It occurred to me recently that hardly anyone ever looks up as they walk about the streets of their city or inbred rural enclave; (I still haven’t decided what mine is, by the way – I do not wish to offend the inbred. They’re unpredictable.)

I wonder why no one thinks it is important to be aware of what may or mayn’t be above your head; in fact, just last night the topic of being brained by a piece of masonry came up. I can’t think of a better reason to walk about habitually staring upwards, though I suppose that brings up two separate issues: how to avoid muggers and rapists whilst gazing at the heavens; the other is that is it better to see the broken stone falling at your head a second too late to alter the outcome?

I recently got a new front door and have had trouble finding the door knocker I want. I have settled on a gargoyle that spits water at people. Especially the Nazi war criminals that are hiding on window ledges and doorsills because NO ONE EVER LOOKS UP.

The Nazis are clever.

I had a night out on Friday. It was odd – the ease with which I was able to slip out the door without having to orchestrate childcare, or leave a long list of instructions to a hopefully non-paedophilic infanticidal maniac on the best way to diffuse Girl Baby’s inevitable sleep tantrum. What I am trying to say is that the children have been whisked off to their grandparents for a few days, and I have been left to my own devices.

I had thought I would enjoy all this time to myself – in some ways, I have. I took a bath. I read a book. I stayed up late and slept in until the grand hour of NINE O’CLOCK this morning. And, as the title has already given away, I had a night out on Friday.

I am not one for going out much, mostly because up until recently I was married and would snuggle in at home after the children had gone to sleep with my ex. That’s not to say there hasn’t been the occasional night out with friends, but really, I just don’t do it very often. And certainly not with my holy-crap-I’m-single glasses on. Those leant a whole new, vaguely depressing light to the evening. I am too old to try and meet someone Utterly Fabulous in a pub. I don’t go to clubs, since I am not a coked-up fresher with a fondness for cochlea-destroying bass.

So there I was, watching men lurch about over women trying to prove they had the most beautiful plumage. I watched women in states of drunken disarray precariously pick their way across the cobbles in stilettos. I paid too much for watered-down drink and paid again in the morning with a crushing hangover. In fact, I spent all of Saturday huddled on the sofa with my special Hangover Kit (all within an arm’s reach):

-Two 2 litre bottles of sparkling water and a dish of pre-sliced lemons and cucumber (try it – brilliant.)

-Packet of ibuprofen

-Several tins of peaches (easy to eat; hydrating)

-Laptop, streaming Scrubs

-Assortment of pillows and duvets

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But, like all people with Stockholm Syndrome – that is to say, every decent parent in the entire galaxy – I have begun to miss my pint-sized captors. I take this a good sign that I am sufficiently attached to them, as irritating and sticky as they are. I keep thinking about the silly things that Boy Child says, or the funny little dance that Girl Baby does whenever I put Nina Simone on. All of these bucolic reveries are in stark contrast to my Friday evening, and as a single mother, I am wondering: how to I reconcile these two worlds? Just because my marriage didn’t work out doesn’t mean I am going to remain a spinster for the rest of my life. (The first person to say “Join a book group!” or some such asinine comment is getting shot squarely in the face with my shotgun.)

Is there anything that the application of a twelve-gauge shotgun can’t solve?

I firmly believe that every single person carries with them a tidy compendium of mental illnesses in their head; some are harmless idiosyncrasies that might fall at the very furthest edges of the obsessive-compulsive scale. Some are mild forms of depression. Personality disorders are rampant (I’ve decided, in my infinite wisdom), despite the fact that often, they’re vaguely insulting diagnoses.

My predominant mental illness is that I am an anorexic. There we go – I’ve outed myself as a modern-day self-flagellating, calorie-counting gustatory neurotic. My relationship with food has always been antagonistic. I never think of it as something you need to, you know, live. I have to quell my appetites (which sort of ties in nicely with the previous post on the piety of women since food is always a morality play with me. Cheesecake = sin. Lettuce = virtue. Nothing = saintliness.)

As with a lot of anorexics, I am a very accomplished cook; my friends always politely refrain from commenting on the fact that whilst I eagerly refill their plates with heady pastries and rich savouries, I refuse to eat any myself. They’ve passed the point where they attempt to reason with me in any meaningful way. I sometimes get a token “You having any of this?” sort of comment, which always makes me flush with embarrassment. “No thank-you,” is my inevitable answer. People die because there isn’t enough to eat, and I’m sitting here surrounded by plenty like Catherine of bloody Sienna.

