A brief history of self-pity

February 2013

I now have the most magnificent opportunity to enjoy Cape Town. And I do.... to a certain extent. But all of it is tinged by me wanting a man who does now want me. Yes, he's the one from a couple of blogs ago, if you've been following my eloquent whitterings. I've been here before, not specifically in Cape Town with a man who does not want me, but you know, in Birmingham, Granada, London, Bury St Edmunds, New York, Beyton etc etc ad nauseam, where there is a man who does not want me. What's weird about this situation is that he does want to spend time with me... just.... you know, on his terms. He wants to step back from where we got to and revert to the good friends setting. It has all happened very quickly and despite my extensive experience in unrequited love (I have a PhD) I am ridiculously surprised at the strength of my feelings after what has been a matter of weeks.

For the sake of my ability to get up in the morning, the coherence of my personality, my general mental health, I should not spend time with him. Spending time with him is too enjoyable, too safe, too exciting, too fricking meaningful for me; it reminds me suddenly and after so many years of not experiencing this, of what my life could be if there was someone beside me, even if they were irritating and difficult and, you know, human some of the time. Even though I know they could not save me from my existential angst they could make me a cup of tea of an afternoon and pop out for nightnurse when I'm ill and prevent my mother from lying awake worrying who the hell is going to look after me when she is no longer here. I don't care about flowers and romantic walks, I want someone to hold my head out of the toilet bowl when I am throwing up. That's probably why I'm single: love for me exists only in action, in engaging with the mess of life, not in lovesongs and grand gestures to apologise for not turning up/being rude to my boss at a drunken party/falling out of love with me.

Unfortunately this man has lifted the corner of a long-neglected curtain into a room so dark and cobweby, so full of skeletons, ghosts, and all kinds of the living dead that I don't know what to do with myself. At 40 I am living the life my 15-year-old self was terrified I would end up with: the strange, itinerant lifestyle of an artist with no husband/boyfriend/fuckbuddy with benefits (see tea, vomit, above) to give a hoot or two about me. And I have the added removal of my still point, my scrambled-egg-making-holiday-planning-company-of-her-younger-sister-loving Kate.

Exposed by this latest, vanishingly rare, encounter with a man who actually likes my company and fancies me, each breath seems more painfully comical than the last as I struggle to keep my composure all over town. Beautiful, interesting Cape Town, which was already heaving with loss for me, has, unbelievably, gone and acquired one more loss, a man who is still here in town, who opened up to me, let in the light, and as quickly absented himself, leaving me to deal with what the famous incredible Cape Town light, so popular with all those films and ads, exposes within me. Most surprisingly, most disturbingly, my long-dead father shakes his gory locks at me in ways almost forgotten and I long for him so hard I fear this longing will solidify and burst out of me unbidden.

I walk hard and fast in the summer heat all over town, take myself for that swim every day, trying to outrun my neuroses, zombies rearing their rotting heads unpredictably all over the shop. I try new places I've not been with any of these darn people who no longer want my company, some - admittedly - through no fault of their own, and find myself in a hotel cafe because they have wifi and I can work there, for the price of too many Coke Zeros. The staff are lovely, which helps.

Before too long two English couples are sharing my table and we get talking. They are Rotarians. They are here delivering hundreds of wheelchairs to people who would not get them otherwise. They tell me the story of how they first got into it, how many thousands they have delivered to many countries, of the people they have met along the way - the hopeful users, the other Rotarians who put them up, the dignitaries who attend the Ceremonies Of Handing Over. They describe how disabled people arrive at the prescribed venue, against all odds, dragging themselves, carried by others, and are overcome by emotion at having their mobility for the first time in their lives, a mobility they truly believed, and with good reason, would never be theirs.

They tell me a woman came one day, with a very hunched back, and from under the blanket she was wearing as a cape slithered a human form, a man, collapsing to the floor, her son, whom she had carried on her back for the 19 years of his life. The son gets a wheelchair and their lives are changed forever.

The five of us, five Brits, sit and marvel at the level of need here in South Africa, at how little it takes to change a life - in either direction - at the love-in-action of this mother, of so many people they have encountered in their charitable work, which runs alongside their full working lives.

We talk about Kate, about the show, they are so sympathetic. We exchange cards, take photos, we laugh, I even succeed in not crying my tears of self-pity, because that's what they would be: not tears for these strugglers from their stories, it would come from somewhere else, somewhere dishonourable, and I try to think of those who would like to know about their work.

Walking back down Long Street, walking home, I have had my spirits lifted by this human interaction, with the Brits, with the hotel bar staff, and I am just that bit quieter, slightly less likely to burst into tears. I have a word with myself about my ocean of self-pity, I begin the count of my legion blessings, numbers one and two being the use of each of my legs, number three that I can afford one too many Coke Zeros. My luck is in fine fettle I remind myself. And yet I can feel it there, somewhere very safe, the currently quiet desperation, fear, indulgent, pointless self-loathing linked to a man I did not know six weeks ago, and I wonder what kind of ungrateful meathead I am if even the Rotarians' stories cannot shift that shizzle.