Unhappy

Sunday, 1st August, 2004.

I have just realised why I'm so bloody tired. It is seven forty five on
a Sunday morning. It is only the second morning that I haven't had
early calls (the first being yesterday) since I came back from my last
trip to London?so ? why the bloody hell am I up at this ungodly hour?
I've been lying awake for ages. I was mentally writing my diary and
figured I might as well be up and doing it for real. If I'd looked at
the clock and seen it was so early, I wouldn't have bothered.

I'm on the sick. I take time off from work for all kinds of reasons,
car won't start, that's the favourite, son beaten up, house broken into
but I'm never normally off sick. I feel a fraud because I'm okay now, I
think. I could ring them up right now and tell them I'm available for
work. I need the money, and it'd earn me some brownie points but
wouldn't it be good to just have this one day when I don't have to rush
out for at least four separate call runs? I'm not going to ring work.
I'll chuck another guilt token into the pot.

I'm not skiving, well, not really, I do still feel a little bit
fragile. I have been ill, had some nasty little tummy bug. I wasn't
actually sick, thank god but came close to it many times. I'll spare
you the unpleasant details but it wasn't nice. During the very early
hours of Friday morning the stomach pain was so bad that I convinced
myself that something was very wrong with my insides. I have been
cursed with an over active imagination gland. .As I lay there,
writhing, I could literally see in my imagination, popped bits of
metal, spilling entrails and my half a pound of chopped liver
unfettered and let free to spill loosely in my stomach cavity. I
lurched through the night extending timelines and promising that if the
pain didn't ease off in 'another ten minutes' I'd call out a doctor. It
didn't ease off, but dawn broke and light skies made the probability of
ringing a doc more acceptable. I waited for the clock to reach a
socially acceptable hour and then figured that as I'd managed through
the night I'd see how the day went on. I'm fine now.

Marty is driving me nuts. I'm powerless to help him. I'm annoyed with
him for being such a victim, I'm annoyed with myself for bringing him
up that way. I'm frustrated that I can't do anything for him and I'm
sick of hearing his whinging voice telling me he's bored. It is the
summer holidays. He wants to go abroad on holiday. I can't afford it.
He quite rightly points out that if I hadn't been selfish enough to
book two trips to London for myself this year, we could afford
it.

He has no friends. The lad he hooked up with a few months ago dropped
him to hang around with someone else. Another new lad moved here from
Kendal, Marty homed in on him but he dropped him too within a week. It
doesn't take them long to see that Marty's a social outcast. He has no
bike now. He has no playstation. He's too scared to leave the house and
he lies on the settee all day long whingeing about how bored he is. The
only break to this routine is when I drag him out to work with me. He
substitutes settee for car seat and still moans about being bored. I am
trying to work on the Devil re-write and I'm not getting the time I
need to do it. We still have five weeks of the school holidays left. I
get rattie with him after I've listed a hundred and one things to do in
a boring bedroom. He won't go out. He won't read, write or draw.
Jigsaws and painting by numbers sets don't interest him. He doesn't
want a model plane, boat or car. He's too old for Lego, mechano or any
other construction set. He needs a friend.

I have taken him out to Pizza hut, I've taken him for a pub lunch. I've
given him money to go into Barrow. He's sold his fishing rods to go
into Barrow. He won't go swimming, bowling or to the flicks alone. It's
not cool to be seen within a mile of these places with your mother.
Everyday he wants to go off somewhere (miles equal money) to do
something 'fun'. But I work seven days a week. My work day is split
into four shifts. It doesn't leave time to do anything. Yesterday he
wanted us to go off somewhere. Alton Towers was top of the pops. He has
no idea how much a day at Alton Towers would cost. I couldn't risk
being further than ten feet from my toilet and in times like these only
my own loo will do.

Today I will give in and we'll go somewhere, not Alton Towers or even
Blackpool bloody tower but somewhere. I'll try not to hammer my
overdraft too harshly. But I'm feeling like the most shit mother from
shitsville and only pandering to his will, will ease that.

I hate seeing my son so unhappy. His life shouldn't be like this.

He's been talking about suicide again.

The other day he sold his beloved fishing rods. After all, he reasoned
when he asked me if he could, I have nobody to go fishing with. He got
fifteen pounds for four rods. I told him he had to put five in the bank
and could keep the other ten for whatever he wanted. He rang my great
niece, Emily, to ask her if she'd go to Barrow with him.

She constantly tried to con all his money out of him. She has never
known a difficult day financially in her entire life. She has money
coming out of her ears and yet she made Marty buy her a mascara and pay
for her bus fares. She spent all her money quickly on more make-up and
sweets and then picked up four reduced rate singles. She'd worked out
that Marty could just afford them with what he had left. She moved to
the check out and Marty said, "I thought you had no money left?" She
answered in a snotty voice, "No, but you have." Marty told her that he
wasn't going to buy them for her and she slammed them down and stalked
out of the shop leaving Marty on his own in Barrow. Even his own family
walk all over him because they know they can.

I wish I could take him to London with me. I have been very firm with
him every time I've been to date and told him that he's too young and
that as soon as he's old enough to get in the pubs, he'll be allowed to
come too. I'm very annoyed therefore, that Martha waltzed in the other
week and announced that her fifteen year old daughter is coming with
us. Okay, Andi has three years on Marty but she still wouldn't pass for
eighteen. If we want to do something that she can't get into then we
will have to change our plans. Martha now tells me that Andi is
bringing a friend with her. Well, I'm not paying for her friend. I
don't know if Andi and friend can get into the UKA do. If they can't
Martha will just have to go off and do something else with them. I'm
not buying their tickets until we get there on the night for that
reason. Normally, by now, I like to have everything booked and paid for
in advance. I haven't bought Andi's friend a train ticket.

