A Normal Woman

A normal woman.

That’s what Elisa was, or at least she thought so... as she picked the umpteenth pile of laundry up and took it to Heather’s immaculately tidy bedroom. Her daughter was the neat freak she never was. Her room was a calm oasis of candles, potted plants and artfully placed photographs. Elisa had been at this housework malarkey for ...ooh, half an hour now and she was exhausted, no she was bored.. that’s what she was, bored. She closed the door of the oasis behind her. Sean’s room was another planet... a health hazard. She looked in, winced.. this was her chip off the old block. The sofa beckoned and Elisa flopped down, stirring up a puff of dust bunnies as she did so.... she began scrolling on her phone like the teenager she sometimes felt like.

In fact she’d been increasingly feeling like it for a few weeks now.. was she menopausal?Geez, she actually hoped so ... she was over the redundant monthly flood. One interesting thing had happened recently... it had been a big effort to partake and she wasn’t at all sure about it, but she had joined a creative writing class, evidence of her attendance was scattered about in her tired looking lounge room, pretty moleskin notebooks, gel pens and a new laptop bag had been part of the preparation for that particular venture. Of course there was no one else as old as her in the class, but that didn’t actually seem to matter, there was plenty of fun banter between the participants ... A few weeks ago there had been a class outing and one of her fellow students had been in her face asking her, to her mind, bizarre questions... like “what religion are you?” As if that had anything to do with anything.. the answer was none by the way ..but really she was curious as to why they’d ask. They’d drawn attention to themselves... there was something unsettling about it, good unsettling.. not bad.

Well talk of the devil, super friendly this chap, why would a young guy like my Facebook photo of the train station? Elisa wondered. He seemed very fond of Facebook. Elisa had not paid much attention to it really, until the writing class insisted they all join a fb group , she’d lived most of her life without it and thought it better for it. She did like some of the articles though. Bizarrely at that very moment an article popped into her feed...

“Most married women develop crushes”, , well it hadn’t happened to her, and she reckoned that statement was a bit sweeping. Elisa reckoned that it was one of the blessings of marriage. One she actually really appreciated... You know your’e not looking, you aren’t really out and about seeing, and you are too busy doing things for everyone. You have more important things to do. Speaking of which she reluctantly hauled herself off the couch, and dragged her ancient vacuum cleaner into the hall.

THIS FELT DIFFERENT

After a good few decades of nothing being unusual for her, Elisa mused over the cleaners drone...and enjoying her very fortunate life...there really wasn’t much of a doubt in her mind... she kept thinking about that odd guy in the writing class... he was really ....odd, but he posted intriguing stuff on Facebook... and seemed to be happy to chat to her, bored possibly menopausal fat mum that she was.... she was a really contented being... but she did not want to be left out in class, because she was older.. this strange fellow did not make her feel left out..

Wandering around the clothing shops on a Saturday afternoon, she was looking for some inspiration for class... why she thought she’d find it in a bargain basement shoe shop, she wasn’t sure... but she was finding it hard to focus on the rows of bland beige ankle boots anyway.. she’d been trying not to think about Mr. Odd, but was not succeeding she had to admit it to herself ...

this was a crush .. and a bad one.

NOT A GREAT IDEA

Why was it happening now... ? She hadn’t had a crush in over 20 years or more, she had never been prone to them....Surely it wasn’t because she’d read about it.. that would be insane! She was happy at home. Really, had things become routine ? ... she didn’t think so she looked forwards to her weekend evenings with the bottle of wine and a good film to watch. So should she just “do the right thing” and get away from this situation... ? although she wasn’t really in the position at the time to do that. She had actually spent a fortune on that class...She asked Paul what should she do... “well first of all, don’t tell me about it... I do not want to hear it..look, I think you know, so can we please talk about something else... ? you’ve always got your head in the clouds Elisa.. I suppose that’s why you’ll make a decent writer”. He looked at her with hurt eyes....He wasn’t going to help her out of her moral dilemma. Actually dammit, what dilemma? it was a bloody crush not kicking Paul out of bed or asking for a divorce. Sometimes Elisa felt inclined to push against the bullshit rules of society.. but having a crush hardly went that far. So with that in mind She leant into it, befriending them, in the hope that getting to know her crush better would be totally off putting, or partly off putting anyway. That was the plan. It didn’t really work like that. Though it kind of did....

