Stringless

By Rich Watson

I must have been about twenty-seven when I realised.

I woke up one Sunday morning and through sleep sticky eyes I saw her and wondered who the hell she was. Who was this snoring lump of sweat by my side with her nipples in her arm-pits? Then, as I woke so did the realisation. It covered my memory like a fungus. She's my wife!

How does this happen to so many of us? It wasn't so long ago that my world was happy, filled with fun, no strings attached always up for a laugh! "Good Ol' Rich!" they used to say before her. It was there, wrapped in that wedding gift duvet on that bed, our bed, that I had found myself un-happy and in a foreign country with a woman I didn't know & and I doubt she knew me either.

A hand crafted gold ring looked uncomfortable on my finger and all of my dreams lay shattered and crumbled around me on the bed like the confetti thrown on that awful day in June when I wore the too-tight suit.

So where am I now? Who's sheets do I find myself waking under? It's the same duck down duvet in a different cover thrown on a different bed, but it's the same me that sleeps and dreams beneath it, the same me still searching for happiness and looking for someone other than myself to blame. But I’m happier now, I think. At least they’re starting to say, "Good Ol' Rich" again.

I can smile now with a truth that I couldn't have back then, an honest smile and a full heart that had lain dormant in those Scottish days. I’ve arrived at my strange beginning again now. I’ve come full circle and am returned to the site of my birth. I breathe in deeply and start again.

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