supposed to love her unconditionally is really going to lose his temper this time, and petrified of the consequences. It’s pretty easy to see how that sort of fear might spill over to inhibit any possible romantic attachments. Love equals fear. Fat equals a safety blanket.

Like I said, not a healthy relationship.

No, I really haven't disappeared.

Hello all you lovely people.

Just a quick note to say that I haven't vanished, and I hope to be back to blogging soon. Life got just a bit more challenging, and I don't currently have regular internet access. Again. Grrr.

Hopefully all sorted soon, and then you won't be able to keep me away.

Love to you all, and try to keep smiling!

No, I have not disappeared off the face of the earth. Would anyone have noticed anyway?

As you can probably tell from my title, I'm feeling rather down tonight. It's been a while since I posted, for a variety of reasons, including a family crisis and a fairly long work trip from which I have just returned. I should be happy. The trip was successful, to beautiful, sunny places. However, I came back to discover that most of my so-called friends hadn't even realised I was away, to three bills and no other post, to a myriad of emails, but none I wanted to read, and to what seems an endless loneliness. I just wish there was someone, anyone, who gave a toss, who might have met me at the airport, or called and said "I've missed you. Let's have a coffee this week and catch up".

It probably doesn't help that these trips also mean an abysmal diet - far too much bread, and only easy, fatty proteins, like cheese and salami. Anything I can buy cheaply, and eat, picnic-style, in my uber-cheap hotel rooms. Lots of fruit as well - it's so cheap there - but that doesn't change the fact that all my clothes feel just that bit too tight, and I feel even more physically repulsive than usual.

When is this going to change? When is there going to be someone in my life who would notice if I disappeared entirely? My mother doesn't count - she needs me to answer the phone to prop her up, as much as anything else. Is it even possible that it will? I spent the second week at an industry event. I overheard countless propositions, I witnessed years of flirtation being squished into a few days. It seemed that everyone was feeling the love, except me. Perhaps I give off "Don't even think about it" vibes. Maybe I really am intimidating.

Ignore me please, tonight I feel desperately lonely, unloved and unloveable, and very, very sorry for myself. Must be PMS - normally I deal with this much, much better.

Mythical Beasts

Another month, another post. For anyone who is wondering, I did eventually text the gentleman I referred to in my last post, but received no response. He later accepted my ‘friend’ request on Facebook, and I note that his status still shows him as ‘In a Relationship’, so perhaps that’s why. I’d like to think so, at least, instead of thinking him less of a gentleman and more of a cad. Perhaps I completely misunderstood our interaction. Ah, well. As little as I wish to be pragmatic about the situation, and as difficult as it is – I actually thought about whether or not I would be willing to give up my long-fought-for career for this man, should it be necessary - it seems the only course open to me. Which leads to my recent train of thought. Actually, it has occurred to me before, but I have always been able to dismiss it. Not so much, any more.

I’m twenty-seven. I have never been kissed, romantically, I have never, in fact, had anything that could be termed a relationship, or even been on a measly singular date. I have certainly never been physically intimate with a man or boy. Had I got into that cab last month, I’d have been in a fairly tricky situation, with my probable partner assuming, not unreasonably, that I know a lot more than I do. And perhaps that is how it’s supposed to be for me. If we were all meant to find a partner, if we were all meant to be part of a pair, then the terms ‘spinster’ and ‘bachelor’ would never have come into being, yet there they are, large as life in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are more women than men in the world, despite the anti-female bias that still exists in China and large swathes of the Middle East. It is inevitable, therefore, that some of us will simply miss out when it comes to finding a male alter ego.

I have several colleagues, now in their mid- to late-forties, who have only recently married, and maybe that will be me as well. From this point, that seems an awfully long wait, but it’s a better prospect than the idea of remaining single for the rest of my life, and at least holds out some hope. Of course, by then, I will have had to make some fairly big decisions about my fertility and my desire to have a child or children, which these colleagues seem to have eschewed entirely. Single motherhood, which I could only in good conscience undertake if I were to be financially secure and independent, is obviously a daunting prospect, but infinitely preferable to the idea of being childless. I want to be a mother, albeit not right now. If I can’t find a partner, should that part of a woman’s life be denied me also?

I am trying not to dwell on the reasons why no-one has ever been interested in me romantically, or at least not enough to do anything about it, because it is too depressing, and frankly, too humiliating. Terminal loneliness is fairly ghastly at the best of times, and when a difficult patch in life coincides with the realisation that the overwhelming majority of ones’ close friends are married, engaged or likely to be that way within the next year, it’s pretty hard to take. I think even my mother, previously the champion of remaining independent and only being ‘friends’ with men – and she doesn’t mean the sort with benefits – has started to realise that there is something fundamentally off about a twenty-seven year old daughter who has zero romantic history. Single and twenty-seven is one thing. Twenty-seven, with no past entanglements at all is quite another. Maybe I’m strong enough to take it, most of the time, and maybe that’s the core of the problem. Who knows? Meanwhile, in the full knowledge that it’s about as likely as a real lightning strike, I shall continue hoping every time I get into a bus, or a tube carriage, or enter a new situation or group of people, for that elusive, mythical coup de foudre. I shall continue to read the London paper’s love-struck column, in the hope that one day I’ll recognise a description of myself contained therein, and I will no doubt continue to live life the way I wish it was in my head, where my imagination can create, fleetingly, a connection I ache for, but increasingly doubt I will ever have.

In other news, does anyone know of a good food therapist in London? I need to sort out my relationship with food – it is not healthy.