I disagree with a lot of what has been written about the roots of eating disorders. Over-controlling mothers, distant fathers, chaotic home life, a desire for control. “It’s not really about food,” the therapists insist rather lamely, in an NHS-purchased office chair, cheap and squeaky. They lean forward and look me meaningfully in the eye and proclaim, “It’s about control.” What a load of nonsense. If I was really in control I would down bucket after bucket of fried chicken with careless abandon. If I were in control, the sight of a fruit scone would not send me into a mental tailspin for the next forty-five minutes. Quite the contrary, anorexia is a total loss of control. It is an insidious, unglamorous and most significantly, a boring illness. Food is a pleasure; life without it takes on a muddy colour, with streaks of funereal black punctuating it.

I’ve tried all sorts of therapies, ranging from psychologists brandishing flow charts showing how human beings go through x amount of steps before making even the simplest of decisions, and how we can mould our expectations of the outcomes by performing certain mental gymnastics at each checkpoint. (Yawn.) I’ve had slightly-befuddled psychiatrists hand out prescriptions for all variety of anti-depressants, unaccustomed as they are to dealing with this sort of thing – their main concern is keeping the schizophrenics and manic-depressives on an even keel with psychotropic drugs. “So,” said one to me once, peering at me vaguely over magnifying reading glasses, “you’ve tried Pr0zac right?” “Yes.” “Hmm. Well, how about some Ser0xat?” “Er. Ok?”

I’ve spent over half my life counting, restricting, calculating and having my happiness dictated by the size of my clothes. Sounds hopeless, really, when laid out starkly like that. But I’ve discovered my motivation – at last! – for a real, concerted effort at reclaiming my rightful place at the table. This morning, as I performed my usual anxious once-over of my body, poking and prodding it with a furrowed brow in front of a giant mirror, Girl Baby toddled in to the room. She appraised me with her clinical eye and then, without breaking her gaze, lifted her shirt to expose a gorgeous rounded toddler belly. I was just about to gush about how perfect she was when I froze; she was looking down at her tummy with the same dissatisfaction that I use on my own. Then she slapped her stomach. Finally she looked up at me and grinned her silly grin as if to say “Look what a good girl I am, being just like you.”

Oy vei. If that’s not motivation to knock this on the head once and for all, I don’t know what is.

Piety, purity, submission and domesticity – these were the four qualities that made up the predominant ethos of white, upper-middle class Britain and America in the nineteenth century. It was known as the Cult of Domesticity. Excuse me while I get a suturing kit to repair my sides, which have split from uproarious guffawing. Enraging as it is, there is nothing shocking about men assigning and defining the role of fifty percent of the population; it’s not as though men hadn’t ever had a – shall we say disparaging – view of womankind prior to that. In fact, I’m not sure much has changed.

Wait. Let me reliably inform the reader than I am, in fact, still wearing my bra, embrace high heeled shoes with rabid delight, and (gasp!) have been known to apply make-up to my face. Therefore, this post will not be a good ol’ fashioned Man Hatin’ Rally. But. But, but, but.

In the nineteenth century, the above-mentioned characteristics were seen as the ideal combination for a wife, a mother, a sister. It is no coincidence that the height of biblical study groups for women were at their absolute peak in the nineteenth century (outstripping America’s current evangelical zeal); religion was the tool handed down by the male-dominated Church to ensure women stayed passive and docile. By reducing a woman’s life to a series of Pious Acts (attending to the needs of the home and family, for example) and Sins (daring to question the patriarchal head of the family; wanting to vote, etc.), men had carte blanche to act as they pleased, feeding their succubus-like egos on the emotional servitude of their womenfolk.

Where is this post going, you may be asking yourself. Well. I have Been Thinking, and although the notion of these sorts of beliefs seem laughable on the surface in the digital glare of the twenty-first century, I am not entirely convinced that anything has changed. Our values are all skewed; we have a visceral reaction to a woman dressed in a short skirt, hair bleached white and neckline plunging (“Slut.”), but we make tracksuit bottoms with words like “Juicy” written across the bottom for six year-old girls. (People who buy tracksuit bottoms for outerwear should be rounded up and shot, Gestapo-style, but that is a diatribe for another day.)

And despite the seventies, the rallying cries that We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby!, we haven’t. Not really. In the midst of a divorce after years of faithful tending of the home-fires, I was vitriolically informed that, like, lately I had hardly even been cooking anything. And, for that matter, whilst he was at it, the house was sometimes messy, and he had to help give the children their baths. Basically, it seems as though if I’d been a little more subservient, pious, domestic and pure, maybe – just maybe – I’d have been able to keep my man.

It’s a little deflating. And a lot enraging. And certainly a lot to think about considering that Girl Baby has to inherit a core set of beliefs from me. How much submission is enough to not get restraining orders slapped against you, but how much is too much? Piety doesn’t come in to the mix because religion is for the weak in this house; how much domesticity is a skill (make no mistake – it IS a skill to be able to whip up a reliably nutritious meal out of lentils, one egg, a sprouting onion and a wrinkled pepper) – and how much a rod for one’s own back?

