“I used to come down [to Brighton] during the war. I used the watch the air battles, the dogfights, out there. Our boys and their boys weaving about on a lovely summer’s day, putting on such a show. If one of the Hun went down, the whole beach would cheer. If one of our boys was hit, even the wind would stop blowing. Time froze until the lad either parachuted to safety and your heart would leap, or he plunged into the sea and you all died with him. Nineteen or twenty years of some dear mother’s adoration, loving care, just switched off. Doused. It’s why I never had children. Couldn’t face losing them. It’s why I never had much at all.”
It’s from one of the program’s quiet moments, one of the infinitesimal spaces where they would slip into the dialogue something so poignant and sharp that you’d forget for a minute that you’d come for the laughs--at least, until one of the main characters whacked a pigeon with her cane or purposefully confused his drug-addled daughter-in-law. It’s a split-second of total honesty. A bare-faced ‘come to Jesus’. It makes you think. Well, it did me, anyway.
I’ve heard it said that the happier you are, the less you need. Those inspirational Instagram doohickies are always touting simple pleasures. ‘You can’t take it with you.” Experiences and relationships are more valuable than things. There’s certainly something to be said for this vein of life philosophy--especially if, like me, you deplore clutter.
But there’s something beyond that for me.
I know I’ve mentioned before that I’m ‘not very good at people’, and there’s a reason for that. A life of externally-enforced--which very quickly also became self-enforced--emotional repression has rendered me wary. I keep the world at arm’s length on purpose, because anything closer than that is dangerous. Experience has taught me that there is always another shoe to drop; there’s always a way for someone to disappoint or betray you. It’s an unending dogfight, but it doesn’t seem to matter who gets shot down. If it’s me, it’s because whatever situation I’ve ended up in is somehow my fault. If it’s someone else, I’m not cheering as they plummet towards the sea--I’m watching, wounded, because they’ve proved themselves to be an unsafe connection. No one wins.
It always makes ‘not having’ seem the safer route. If I don’t build the bridges, the bandits can’t cross. If I don’t reach out, no one can cut off my hand. If I don’t give myself away, I remain intact.
You can’t grieve for something that was never yours.
Or can you?
It turns out that you can. I have existed with a permanent loneliness which I only recently was able to recognize for being what it is. It’s always had labels like ‘independence’ and ‘self-reliance’ and to a degree those are absolutely on the nose, but behind those things is this big, empty space between what I call my ‘Public Face’ and the rest of me. A metaphorical no man’s land, only I’ve always pictured it as a vast, open stretch of ocean, surrounding a tiny, rocky outcrop, which is where my interior self lives. Sure, she could go swimming, try to get to somewhere else that’s less desolate, less isolated, but she knows there are sharks, and she knows that you never see them until it’s too late. Does she want to leave her island? Of course she does. She knows there’s something else out there beyond the horizon that’s less lonely--she knows, because it exists around her, on the other side of her ‘Public Face’. She can look, but she can’t touch. Well, she could, but that would mean braving the sharks, and probably losing limbs.
So would it be worth it? Everybody says it is. “Come on over this side, everyone’s lovely and we have cake!” They don’t seem to see the minefield in between, the deadly obstacle course I’d have to run to get there. “It’s nothing, why are you worried? Just come across the grass.”
“There are snakes in the grass.”
“No, there aren’t. You’ll be fine. After the grass, there’s a little bridge, you just have to cross that and you’ll be here.”
“There’s alligators under that bridge, and all the boards are rotted through.”
“Looks fine and dandy from where we’re sitting. What are you so scared of?”
“You’re made of bees.”
“Bzzzzzzzz!”
“I...I think I’ll stay here, thanks.”
Sometimes, it’s easier to live without--even though it’s without something you know you want. Something you know you need.
The less you have, the less you have to lose.
(I had a shitty week, okay?)
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