Brides

Two of my friends got married on Saturday.  It was a lovely wedding and C, the bride, looked beautiful.  The occasion, though, reminded me of a conversation I had with my mother a few weeks ago.  It was a very surreal conversation, and one that you should probably never have with your mother.

I'll be graduating with my under graduate degree this September (I just sent off my last essay today!) and I'm having a party to celebrate.  My mum suggested the party when I was in hospital sometime last year or the year before, and it was just before my most recent admission that I started to organise the party and send out invitations.

Mum and J are very kindly paying for most of the party, and it was while we were discussing some of the costs that this surreal conversation took place, beginning with her saying, 'Of course, if you decide to get married next year then we'll have to have a re-think about finances.'

????????  'Yeeees, but I need a man, and a relationship with a man, before getting married becomes a possibility.'

'Hmmm.  Have you thought about maybe going to Thailand and getting a Thai bride?'

??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????!!!!!!!!!! 'No.  I can honestly say that I haven't.  And Mum, I'm not gay.  You do know that, don't you?'

'Yes, it's just ... Well, I thought with your liberal views, and all that...'

?????!!!!!!!????????  'Er.  Um.  Right.  I see.'  NO, I DON'T!!! What liberal views in particular????  'Well, um, I'm not gay, and I'm not going to Thailand to get a wife.'

'Oh.  Okay ... So you won't be getting married next year?'

'No, I think that's very unlikely.  Lovely as it would be to be getting married, I do want to marry a man, and I want it to be a man I love.'

I have no idea where that idea of hers came from, and I have to say that I felt as though I ought to be apologising for being straight.  I'm also rather perplexed as to why she seemed to think I might want a bride!  And a Thai bride!  This is the woman who was anxious about me being well enough to go to North Yorkshire, so I have no idea where this notion of me jetting off to Thailand came from.  And a bride from Thailand!!!   The conversation seems so wrong in so many ways.

Completely surreal.  Totally bizarre.

Sweetheart

He knealt down, held my hand, turned his penetratingly blue eyes to me, called me Sweetheart and stabbed me in the wrist with a needle.

One of the things that I find ever so difficult about chronic illness is the restrictions it puts on socialising and opportunities to meet people ... most specifically, potential partners. I yearn for a relationship. I yearn for the possibility of marriage and children, but it seems to me that it doesn't matter who I am as a person, the fact is that the life I lead - with chronic illness - isn't attractive. It doesn't matter if I am a good person with plenty of positive things to offer and love to give; the fact that I live so close to the edge of life so much of the time turns people away. I can fully appreciate that it's stressful for those around me and who care about me, especially as it's a recurrent situation, but it saddens me that my prospects for relationships are so stunted.

I am on the receiving end of many terms of endearment when I'm in hospital - sweetheart, honey, treacle, dear, flower etc - and many of them said by men, but male doctors. They don't mean them as terms of endearment, but as something to soothe the pain they are about to inflict, or the stress of the situation, or their own anxieties about the difficulty I'm having in breathing. I would so love to have someone call me sweetheart and to actually be their sweetheart. There is a hole in my life that I know can only be filled by a loving relationship, and it saddens me so much to think about how slim the chances are of this hole ever being filled, because of the unattractive feature of severe brittle asthma and the shadow of death in my life.

I'm okay on my own. I'm independent and self-sufficient. I have excellent friends, but I do wish I had the company of a man who loved me ... and I wish I had the possibility of children ... a family of my own.