But not enough... because already Elisa felt they were her FRIEND. She had to get past the crush ... it was fun to flirt but it was also VERY uncomfortable. And yet they got on well enough. Really well in fact. And weirdly sometimes the crush just wasn’t there and she got on with them even better then...Of course that was easier to deal with , they could be the friends they wanted to be to each other. And that was great. They exchanged writing ideas .. sitting side by side on the rickety Formica tables in the run down community hall that served as their writing classroom.

THE OTHER “C” WORD

Ok, so where was the problem? No one was cheating or doing anything wrong... or IS having a crush cheating, even though it’s so pedestrian it’s basically being a human? ( even though it wasn’t normal for her...) is being affectionate cheating, is spending time chatting cheating.. is it a slippery slope or wasn’t she just a normal woman?

FEELS V COMMONSENSE

Elisa didn’t have all the answers or indeed any answers to this... but unfortunately discomfort outweighed the friendship in the end. She’d come to expect a certain kind of respect she supposed..nothing huge .. just seeing her, and acknowledging her she guessed. As the class progressed a way more “appropriate” woman, single for a start.. and that was only the first point in a long list of why she was more suitable..replaced her sitting on that Formica table .. heads together.. because Elisa was in the grip of that very unhelpful brain chemistry aka a crush... that HURT . If she’d had a crystal ball that could see two years down the track ... she’d know she would feel pretty different and even now could envisage that wasn’t going to be enough common ground to sustain the friendship, once class was over...that friendship that was so much fun now. And it WAS fun, and had a high vibration.. but that if anything that enhanced her marriage ... it most definitely did not undermine it. A sensual attraction is a very different kettle of fish from the usual attraction that everyone presumes it is... it wasn’t THAT. ..... she didn’t even think of the man as having a dick... however feeling warm, fuzzy and cuddly is nice. Elisa wondered was this attraction symptomatic of what she wasn’t giving herself, or allowing herself to receive at home perhaps, or was her caring side in overdrive for some reason because she thought or felt her friend needed a boost? As if that was any of her business , even if it were true. Her friend hurt her by ignoring her almost completely at the Writing Class presentation night, and worse, but that was something they were entitled to do... Elisa knew that, but complained about it anyway and that was her biggest mistake, if she had any thought to preserve the friendship. Everything unravelled in a very ugly fashion... anyway two years down the track she and they are completely different people. The very idea of having another crush, on ANYONE ... now seems completely ridiculous. And what might well have been and indeed was..a decent enough friendship or acquaintanceship is now severely tattered and torn. That was the last thing she wanted, but she didn’t want the crush either.

BADLY HANDLED

She just had to work with what she had at the time and honestly that was the both the crush and the friendship had grown out of the group dynamic... the writing class where they had met. And that was now long gone. There wasn’t enough common ground to expect that connection to go any further ... besides it was awkward, she didn’t want to be reminded that she’d had a crush... not that she felt ashamed.. she didn’t... just stupid. But she could have been gentler on herself and them, when dealing with that reality. And she had planned to be....Elisa wasn’t a mean person, but she did have standards for her own behaviour and how she treated others, she had been trying hard but she wasn’t meeting them here... and she was overtaken by events ... that made it mandatory that she took serious steps to kill that crush. Her method was harsh.. and took NO account of friendship. Elisa had felt her friendship wasn’t really valued... and it was a bit of a misunderstood amusing joke, she’d tried to talk about it more than once but was never heard. The object of her crush’s outrage at her hamfisted and harsh handling of this drove home the nails in the coffin of that connection. They fired back at Elisa and said some things that were actually untrue, but she understood why they felt justified in their attack. Facebook had played way too big a part in all of this and Elisa felt resentful that she could not just take time away from that to let things settle ... without causing offence. It made her very sad, all she had really wanted was to show her appreciation of the group based friendship and have a NICE GOODBYE. Then if they had met in the street sometime in the future, then would have been able to be courteous to each other, and would actually want to know how each other was doing, Instead of avoiding each other like coronavirus. She was jerked out of her reverie by the doorbell ringing.. it would be another of the endless packages that had been arriving, mostly for Heather .. though she had a few outstanding..If only a bell rang to warn that this was going to be last time you were going to see someone then you’d make sure your words and actions were of the highest standard. Elisa had resolved to focus on everything she had before her, which was a great deal more than many people had. However she felt sorry that she didn’t handle things as she should as she had never intended to be a problem to her odd friend.