It's so unfair on Marty. I've told him, all this time that he's too
young to come on my London trips and yet Martha's bringing half the
kids in town. My kid loses out? again!

I think I briefly mentioned that I had a date set for last night. A man
called, um ? let's call him Walter, purely because I'm feeling evil.
Anyway, Walter invited me to dinner in a lovely hotel in Cartlmel. He
wasn't my type at all. But then, look what going for 'my type' has done
for me. I've tried so hard to get away from 'my type' of man that I
don't even know what he is anymore. It used to be easy, long hair,
tattoos, biker, the typical stereotype. Walter was different. They've
all been 'different' for some time now. But the result has never
altered. Walter is a fitness instructor. He works primarily in a
correctional facility, or prison if we're not being posh. He is loud,
overbearing and loves the sound of his own voice as I found out in our
only telephone conversation lasting two hours. I had no hopes of the
date but figured he'd be lively conversation and I suppose I was quite
looking forward to it. I intended to pay for the meal just in case he'd
be under the misapprehension that he'd bought more than my company for
the evening.

I never heard from him all last week so I left a message on his machine
asking if all was well and if we were still on for Saturday night. I
received a very awkward message back. It made me laugh, he sounded so
uncomfortable, bless him. He told me that he wouldn't be meeting me on
Saturday night because he'd met somebody else in Paris.

Far from being annoyed, I appreciated his honesty. He told me the
truth. Alright, if I hadn't rung him, he wouldn't have contacted me at
all but he did 'fess up and I admire him for that. He could have said
that he had car trouble or made up any other excuse but he told me the
truth and said that he'd met someone else. It was a refreshing
change.

I have got Rick out of my system. He rang me for two hours last Sunday.
I missed, My Valentine, on Channel four. I wanted him to ring. He
texted me first to say that he was going to and I was all excited. I
said so little and he said so much. You can read any one of my other
diaries to find out what he said. It was just the same old crap as
always. Loves me, things to do, lawns to mow. I lay on my bed and
switched off. I was completely detached. He bragged about his new car
and about his holiday in France. He told me that his daughter had
fallen through a plate glass door and had to be operated on for a shard
of glass in her stomach. And yet, he still went to France. He was on
his way to France when he got the call about his daughter. Still on
English soil, he could have turned back but he didn't. This is the man
who does everything based on what is best for his kids. I had always
believed that of him, that no matter how he'd lied to, or deceived, me,
he was a man who always puts his kids first. While his daughter was
being operated on he as driving to Fance in his brand new car. I saw
him in a different light. I lay on my bed thinking, "What a wanker,"
and the last bit of respect I had for him was gone. I think I'm over
him. That's good. He's not the love of my life as I suspected that he
might be. He's just one more in a long line of men who have lied to me
and used me and is now history.

26th November?

Don't ask. I haven't worked that one out yet.

Probably not.

My weight is stuck again. I hate it when that happens. I have lost
seven stone exactly and yet I'm still fat. The weightloss has really
slowed down now. I am on a fairly unchanging diet. I have a small bowl
of cereal at lunchtime and a small salad in the evening. I eat this
most days without change or variety. Salad goes down well and doesn't
usually make me feel ill. I seem to be maintaining at the moment. I'm
stuck between fifteen dead and fifteen three. Every morning I get up
hoping to have hit the magic fourteen something and it's still
fluctuating between fifteen and fifteen three. I have a meeting with
the dietician next week so I'm going to cut out the salad until then to
make my target.

I'm getting a new cooker tomorrow. It's Kez's old one, she is having
her 25,000 pound kitchen installed. Still don't know how a kitchen can
cost that much. I can't remember if it's geen or blue (the cooker). I
know it's twice the size of mine and I know that it isn't going to fit
in the little hole that mine does. I'm going to have to move the fridge
freezer. My kitchen is tiny. I have a large living room which I
appreciate but the kitchen is a match box. I hate it.

I hate it here, full stop.

I'm still thinking about moving away.

But not tomorrow, tomorrow I get my new cooker.

To give Marty something to do, I bought him a flat pack wardrobe last
week. We spent most of one day building it. I had lots of fag brakes!
Marty thought it as going to be 'fun'. It wasn't. We worked hard
though. I mucked him out which I do thoughrouly about once a year. He
now has ample storage and a spotlessly clean room. IT WILL STAY THAT
WAY THIS TIME. If he ever lets his room become a shit tip again, I
don't know what I'll do but I will do something drastic. I have told
him that if he just puts five minutes a day into keeping his room
clean, it will stay in the condition it is now. I'm going to decorate
it for him in the next few weeks and buy a new carpet, curtains, light
shade and clock, oh and some shelving. I might buy him a new television
and play station too. We'll have to see how the funds go.

I'm not happy at the moment. I know Marty is desperately unhappy and I
can't do anything to help him. I can't make him popular. Do you believe
in history repeating? He is so like I was as a child. Is it my fault
that he has no friends and that people don't like him?

I gave up smoking on Wednesday night. That doesn't improve my mood.