Talking with a friend about the breaking of relationship, she used the metaphor of hitting an ice floe and how you see that ice floe looming. And I said yes, and that crashing into it wasn’t because of lack of love or intelligence, but often had something to do with childhood catastrophe and the learning that love and disaster elide. And we sort of agreed that once it had been hit, there was no drawing back from it, no counselling would work, there was no route round.

Then going over this with a wise gay friend he said that our generation – his and mine – in our formative years had our deepest desires met with homophobia, scorn and silence. There was no one to talk to. It meant we internalised pain and were on our own. He said thank goodness it’s easier now.

Then he gave me a very good bit of advice: You should put a rubber band round your wrist and every time you find yourself thinking of the person you know you must forget, twang the band and make yourself think of something else. It gives a sort of sharp Wake-up-snap-out-of-it feel. It’s curiously effective, though these days, for myself, I’m far too grown up and busy for such twanging.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under At home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.