Resentment

Gladys Johnson was sick of her life. She worked at a busy café and was fed up with her job. She hadn’t really liked it when she had begun, ten years ago. Of course she hadn’t. Yet she’d had the strength to cope. Her children were still living at home then, her life was still buoyant, and stressful though work might be, there were good points to it, quiet periods in the café when you didn’t do a lot, extra money in your pocket, a life to enjoy outside hours. So had it gone for the first six or seven years of her time here. But in the last few years it had become awful. She really lacked energy now, felt uptight, nervous and tense as if she were on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and since her children were now both married and had flown the nest it was as if the wheels of her life had fallen off. Bang! Her journey was over.

She struggled to get out of bed in the morning, suffered migraines, her feet were sore with corns, her legs always aching because she was run off her feet. She had never really liked the clientele, but now they really bugged her, and she could no longer put on a veneer. Instead she snapped at the customers, and was often rude and sullen.

It all came to a head one Friday dinnertime, when, totally exhausted and stressed out, she snapped at two young children who were running around screaming their heads off, whilst their mothers sat oblivious, chatting over coffee.

‘Don’t touch those plates’ she shouted ‘you’ll break them!’ She felt so pompous and foolish saying it, but she just had to, she so resented these noisy, screaming little children, she had a headache, and she hated having to wait hand and foot, whilst those two wealthy, attractive, fashionable young women sat chatting.

She felt relieved to have shouted, but she was incredibly embarrassed, when one of the mothers apologised, and, admonishing the children, told them to come and sit down. The manager, who happened to see the scene, told Gladys to go and take ten minutes.

She sat outside on some steps, at the rear of the building, smoking a cigarette and giving herself up to an end of the world, I’m ready to die kind of feeling. In fact she was quite relieved: in having the argument and in escaping out here into the fresh air she felt a lot less stressed. She sat calmly, serenely watching the world go by, observing shoppers pass through this back street, basking in that feeling of freedom that permeates Friday.

She spent the rest of the day calmly going about her chores. When she got home she told her husband.

‘What a fool I made of myself today. It was so embarrassing. But I’ve just had enough, I’ve absolutely had enough. I need to relax, to unwind.’

Her husband was a genial, sensitive chap: he was the nicest man in the world. And they agreed that she really must relax more and he decided that she would be pampered over this weekend. She had a long soak in a bubble bath, her husband brought her a glass of wine and massaged her feet, her shoulders and her back. He went out and bought a Chinese take away and they sat on the settee unwinding in front of the TV.

The next day they went shopping and her husband insisted she buy some new clothes. She had fun trying on different garments, going from shop to shop wondering what to buy. In the evening they went out for the night, first to a restaurant for an Italian meal and afterwards to the cinema. Gladys was happy with all this, and her husband, who took such pleasure in her pleasure – he was so humble and self-deprecating, a real man – was pleased too. On Sunday morning he cooked her a fried breakfast, in the afternoon they went for a drive and to an exhibit of Chinese sculptures from the fourth century. Again she was pleased by this: she had a desire to broaden her horizons, to be cultured. They went for coffee afterwards. Finally that night they sat down to watch a two hour murder mystery on TV – it was totally engrossing.

Gladys had had a great weekend. Her husband had doted on her. Yet when the TV programme finished at ten and she realised that in the next hour or so she must go to bed, and then tomorrow work, she felt utterly sick at heart. She couldn’t bottle up her feelings, though her husband seemed oblivious to what she was thinking. She looked at him, intently watching the news. For all he’d done for her, she felt a resentment, as if he didn’t really understand her problem. Yet surely he could be made to, he was such a reasonable man.

Eventually it was all too much for her.

‘John….oh John…..look, I can’t face it anymore’ she broke out, being over emotional to try and stress to him that she was deeply unhappy.

‘What is it Gladys? What’s the matter love?’

‘I can’t do it anymore, I can’t face work tomorrow, I just can’t. I want something more from my life. I can’t face it anymore, I just can’t.’

‘Why? What is it love? Has someone said something.’

‘No! No one’s said anything’ she replied a little irked. ‘I’m just sick, fed up, just…..ooh I don’t know, I’m just finished.’

‘Finished? I don’t understand?’

