Resignation

It being the Period of Resignation and all, I didn’t so much as bat an eyelid when my committee friend Issy told me she has been diagnosed with secondary cancer in her lungs, liver and bone. She’s thirty-two.

This ought to jolt me into a sense of proportion about my own whining, but of course it didn’t.

I’m not whining about anything any more: I’m resigned. It’s the realisation that you’ve slipped over the peak of the parabola. Oh, if only you’d known that you were cheering your final hurrah, how much you would have savoured it! How much more carefully you would have cherished those moments where you were cherished, and held much more attentively in your mind’s eye those moments where you were held in someone else’s arms.

It’s a gradual process, like a mist coming in from the sea. Almost imperceptible to begin with. Small things, small steps, small moments. Then before you know it, it doesn’t matter which day you wear your nice bra and which day you don’t. Or your nice pants. And after a few weeks you realise the latest lingerie you bought is never coming out of its package, labels still intact, and you take it back to the shop for a refund, mumbling something about gift, wrong size, and use the money to buy a jumper instead.

And you stop using that nice brand of body lotion, because no one is going to come close enough to smell your skin. And then you stop shaving under your arms as a matter of course, and only bother if you’re wearing a sleeveless top. And then you stop shaving your legs entirely, because heck no one is gonna see them, just wear trousers and boots. Chuck the stockings and wear some winter tights. And you run out of that special conditioner that made your hair silky and scented, because no one will be running their hands through it now except maybe your hairdresser.

And you stop wearing the tits-n-heels outfits that made you, for a ridiculous late-blooming moment, feel sexy; and realise that you are a fool, that you are mutton dressed as mutton. And you go back to wearing black trousers suits. And you see your confident red coat is wearing out and you replace it with a black one. And you jam your flamboyant multicoloured, twisted silk scarves in a cheery carnival knot at the back of the drawer and wonder what the hell you were thinking.

And maybe you will sit in a restaurant with someone who used to pant after you, and beg to fuck your brains out, and realise that you are utterly resistible.

And you will accept the inevitability of this, and the knowledge will sit forever in your chest like a stone, and you will say nothing, and smile and sip your wine, and feel grateful for any small smile or kindness.

For this is the Period of Resignation, and this is all there is.