The Best of all Possible Worlds

 My sister said something very interesting yesterday. She said "Of all of us I think you're the most like mum." And I don't  think she was making a "drinky drinky" hand motion while she said it. 

There is a streak of morbidity that runs through my family like a depressive recessive gene. We are not know for our sunny outlook on life. Opportunity is merely another word for crisis and the worst possible outcome of any situation is the one to be expected and endured. It comes from my Father's side of the family - if he ever attempted to look on the bright side he would see only a dead car burning on the lawn. 

My mother is not like this. My mother, certainly lately, is devoutly Panglossian. She hopes for the best and it just sort of works out for her. She's like Titania, sat on her throne working through her intrigues, while a hell of a lot of rude mechanicals buzz around her sorting shit out. The last time she was in hospital she was keen to leave and blithely told anyone who would listen that it was fine as she would be looked after by her marvellous son who was flying in from Belfast to butler for her. The one person she didn't tell was me. But it worked out - she got out of hospital and I was on the next flight over sharpish. She wished it and it came to pass. 

She's just come out of hospital again having broken her other hip. She was in hospital for well over a month this time. They were extremely ungracious in their keenness for turfing her out of the bed and bandied notions of a rehab unit disappeared as my mother continued to equivocate. Finally she was shunted home in an ambulance without anyone bothering to ask if there was anyone waiting for her or if she had any food in the house. In fact she had neither as my sister, who had been down visiting her was out buying food, when the ambulance pitched up. However, the care package she's getting looks good, everyone has worked well and my sister and two brothers have flocked around her. It seems to have worked out exactly the way she wanted it to. She wrinkles her nose like Samantha in Bewitched and stuff magically happens. 

Historically I have been as pessimistic as the rest of them. I routinely assumed the worst as a self-fulfilling prophecy and that way I was rarely disappointed. There is a certain grim satisfaction in expecting the worst and having it unfold exactly as you predicted. You can get pretty comfy rolling around in shit if you convince yourself its the best you'll ever do for a duvet. I didn't do a lot of things because I assumed I'd fail. I always met every opportunity with a suspicious sniff and every endeavour was doomed before I even began so I never began. 

I'm not like this now and all it took was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It took my world falling apart and having to completely start again in a new country, without friends without a job. Just set adrift. That's obviously not true: when Kelly died people were really good, her family looked after me, my family and friends came over to Belfast to see me. But the the way I saw it was that I had two choices: I could either drink myself to death and get the whole sorry business done with or I could actually try and start again and try and make something of myself. Something that she might have been proud of. Something that she would never get the chance to do. She didn't have the luxury of fear of failure or anticipating the worst or not bothering, so I had no option but to knock up a five year plan and get stuck in. 

I'm not a going to start posting inspirational memes. I don't think people can do anything they want if they just really, really believe it. That sort of nonsense, privileged thinking can be actually damaging, and can be as oppressive as telling people that they can't. And I still have a healthy fear of talking to new people, of cold calling, of Zoom calls and displaying my wares. A lifetime's programming and, I believe, a familial tendency to expect the worst don't just melt away. Even today I shall be attempting to negotiate a contract in a Zoom call - nothing in my long history of just existing could have prepared me for that. But I'm better than I was. The five year plan didn't exactly work out - I had no notion that I would ever write a play until I had to write one because we had agreed to put one on. I had never heard of podcasts five years ago. The novels that I wanted to write were written but have stubbornly refused to be available in the shops. But I'm getting there. I'm flailing around, a mad monkey flinging his shit but some of it is sticking. And that's my career right there: shit on the brim of a Zookeeper's hat. But like the French I believe shit to be lucky.