The miracle of modern consumerism is difficult for me to grasp. I look about my sitting room – an entirely ordinary room composed of faux wooden floors, sofas, bookcases stacked with volumes of various depth, a television sitting somewhat accusatorily in the corner. I sometimes imagine the world as a giant hive, all hexagonal compartments thrumming with activity. It has a sort of Communist architecture to it, in my mind. The Department of Electronic Devices; The Bureau of Textile Production. Each corner of the hive (although “corner” isn’t quite accurate since my imagination had not leant any describable shape to this idea) is busy with materialising a product. This notion always occurs to me most strongly when I survey those parts of the house that seem to collect random objects as if by magnetic force: kitchen drawers with their dusty rubber bands and old, incomprehensible metal components to some long-discarded object. Where do all these bits and pieces come from, and what arduous process has brought them randomly together in my home? Who operated the press that made the cheap tin opener? All around the world, people have worked in factories, ships have sailed, planes have seared through the sky to bring these things to me, and I have purchased them without any consideration other than whether or not they make my home look pretty.

I am particularly good at feeling guilty. It is always there, vibrating at the back of my mind – the sensation that by virtue of birth I lead a comfortable, ordinary life. I am not wealthy, but neither am I poor. I am neither ugly nor beautiful (although there are rare moments when I appreciate certain aspects of my appearance); I am the mother of a young son and a younger daughter. A perfect blue-n-pink set. I was married to a decent, if somewhat emotionally distant man, with whom I am now separating (I am careful not to turn this mundane drama into the stuff of a Camille performance). There really is nothing to complain about, and I alway feel intensely petty and louche when I do.

On this particular morning, whilst I absentmindedly wiped crumbs away from about the toaster, I was considering the position of an intellectual woman (which I suppose myself, rightly or wrongly, to be) attempting to mother. Before having children I had thought that intelligence would be beneficial; after all, the children would be exposed to all the usual, desperate lessons; subject to witty rapport in their teenage years, and gently nudged in to things in their younger years. Now, though, I am not so sure. Often, at the local park, I observe the Other Sorts Of Mothers – usually young and probably poorly educated (I am careful not to make assumptions), often laughing racously on a bench whilst smoking cigarettes with conspiratorial girlfriends. It seems so easy for them – whilst I fret like some over-anxious hen over every potential stumble and scraped knee, these entirely different creatures garble on, scarcely aware of their progeny (who, more often than not are sucking on some luminous ice lolly with a somewhat despondent expression on their face). I have begun to think that a certain sort of bovine stupidity might make dealing with young children more bearable.

All of these concerns strike me as typical middle-class afflictions. The very poor worry about how to get enough to eat; the very rich worry about vague, incomprehensible things like offshore bank account rates and shooting parties; I worry about everything – and yet, nothing of consequence, at the same time. I stood in my kitchen on yet another grey, formless morning this morning whilst Girl Child battered the siamese cat jovially with bits of wooden train track (one of my many nods in the direction of supposedly Good Parenting – no plastic mass-produced nonsense for my offspring, no! Chop down what remains of the earth’s forests instead and fashion them into trivialities. Ah, guilt again, that familiar blanket).

Suddenly, I felt as though gravity had increased and pressed my forehead against the cool wooden countertop. I took a deep breath and shut my eyes as tightly as I could. I simply cannot understand these coils of sadness and guilt that wrap themselves around my heart and squeeze it tighter and tighter, like a Chinese paper finger-trap.
***
It was over in an instant; my marriage slipped out of my grasp like a bead of mercury disappearing down a flight of stairs, becoming more and more fragmented, until it had all but disappeared. It is very strange, inhabiting – yet somehow feeling foreign – in my own life. All the remnants of our years of cohabitation remain intact: the shoes carelessly tossed in the front hallway, my tendency to prepare meals that I know Ex Husband would have appreciated, the sudden crushing feeling in the chest when I wake from freftful sleep to find myself alone in what had been our bed. I really am not one for crying – at least, that is the public persona I have adopted. Even in my most private moments I have a significant amount of difficulty in summoning forth tears. It always feels bit melodramatic, a bit weak. I don’t question the value of the emotional release possible in such a display, but don’t seem capable of accessing that sort of disihinibition. I comport myself as though I am constantly under scrutiny. This plays out in my endless repetition of housework (”What if somewhere were to drop by?”) There is something meditative about ordering one’s house; I suppose there is some lofty comparison to ordering one’s mind to be made, rather like those Tibetan monks I saw on a documentary who take dishcloths and brooms and cleaned their monastery with a sort of maniacal zeal every morning.
I can see where this might take them.