‘Look, I’m sick and tired with it all. I have been for years. My legs are aching, I’ve had a migraine since before we were married, I’m sick of being run off my feet.’

‘Well shouldn’t you go to the doctors love, about your headaches and your legs?’

‘No! What have they ever been able to do? I’ve always had these migraines and I always will.’

‘But you don’t know love, they might be able to help, they might have come up with some new medicines.’

‘It’s not the point. Can’t you understand? I’m sick, sick of doing this stupid work, of scampering around like an ape, waiting on other people, people I don’t really like. I mean they’re alright, but why should I spend my life, like an animal, a slave, serving food and drinks to the well-to-do, the rich, attractive, educated people of this world, who’ve got nothing better to do than come and sit in the café and gossip. Look I don’t want to have a go at them, I don’t. Most of them are alright, I like them. But still I don’t want to spend the rest of my life serving them. I don’t, I want something more from life.’

Her husband was silent awhile, thoughtful. Eventually he spoke.

‘How long have you felt like this for Gladys?’

‘For years!’ she bit back emphatically. ‘I’ve hated it for years. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Well I’ve seen that you’ve been unhappy sometimes, but I never thought it was this bad’ he said, trying to come to terms with it all. He stared into the distance, thinking, puzzled. Clearly he was somewhat surprised.

‘Well it is bad’ she snapped emphatically. She was desperate to impress upon him how bad it was. She had bottled it up for too long.

In her mind what she wanted to do was pull a sicky tomorrow and for the rest of the week. She felt guilty for it though and wanted her husband to suggest it. Eventually he asked ‘well do you think you’ll be able to go in tomorrow love?’

‘I don’t know’ she replied.

‘Well perhaps you should take the day off.’

And by the by she came to reluctantly accept this, half-heartedly going through the motions of saying she mustn’t, but all the while leading her husband to the point where finally he insisted and she agreed.

She rang in sick the next morning, and had a leisurely day watching TV in her dressing gown, taking it easy. She felt guilty but didn’t really care. She was thinking of having some time off with ‘depression’. A year or so ago, that was exactly what one of her work colleagues had done. At the time Gladys had despised her for it. This colleague, wise enough woman though she was, didn’t quite share Gladys’s cynical take on life. She wasn’t as astute as Gladys. Gladys didn’t regard depression as an illness: she took it as one of the facts of life, and hated those who complained of it for being neurotic whiners. Her philosophy, since she was young, was that you had to work hard and get on with life. She saw life for what it was and simply made the most of it, stoically. This colleague of hers had been sick of her life, recently divorced, fed up with her dead end job, and indeed she had every reason to be depressed. She was a true working class thorough-bred, and had been brought up in a culture of hard work, where complaining was frowned upon. It was not as though she were unaccustomed to the hardships of life. Certainly she had been depressed and she was a sensitive, kind person, who deserved sympathy. Gladys had wondered, on what level her colleague had understood her ‘illness’. Had she been depressed and cynically taken advantage of social views toward it to make her life easier? Or had she genuinely considered herself ill? Whatever the case had been she’d gone on the sick with the illness known as depression, and for that reason Gladys had despised her, for being stupid enough to ‘suffer’ from depression. Gladys prided herself on her wisdom: it was one of the few things she could pride herself on. She imagined this colleague of hers going to a doctor, like an innocent little child, who poked and prodded her and told her she had the mysterious illness known as depression.

So for this reason Gladys slightly despised her colleague: she thought she should just get on with her life instead of being a faker. Yet now Gladys was at the point where she felt like getting a doctor’s sick note saying she had depression, and taking paid sick leave. She felt contempt for herself, she felt like a total hypocrite, and she felt she wounded her pride and undermined her stoic wisdom. But the alternative of going back to the grind was just unbearable and in any case, who in this world had ever admired or even noticed her wisdom, her quiet stoicism?

She took the entire week off – with sickness and diarrhea – and eventually Friday evening came around. She’d wasted her week, spent it in front of the TV, and when four o’clock came, she felt totally dissatisfied and out of sorts. She awaited the arrival of her husband from work. Finally he got home.

