Friday, July 23, 2010

Where have all the good times gone

Missing: My social life.

I appear to have lost it or given up on it or had it snatched from me while I slept several hours before midnight some weekend or other in recent months.

These are the days of revelling that should be all mine, raging against the middle and old age that will quietly enter and fill the evenings with its contented little joys of cocoa and comfy slippers and hot water bottles.

But the promise of happy chatter over incessant beats has failed to lure me out of my corner of Dublin for some time. There are many obstacles. Friends who have proper relationships and who are caught up in that smug waltz of inter-dependency that fills their diaries with daytrips and hand-holding and expensive dinners in candlelit lairs for couples.

I am not blameless however. I don't send the text messages with suggestions for fun on a friday or saturday night. I think about it occasionally, but then I allow that head-full of antics to cede to the reminders that I would have to set up before I go out, I would probably need a nap also, the fact that more than two drinks will have my heart hammering when I place my head on my pillow in early hours of tomorrow.

So there has instead been a growing reluctance to face the weekends. This is something I have only realised in the past few weeks, that I now value weekdays more because then I don't feel so pathetic being in bed early or structuring my evenings around silly soap operas.

Next weekend. Most definitely. There will be dinner and dancing and recklessness in abundance. There will also probably be bed by midnight, but a re-introduction to the night-life of the city of my college days requires the same soft touch as that of a debutante.

Baby steps.

In stilettos.

5 comments:

  1. I had a fierce problem there for a while. On the odd weekend when the missus would be away down to wexford I'd be thinking the cats away and all that. So, being a crazy rebel, I'd get a bunch of beer from the offy and sit in front of the xbox until I passed out about five in the morning. Meanwhile all my little fwends would be in the foggy dew, but I wouldn't know they were in the foggy because I went out of my way to not call anybody so I wouldn't know and then wouldn't be compelled to go out. Looserville, population: me. blissfull it was.

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  2. KFS - It's worrying how blissful it can be at times. I am fast morphing into the neighbourhood crazy lady who lives alone, talks to herself and who only goes out to scare children

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  3. I love evenings like that too! Nothing nicer than coming home, getting into fatmanpants and pottering about for the evening :)
    Question (and feel free to not answer) - are you able to keep working with CKD or do you require too many frequent naps?

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  4. "contended little joys of cocoa and comfy slippers and hot water bottles"

    That happens a lot sooner than you might expect.

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  5. Suse - I worked full-time with Stage 4 and Stage 5 CKD and for the first six months after starting dialysis. Then I decided my life wasn't half complicated enough so I thought I'd quit and move across the country in the middle of a recession! I now work on a more casual basis. Freelancing. It means I'm able to work on my terms, and mostly at home. I should say there are loads of dialysis patients who continue to work full-time and they manage just fine. I was able to decide to quit my job and be broke for a while because I only have myself to look after. It's not a choice for many of those who have kids.

    Holemaster - You have just alerted me to a typo! That should be "contented".
    Anyway, I know there are worse futures to fear than old age with hot drinks and comfort. I look forward to it. Just not yet;)

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