On being nice

I went for a drink with José the other night – it took some effort to pull him out of his NQT private hell, but then he was as happy to take a break from it all as I was to have a human being to speak to. And José being José, I didn’t have to wait long for yet another immortal quote. He was telling me about a wedding he went to the previous weekend, where he saw a few people from the programme. As they were exchanging information about how they were doing and how the absent others were doing, Naomi filled them in on my potential move to Milton Keynes. To which José said: ‘Good for her, maybe she’ll finally be nice!’. Which didn’t go down well at all. He tried to explain but worried that he did not manage to put what he meant through and hoped that if I had heard about it already, I wasn’t angry at him.
I wasn’t. I was laughing out laud, because I could just see the outraged looks and shocked expressions, and ‘how-can-you-say-that’-s he was describing.
Also because it’s so José to say something like that.
And because I didn’t need much explaining to know that ‘maybe she’ll finally be nice’ really meant ‘maybe life will finally be nice to her’.

And may his wish come true, cause lately life’s been more of a bitch. A shitty week was crowned by an even shittier Friday, culminating with me standing in the middle of New Street in a cold drizzle sobbing down the phone that I missed my train. But let’s not go there – a new week is starting, my batteries have been recharged over the weekend, so I shall brace myself and hope for the best.

Leavers' Ball

‘There’s nothing more repulsive than a drunk woman’ my father used to say, and after the leavers’ ball I have to agree. I probably wouldn’t be so condemning if the woman in question wasn’t the girlfriend of the Ginger One, who is the cutest bloke on the course and therefore should be with a perfect woman so that it’s okay for him not to be hitting on me. Poor thing, he spent most of the night outside with a limp body falling through his hands, he probably also had to listen to her slurry monologues and hold her hair back when her stomach finally gave up trying to digest all she’d poured into it.
Another highlight of the evening was seeing the Cow dressed in a washed out beach dress and pouring out of it wherever possible. Which didn’t make her less condescending as she told me that I looked very nice in a tone of voice implying an utter surprise.
Nevertheless, I had lots of fun. We danced our feet off (or, in my case, literally my shoes off) and cigarette breaks with Jose contributed highly to my Spanish vocabulary – I am now capable of making very explicit sexual advances indeed. We annoyed the lady in charge of catering by requesting first bread then butter, both of which were inaccessible. And the tuna really needed butter – I have never had fish so dry in my entire life! What is it with overcooking things in this country?

PPD

Yesterday I went to university to submit all of my paperwork. I finished typing the last of the assignments on Monday night and for a brief moment I enjoyed that wonderful feeling of lightness and freedom one gets once a big burden is out of the way. Unfortunately, it had changed overnight in to a full-blown postpartum depression and so I went to the university a proper and sorry mess. Every time I tried to say anything, it made me want to cry. Every time someone asked if I was ok, my eyes would tear up. As I said – a proper and sorry mess. My tutor thought that it was all about the job I didn’t get, which I suppose it was a bit, as in no job equals no stability, and yes it was a deception, but hey, it was almost a week ago, enough is enough! (Okay, fine, I am still a bit upset about it, but life goes on, really, I do mean it).
Anyway, I didn’t really talk to anyone at all cause, as I said, every attempt on conversation made me cry, and I definitely wasn’t going to make my PPD into a public event. People were feeling sorry for me as it was and you all know how much I like people feeling sorry for me.
And then I got back home, opened a box of wine, got out that jigsaw puzzle I had bought a few weeks ago and went into a full relaxation mode, screw year 7 reports, screw everything, I’m relaxing and that’s that.
And today, today I got a message from Jose on Facebook, he actually sat and wrote this long, thoughtful message about how I shouldn’t let it get to a point where I was feeling burnt out, how I should let go every once in a while and not forget to relax and recharge my batteries and what a wonderful person I was. And I felt loved. Cause he doesn’t really know me all that much, and here he serves me a perfectly accurate diagnosis of my PPD and cares enough to sit down and type it all up when he has only two days left to finish his assignment.
Two conclusions from all this: (1) I love Pepe, and (2) I need another jigsaw puzzle. Both shall be acted upon tomorrow, as I’m having coffee with Jose and then am going shopping.