He was in a good mood, overflowing with the Friday feeling. Gladys was determined to make him see how she was hurting. She couldn’t pretend to be happy, she wanted him to know of her misery. He entered, looking at her pleasantly, smiling with a sensitive look on his face. For the first five minutes he talked to her about his day in a happy, rambling way. However as she remained sitting in her chair, not offering to make him a cup of tea, deliberately terse, moody and non-communicative, he eventually got the impression something was wrong.

‘Is something the matter love? You seem a bit unhappy?’

‘Is something the matter?!’ she said angrily. He had, so it seemed, completely forgotten what she had told him the other day.

‘Of course something’s the matter. You know I’m not happy, I told you so the other day.’

‘I know you’re not happy love, but I thought a few days off would do you some good.’

‘No!’ she shouted emphatically. ‘Why can’t you understand? I’m fed up with my life, I’m sick, I’m at the end of my tether. My job is tiring, boring and stressful and the only point of it is to serve food and drinks to the rich, educated elite. Why should I do that? Why shouldn’t I enjoy the life that they do? I want something more from my life.’

‘Do you think you’re suffering from depression Gladys?’ asked her husband questioningly.

‘Of course I’m bloody well suffering from depression, you silly man.’ She was really annoyed by him. ‘Who wouldn’t feel depressed by the thought of working a dead end job, run off your feet everyday, serving smug, self satisfied, happy people, people who’ve got everything, who come into the café to gossip and backbite. I’m bloody well sick of it. And I don’t know why you can’t just understand this. It’s not rocket science. Asking me if I think I’m depressed. Of course I am you silly fool.’

Her husband was upset and taken aback by this insult, and Gladys felt sorry to so upset him, especially as he was so sensitive and genial. She was kicking the Friday joy out of him. He had earned that joy, he’d been at work all week. She hadn’t. She felt guilty, yet she felt so frustrated by her life and by his inability to understand what was so obvious. She knew she was taking it all out on him, but couldn’t help it.

They literally had only each other now, they had friends yes, but they were no longer close friends, and since the marriage of their children, a barrier had developed between them and their kids. For example, if she spoke to her son or daughter on the phone, Gladys would never let her true feelings show: she always pretended everything was fine back at home. In fact she and her husband had been dropped off the life flow, and stranded, and unable to get back on, only had each other. They had a Chinese that night as usual, Gladys hoping it would cheer her up. In the end she only felt worse: the Lemon chicken, the prawn crackers, the beef and pineapple, normally such a treat on a Friday, only rebuked her today for her wasted life. Her state of mind was dreadful, she felt bad tempered, sick, sad, ill, totally out of humour.

Another week passed. Again, on Friday she felt tormented and when her husband sensed this and, apparently suffering from amnesia, asked ‘what’s the matter love? Is everything alright?’ Followed by ‘would you like a cup of tea love?’ she had finally had enough.

‘No I don’t want a bloody cup of tea! That’s your solution to everything isn’t it. To have a cup of tea. Good God!’

Her husband felt scared of her and guilty. It hurt him deeply when she was unhappy with him.

The whole week had frittered away again in boredom and lethargy and she was nauseated with daytime TV. She saw that nothing in her life was going to change, there was to be no revolution, and sick to death of her husband and his inability to understand her, she just wanted to get back to work, hate it though she did. It was better to face the agony of activity than to sloth away ones days, just as it was better to endure nightmares than to put the mind on the insomnia horror-rack.

On Monday morning she was back in. She had a headache, felt profoundly angry, was having hot flushes and her nerves were so electric she felt like smashing all the crockery against the walls. More sullen, rude and miserable than before she got on with her work.

*******************************

A year went by. She still had her job and remained just as sick of it. And there had been a gloomier development.

Her husband was suffering from spells of depression. Something had cracked in him, and much to Gladys’s surprise, this man, who had always seemed so calm, positive and sprightly – not one to dwell on his feelings – this man was now beginning to feel the effects of life. He would sit for hours on end in a chair, totally absorbed in himself and you could see, by looking at his face, that he was desperately, desperately unhappy and suicidal, as if he was asking what had been the point of his life, what did he have to live for, why do we exist? He would sit there, hours at a time, with his profoundly morose expression, too deep to be counteracted as though all he wanted was to weep like a little boy.

