Self

Self. Selfishness. Shellfish.

No, not shellfish. At least I don’t think so. Or shelfish, which I suppose would be the act of being like a shelf in some way, perhaps due to a very angular hairstyle a la Vanilla Ice, the shelfish bastard.

I have, to which I may have casually alluded in a subtle plea for sympathy, recently become single. The process was one of those uncomfortably messy ones full of mixed messages and unspoken truths that drag things out over a unconscionably long amount of time (one reading of the situation would suggest that babies gestate quicker than this relationship properly ended), but it is done now. My period of depression and mild psychosis has been duly endured and dealt with, and now my future lies ahead of me. Which of course it always did. I just wasn’t looking where I was going, and regularly hitting my head because of it.

My life as a flow chart goat

It has occurred to me – rather belatedly given context I have no intention of revealing – that I have been in (or affected by) serious relationships for all but a few brief months of the last 9.5 years. By coincidence, it’s about 10 years since I did any seriously sustained writing. Whether, as in Alexei Sayle’s brilliant “The Mau Mau Hat”, these two women both inspired and distracted me in equal measure I may never know. Certainly in the case of my recent relationship, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that I invested a lot of mental energy nurturing and encouraging her creativity, rather than selfishly indulging my own. And suddenly, as if via an epiphany, I realise that this was a profoundly stupid thing to do.

I once had a dear friend – sadly no longer dear nor indeed my friend – who warned me never to rely on someone else for my own happiness. At the time I thought this overly cynical, and to an extent I still do. I think the truth of the phrase comes down to the word ‘rely’: does it mean that you should never trust someone to make you happy, or simply that you must never allow yourself to be the kind of person with nothing left to make you happy if someone lets you down? And that means – at least I think it does – that one should probably not do what I did. I truly, sincerely and desperately wanted my love to live up to her potential (as I'm sure she now will without me). But where was my similar effort to get me to live up to mine?

So, if all I have left is Self, I ought to make the most of it. I might be mediocre, but I owe it to myself to at least try to be magnificent. For a little while.