Guilt

Both the state of my flat and a conversation with best mate yesterday got me thinking about this. I don't feel guilty about a lot of things and they tend not to be big things like global conflict, destruction of the world's ecosystems or selling off a country's social housing for the price of a few votes. No, my guilt is either a niggling 'not-up-to-scratch-as-a-human' type guilt or profound and rooted in a single decision I made years ago.

Today, the guilt I have felt growing in small but steady increments, correlating exactly and proportionately to the ever increasing clutter and chaos of my flat erupted like a very small volcano or a bloody huge spot. Deciding to tidy is not a decision that I can take lightly. It means for certain at least a day of moving piles of paper from one part of the room to another or from one room to another. It means tidying a small surface in the kitchen and, defying logic and logistics, then moving to clean that grubby bit on the shower before coming back and doing another bit of the kitchen. I know some people self-therapise with cleaning; I need therapy after cleaning. I reckon I am just about there. All day, I have underestimated the time it'd take me to finish.

It's not like I live in a stately home or anything. I guess I'm just not very good at it. I also have mini disasters that prolong the process. Just now, I was hoovering and trying to disentangle the 3 billion wires someone dumped behind my PC. Then the side fell of the computer and it tipped. I had to fix it with the hoover blaring in my ear because I couldn't switch it off. Then I dropped a tin of poker chips on the floor. These are back in the tin but not in appropriately colour co-ordinated stacks. I know this is fluff and trivia compared to what a lot of people have to deal with just to stay alive. I'm not moaning. AND the process assuages guilt. All I have to do is give it two or three months before I have to relieve the pressure again.

The other guilt is not so easy remedy. In fact, I doubt it's fixable. This guilt is like the chewing gum we used to swallow as kids. 'It'll stay in your stomach forever', we were warned but didn't comprehend how it would gradually eat away not only at our stomachs but also our very souls.

In brief, when I was about eight I was sent to the shops to get my mum some fags. If that sounds unlikely then you are very young. On the way I found a pound note. I was that excited I ran home to report my good fortune and forgot the fags. Mum was and remains a very honest person but, thank God, didn't have that 'let's take it to the police station to see if someone claims it' thing that helped line corrupt coppers' already bulging pockets in the 1970s. I was sent back to enjoy my good fortune and get the bloody fags. As I walked to the shop I noticed a cluster of girls aged about ten consoling a girl who was in tears. They were searching exactly where I had found the money. This wouldn't be a post about guilt if I'd stepped forward, pound in outstretched arm and said: 'fear not damsel, for I have in my hand...' No, I walked round the corner to the alluringly named 'Maunds Hatch' corner shop and bought a matchbox car and a ten penny mix. I probably had change left for a new set of clothes and tea at the Ritz; a quid was worth that much in those days.

Best mate suggested I write about it to see if it helps. Have to report that so far it doesn't seem to be working. I think there are four possibilities, two of which are very very unlikely:

1. Unlikely- person I describe recognises herself- declares herself well adjusted and happy and that, in fact, the experience helped shape her into the well-rounded, charity-giving, Mother Theresa wannabe she is today. (I hope it's this one)
2. Unlikely (I hope) - father of person contacts me to advise me that around that time his daughter lost his last pound which he'd sent her to the shops with to buy fags and booze and on her empty handed return he had smacked her but by some quirk she had got a blood clot or something and died. Sentenced to life, he has only just been released from prison and is making it his life's work to track me down and punish me in vile ways for ruining his life. (I really hope it's not this one)
3. The chances of her or anyone she knows reading this are so remote as to be incalculable and the status quo will be maintained.
4. I will actually feel better without any of the above. I still don't yet though.