Читать книгу With My Body - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 14

Unhappiness of soul – a state of being often as unaccountable as it is irrational

‘How are you?’ the lovely, cheeky Bengali man in your newsagency asked before school pick up today.

You replied, distracted, ‘I have no idea.’

The ultimate flaky mum, you know he thought.

But it was the truth. You have no idea. Have lost the woman you once were. Cannot simplify your life. Had so much energy for so much, once; now your days are taken up with so many bitsy, consuming, domestic things. You catch yourself talking aloud as you walk away down the High Street. Is it madness or preoccupation or mere motherhood. In a window reflection you gasp at yourself scowling, jaw set. There’s the niggle that now you’re married you are somehow less. Just the little wife. Hugh doesn’t mean to convey that but he does. There’s a subtle and discernible loss of confidence, so insidious, as you lean on another for so much and you never did that, once. As you have somehow allowed over the years your petrol tank to be filled and restaurant dinners to be decided for you, sweets secreted to your kids, Nintendo Wiis gleefully bought behind your back, theatre tickets purchased for plays you don’t like.

You cannot explain how circumstances have closed over you, how you became a woman who lost her voice.

But you know there’s only one person who can haul you out.

It is five o’clock.

The potatoes have to be peeled and the toilet unblocked; it’s probably a plastic toy, it’s becoming a habit with Pip, your youngest.

You have to change this life, somehow, or something in you will implode like a depth charge way beneath the surface.