REAL EMOTIONAL GIRL

Sometimes I sit downstairs at the kitchen table and think about the pain she's been going through all her life while she sleeps away above my head.

Breaks my heart to think of her up there alone but I get too restless at night so come down here so as not to disturb her.

The other day I told a friend of mine I did empathy too well. They reckoned I sometimes tune into other people's suffering as a way to get away from my own. Got me thinking. Maybe I'm a saviour for everyone else's life except mine. Isn't that the craziest thing?

You hear about some people living their dreams vicariously through their children. Well maybe I live my suffering vicariously through my loving her.

Wait a minute.

Listen ...

Can you hear how loud that clock sounds with its minute clock? I get paranoid my girl's sleep will get broken by any sounds in the house. I even thought she might have heard me pop the top of this beer bottle.

I don't even care if I don't sleep just so long as she can.

You might call me the night watchman, making sure she can rest peacefully and have the sweetest of dreams away from her troubles.

Maybe this is how it will be from now on. She'll sleep at night. I'll sleep through the morning and afternoon and somewhere on that bridge between day and night we'll spend a few hours together, holding each other and making love.

She been sick off work with bad mental health for awhile. And me? I don't have the best mental health myself. Doctor signed me off from work and so now we live in this house island of hers where she's marooned like Robinson Crusoe. That probably means I'm Man Friday.

Who knows if we'll ever get off the island. As long as we're both kept in check by our demons we may never. That would be a sad story though and I'm always scouring the horizon for a happy ending. But happy endings seem to be things you only find in children's stories and rarely adult life.

Besides, she's got this picture up on her kitchen wall which makes me think we're cursed. It's an Edward Hopper one called Automat (1927). I googled it cos I found it intruiging somehow. Reminds me of her and I think that must be why she got it cos it reminds of herself. But all the time it's up there I feel like she'll never escape the pain she's become habituated to.

I want to take it down but I know she loves it.

And I wouldn't want to do anything to upset her.

It would break my heart.

And God knows we're broken enough round this place.

Man. That clock is loud.