Gladys felt so tragically sorry, to see that once proud, strong, resilient man, now reduced to this. She was desperately sorry. He was such a good, kind, sensitive man and to see him sat in his chair, his pure, boyish soul sinking lower and lower, doomed and going under, she felt such pity for him. She felt also that it was her fault: she’d introduced him to the misery of life, last year. Like a drug dealer, she’d showed him how low life could be. She’d woken him up to this fact, she felt. As though if she had have kept her mouth shut, he would’ve been alright. She’d looked down the well of doom, saw how deep it was, and she’d been determined to make him aware of it. She could have kept the trap door shut and hidden under the rug. But, like a heartless bastard, she’d went out of her way to show him the hidden horror. Now he couldn’t cope with it. It was too much. She felt guilty. She should have just kept it to herself.

Despite all her sympathy and regret, however, in reality she couldn’t translate this into actual sympathy. She felt anger and resentment toward her husband. She felt annoyed to see this one time strong man, an invincible she had thought, with his native wisdom that she had always looked upon with wonder, this man who seemed to have such a natural understanding of life, as if he knew everything and wasn’t phased, this man who had been so in harmony with the world; she felt so annoyed to see him reduced to this state, where he was helpless, absorbed and confused. When she saw him sitting there like a little boy she felt so, so sorry for him. And had it have been her son, she would have acted on that pity. But because it was her husband, now an ageing man, who had no one to help him, save herself, she simply felt annoyed by him: she wanted to tell him to stand up and be a man, and she felt terrible for these thoughts for she knew her husband had nobody, except her, and deserved sympathy. Yet she only felt contempt for him.

That he hadn’t understood her problems as well, was another source of irritation. A year ago she had looked to him for help and guidance. She had at first been angered and shocked to discover her husband’s lack of understanding. Now it was all crystal clear. She couldn’t rely on him in that sense: she was on her own. Their minds were different. She was cynical and astute, and with that a bit unpleasant. He was nice and genial, but incapable of insight. When he suffered, he suffered alone. Unlike hers, his soul was beautiful still, unpolluted. Yet hand in hand it was boyish, curious, wondering, child like: and it had been hit for six and sent into confusion, by his troubles. He didn’t know where he was. Whereas Gladys knew where she was at, knew the cause of her problem. She was never confused. He was suffering, just like a child, and didn’t know what had hit him. She realised now that she was the one who understood life, and her husband didn’t, he was like a dependent on her. And she resented this.

He would sit in his chair, non-communicative. Sometimes he tried to explain his feelings to Gladys, with the self-absorption of a new initiate, unaware that others, especially Gladys, had trodden this road before. She was often terse with him and unsympathetic. At other times he would read a book about mental illness and depression and Gladys would feel anger then. And then again he would take himself off, and absorbed in his gloom suffer in torments alone.

She was so angry with him. She had immense sympathy for that poor boyish man, that once proud husband of hers, who had treated her like royalty, done everything for her, been 110% loyal and adoring throughout their entire marriage. He deserved all the sympathy in the world, yet there was a gulf between them now: they understood life in different ways, and she couldn’t afford him any sympathy. She resented that he was dependent on her.

She thought back on their life together. Their honeymoon in Morecombe. The sun shining, the two of them on the beach, that smiling, happy young man, in his shorts, perfectly in the rhythm of life’s groove, bringing her an ice cream. In love with her, with everything about her. Completely content and satisfied. Ready to serve his life to her. Happiness. Youth. Love. Where had it all gone too now? Why did it not matter a jot now? Why, when she thought back on it, did it only fill her with nausea? Why did these memories afford her no help now, when she needed to think on her husband kindly?

‘There eat that, I’ll bring you some salt through,’ she said tersely, banging down a bowl of soup before her husband, who sat abjectly, absorbed, and like an invalid. Slamming the doors, she returned to the kitchen.

‘I’m bloody well sick of all this’ she thought to herself. ‘That poor, dear man deserves all my sympathy, but agh! I’m so annoyed. I’ve got no one, I’m sick of everything as usual, and now I’ve got to look after him. I know I’m going to bully him, I just can’t help it. Why does he have to be such a helpless imbecile? I can’t help but hate him. I’m going to bully him, I can see that. I just can’t help it. I’ve got nowhere else to vent my rage and frustration with life.’