Untitled so far

lilmissprincess

This is an essay I had to write for class, under the title of the start and ends of relationships. It was meant to be in article form.

My relationships tend to have a ritual about them, the important ones anyway. They tend, for the most part, to follow a pattern. They start in a certain way, and although the ending varies for each of them, it tends to fit the same mould. They tend to have music, symbolism attached. Boyfriends, friends, relatives I never see anymore. The people who have made an impact on my life and left it, leaving me a hurt but wiser person.
This time, it varied completely. Well, it tends to when you’re nineteen and find out you’re pregnant and single all at the same time. But it was the start of what was to be the most blissful, heart wrenching relationship of my life. It did, however, start the exact same as most of my relationships. I sat, on reading the result of the test, with a massive tub of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice-cream, watching something on TV unsure what to think. I wasn’t paying attention to the TV at all, or the ice-cream. It was like the start of a relationship which in a way it was. It was the start of my relationship with Nugget, the name I’d later put on my growing bump and whatever it was in there. In my head, I was in shock. I’d been careful. I’d been really careful. I was nineteen, I wasn’t some stupid fourteen year old trying it out without a condom. I knew that when a man and a woman love each other very much and all that jazz. However, fates decided to gang up on me and my collection of contraceptives and decide to impregnate me anyway.
The dad was a friend of mine from college, a fellow Arts student that I’d flirted with and gotten drunk with and now was having a kid with. My level of shock was the same level of his heart attack. He sat with me that night, the two of us spooning ice-cream into our mouths not tasting it at all, just staring into open space and wondering what the hell we were going to do next. We listened to a playlist we’d made the week before, when everything was simple, when we were just friends who had messed around and left it at that. The playlist had a lot of the Beatles music on it. I sang along and he looked at me as if wondering how the hell I was being so calm about it all. The song? “Yesterday”. It said everything about us.
“Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay,
Oh I believe in Yesterday…”
Yesterday. We were young, free, nothing to worry about other than next weeks rent and how that affected our drinking money. Nothing major, certainly not another human being. We, as students, didn’t eat properly and now we were hit with this little thing, this other person that we had to feed, we had to clothe and keep warm. It was like an alien presence in the room, it wasn’t just us sitting on the couch with a duvet over us, eating tasteless ice-cream. It was there too, and it changed everything.
Months went by. “It” became “Nugget” one night when we were sitting watching stupid reality TV and he started calling it nicknames. It kicked on the word Nugget and it stuck. I grew bigger. Honestly, that’s an amazing understatement. I became colossal as summer began, as I hit the seven month mark. Exams were over and I’d passed, as I found out nearer my due date. It was me and Nugget and together we made it through, with a little help.
The end, I guess, was like most ends of relationships. Against my free will. When I was eight months pregnant, and as wide as a house, I was after growing extremely fond of my little Nugget. To be honest, I was terrified. I was able to look on it as “It’s going to be then end of being so fat!” but then I was looking at how I was meant to look after this kid. How this was an actual human who needed to be fed and changed and cried for most of the day when it wasn’t sleeping. It was something I was dreading and yet the thing I most looked forward to. I knew it was the end of an era, the end of me and Nugget being womb buddies, I’d grown used to it always being there. Sadly, in my opinion anyway, Nugget was my best friend. I told it everything. I realise now that a grown woman of nineteen talking to the large bump she brings everywhere may have looked a little strange, but it was like it was my bump-shaped therapist.
That Tuesday, I knew it was strange. Something felt wrong. Something felt out of place, a like a song that ends half way through or a tub of Ben and Jerry’s mixed with vinegar. I sat on the couch waiting for him to arrive talking to Nugget as if nothing was wrong, but I knew it was. Nugget wasn’t talking back. Nugget wasn’t moving slightly when I slid my hands over the bump and started to sing to it. The Beatles. A song I’d been introduced to when I started the arts course. “I Will”, from the White Album. Perfectly fitting.
“Who knows how long I’ve loved you
You know I love you still
Will I wait a lonely lifetime
If you want me to, I will”.
A love song. I meant every word for both my little Nugget and for whatever we had going on then.
Nugget’s dad arrived. We went to the car, sat there silently. I watched him drive so carefully, the two of us refusing to make a sound, even breathe.
I could say I knew what had happened. I sat there, listening to them tell me that this was the end. My relationship was over. My Nugget had given up.
As I said, relationships have rituals.
The end is a blur. Yes, I lay there while they took her, Nugget being a girl, from me, her tiny cold body that never got a chance. I lay there and I cried with her in my arms, this perfect little human I had dreaded looking after.
“You have to name her.”
Nugget wasn’t exactly a fitting name. Not for a beautiful baby girl who at that moment meant everything in my life to me.
We sat there for hours, with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, not tasting it, picking a name. We finally decided on Amy, it seemed to fit. She’d always be my nugget, I didn’t know this Amy girl, I had never met her until she was lying in my arms.
The burial was a blur. This tiny box with my little girl in it, a man’s arms around me, relatives and friends looking but not understanding. I walked home from the graveyard and put on the Greatest Hits CD. “She’s Leaving Home”. I went to the fridge, grabbed the icecream, sat and cried. The true end of a relationship.
They say that relationships have eight stages of break-up. Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, Anger, Depression again, Calm, Hope. I tell you, I felt every one of them. For weeks I sat there, watching the sun rise and set through the blinds, sometimes alone sometimes not. I didn’t want anyone. I looked down at my stomach and felt empty, my live-in therapist was gone. I felt like Eleanor Rigby, the lonely person who just gave up on keeping a face at the door for other people.
Relationships. They have symbolism. Songs. Rituals. Mine tend to revolve around tubs of Ben and Jerry’s and Beatles music. Different people have different things.
But as the Beatles put it, so well: “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.”
I know as long as Cookie Dough remains a popular flavour, I can survive the end of anything.
And that’s my story.
Ice-cream, sixties rock and the most important relationship of my life…

Until next week.
xo

lilmissprincess

Any critique?