On Thursday
I had a day off and it was a revelation. I mean, a proper day off, the kind
where you just let yourself go with the flow and do what you want to do not
what you have to, must do, ought to do. It’s been a while.
I walked
down a street that I pass all the time, full of cute and quirky small
independent shops. They usually whittle past in a blur while I’m hurrying to
the next thing or deep in worry. I never normally have time to look at the
window displays never mind go inside.
I can
remember being in that state of continual resting emergency when I had a very
young baby, or once when I worked on a particularly stressful film set – aware
of the world out there but so not in it – ticking like an overwound clock, always another crisis to deal with
and no time to engage with anything else because that meant relaxing and that
would be fatal. Never off duty, constantly on the alert for the next predicament.
It’s like a
continually contracted state where you just cannot allow yourself to expand
your sensibilities. Like being a permanent diet – no fun. *
But today
something inside me unfurled – a permission to go off duty. To stroll along a charming street just
browsing, encountering, being a flaneuse.
Came home
with spanakopita and horta from the Greek deli and a polka dot mug for my morning
coffee (I’m drinking from it now) Sniffing the exotic scent of amber on my
wrist from a tiny boutique full of pom-poms and pebbles. It felt like being on
holiday.
And I had
conversations. Something about being off duty for the day sent me out into the
world with a different head on and I kept bumping into people and having lovely
connections.
None of
them knew about my caring role, we talked about other things. A couple of times
I felt the subject rise to the tip of my tongue to be aired because it simply
felt like the biggest thing anyone needed to know, and then the moment passed
and afterwards I was glad.
This new phase,
with Nick living here and his illness progressing, is tough. So many changes
and new responsibilities – it’s inevitable that it is dominating my life because
it IS big. It sucks up all the time in the world if you let it. And suddenly everything else feels very small.
But it’s not
the only thing. There is more to life than this.
I refuse to
be defined by my role as a carer. It’s not the only thing about me, even if it
mostly feels like it at the moment. I will not let it define who I am. And
somehow I need to find a way of life where it won’t define Nick either.
*Not that I
would know. See “spanakopita”.
