Thank you

Those of you who know, will know that in the same manner that I have a tendency to run to fat and a tendency to drink too much, I also have a tendency to indulge in sentimentality.

Christmas is a desperately sentimental time. You only have to listen to the radio or watch the television to be reminded of how the season can render someone else’s shitty experience so much shittier: to be homeless at Christmas is somehow – in the mind of the comfortably housed person at least – somehow worse than being homeless on any other day of the year. For a near or dear one to die in the Christmas Season somehow compounds the pain. I don’t know exactly what it is that heightens our senses in such a way at this time of year, and to be honest, that is not what I want to explore.

Rather, I would like to acknowledge, in this most sentimental of seasons and yet in the most unsentimental way I can, my almost unbearable and acute happiness. I am presently re-reading the diaries and if I learn nothing else from trawling back across the past thirty years, I learn that where I am now is where I have wanted to be for a long, long time.

I am not sure if it is traditional for ones forties to be the decade where it all comes right, but in my case it is certainly true. In my twenties, as much as I loved Alison and as much as we tried to have children, the fact is that I was not up to it emotionally or physically. I was too wracked by self-doubt and professional and emotional insecurity. I am sorry for that.

My thirties largely passed in a relationship that lasted nine years but which should have lasted only two. No manner of compensation in the form of professional development and loads of good mates could cover up for the fact that I was nought but a shell for seven years. I remember clearly looking in the mirror one day in 2003 and thinking that I could see through myself. I was a man of no substance.

But now I want for nothing. I want for nothing spiritually, professionally, personally, financially, emotionally and physically. In any damn way that you care to mention I have absolutely nothing except wonder and enjoyment and pleasure and security in my life. I live where I want to live. I am in love and in turn, am loved. I have a daughter, a fact that still amazes me given my various diagnoses of infertility and cancer. And I am glad I have her now and not twenty years ago for now I am ready.

I am richer than I ever thought possible. I do a job that I love. I spend every minute of every day, happy.

So. Thank you. I am not religious and thus I have no deity unto which I need to kneel down and pray. Instead, I say to anyone who gives a shit and anyone who cares to listen. Thank you.