Just finished watching Educating Rita again and it’s left me feeling wistful and confused. What will happen to me? I wonder this sometimes when I have time to think, and it scares me. My partner is almost 50; I am 26. We are like the professor and his student in so many ways, especially tonight when I had to tell him off for talking to me like I was a silly little kid. I suppose I must seem so to him, at times. We usually have an equal partnership though.
I get scared sometimes, and I wonder what will happen if we split up, like we did last year. Are we destined to split up and get back together again once a year on average? That won’t wash when our son get a little older. Will we drift along comfortably forever, or will I eventually do a Rita and outgrow him?
It’s not until I see that film that I realize how scared he is of that happening. No, he’s not scared of it – he knows it will happen. In some way, the age gap will start to become a problem. The person I was with before him was older too, and he was jealous and possessive to boot instead of just being a slightly regretful and afraid like my DP. He used to predict that I would run off with someone else, or that I would leave him. I remember once I showed him a flickr contact of mine who had just discovered they were expecting a baby with their partner. He was balding and she was a stunner. ‘She’ll leave him’ he said instantly, and I chuckled and shook my head, amused at his pessimism. I didn’t see that he was paranoid that I would leave him, too. As far as I know they are still together, and their daughter is way beyond toddlerhood.
But I was talking about DP. I didn’t fully understand just what he envisages happening until I saw that film. Of course – it’s not just an age gap thing. It’s a stage of life thing, a personality thing. It’s not that he wants bad things for me, he doesn’t. He just doesn’t want me to change so much that I decide I don’t love him anymore and can’t go on with him. That’s why I always balk at changes, and turn away from them. It’s why I don’t have any male friends anymore, why I don’t care about having put on 2 stone, or bother wearing makeup anymore. It’s not because he doesn’t want me to leave him – it’s because I don’t want to leave him. I’m too scared of changing, of being so myself that I find I’m drifting inevitably into a life that doesn’t include him. If I stay the same, then we’ll stay the same. If I change, then we’ll change. If I get stronger, more opinionated, more secure in myself, I might leave him. I might decide that our relationship has run its course, and that we are no longer right for each other.
And then I think of my son, and I get scared. I remember those weeks in the town I spent four years in before moving back to London. How strange it was to life there again, but with a baby this time. How when you are a single mother, the people from the NCT look at you with pity, and others look right through you. How you feel like trash, how you are scared that if you slip in the bath and knock your head, there will no no-one to know and no-one to take care of the baby. The fear of hurting him, of ‘falling off the edge’ and getting PND without knowing, the memory of the depression clawing at me, beckoning me back. How I moved back here with him to escape it, because I knew it would swallow me otherwise. And how much I missed him.
I don’t want to need someone, and be with them because they need me and are scared I will go. I want to be with someone out of choice: like Rita. She had the choice of what to do. I always said afterwards, we’ll I’ve left once. Now I know I can do it again if need to. But leaving once doesn’t mean that I can do the thousand and one other things that I’m too scared of doing, in case it means I change and split up the family. Knowing I could leave if I really really wanted to – it doesn’t help with any of that.
Maybe I need to change anyway, and fuck everything else. Maybe I should just be myself. Even if I have to fight at first against someone elses insecurities in order to do what I need to do to be me. Even if it’s hard. Perhaps it would be worth it, because then I would be genuine, instead of waiting to live.
I can’t believe I just wrote nearly 800 words without stopping. I should get myself a counsellor…