Monday the 13th

A few days ago R left her notebook with me, opened it to check some photography readings, it turned out to be a diary of some sort of, which I read shamelessly.

She writes well, but her concerns seem so naïve – not being able to fit in at school, the guy she had hoped she was in love with but turned out not to be, a mild sexual fantasy or two, loads of pages devoted to how much her friends mean to her and how wonderful they are.

Of course her issues are important to her. I know she mulls over them, often they make her behave a lil quirky, sometimes lead to a loss of appetite. Just as anyone’s issues are important to them, however small they may seem to another. The kid who wants the red balloon, the thirteen year old who thinks he’s in love, the-guy-who-has-everything’s obsession with a red Porsche.

But what I read made me think of the great difference in the problems that rock her boat and that rock mine. The emotional blackmail I’m being subjected to by the husband and his family, being semi-ostracised by old friends, a very ill mother back home, a loved cat dying without my being able to see him, having no money of my own, a sense of disbelonging and uncertainty. I try not to think of these things, distracting myself with work and friends, I don’t even write of them or talk about them. I have become somewhat detached because that’s the only way I can carry on. But they lurk there, just below. They surface in my dreams and in the extreme tiredness I often feel, even though I have not done anything physical enough to warrant that tiredness. The only solace then is deep sleep, from which I awake, refreshed, ready to tackle a new day. Pushing behind again these troubles, consciously preventing a breakdown.

My room-mate recently had a tiff with her boyfriend. I could see how it affected her functioning – she was inattentive during class and didn’t even show up in the second half. If I could only have that luxury.

And then you meet an eight year old boy, separated from his parents, smuggled in from Nepal just a fortnight ago, forced to work in a circus. And you think of your friend who has witnessed a series of deaths of close family in the past few years, and who lost a parent just last week. And you feel like R.