LJ Idol - Week 9 (Better Half)
I started reading at a pretty early age. My mum fully encouraged it, mainly because it kept me occupied in the long hours I spent at my grandmothers waiting for her or my dad’s shift to finish. It also kept me entertained on bus rides, stopped me getting underfoot in the kitchen whilst she cooked dinner and allowed her to feel better that I wasn’t sitting in front of a television all day like some kids.
Of course this hobby also caused me to need glasses at age seven (eye strain from reading under the covers by torchlight). Got me into trouble at school (reading under the desk when the teacher was boring me rigid), and nearly got me run over by a car no less than four times (Reading on the way to school despite the fact there was two main roads between home and school). But this isn’t a tale about how much I read, but rather what I read at a specific period in time and what fantasies I happened to create in my head while I was reading.
As a pre-teen I gorged on the adventures of Anne of Green Gables, Pippi Longstocking, the twins at St Clares and the naughtiest girl in school. I longed to be a red headed adventurer. To walk on my hands and float down a lake pretending to be the lady of shallot. Or to run off to boarding school and make lifelong friends, conquer my weaknesses and learn how to play lacrosse (even though I had no idea what lacrosse was). As a teenager I lost myself in the worlds of Morder and Narnia. I fell in love with Mr Darcy and remained baffled at the interest Heathcliff held for Cathy (or anyone for that matter).
Then one day, I was sitting in my nana’s waiting on Sunday tea being served and bored senseless when she asked me if I would like something to read. After greedily grabbing the book from her hands, I was dismayed to find out it was a Mills and Boon. I had always avoided these, but I was bored, and depressed and spending Sunday afternoon in my nana’s, so I went for it, and there my friends is where my beloved, if short lived obsession with Mills and Boon was born.
I found them to be almost perfect. I nicknamed them as candy floss for the brain. They didn’t have the emotional impact or depth that the heavy hitters I loved had, but they had a charm of their own. They could be enjoyed without thinking too much and more importantly they could be started and finished in one sitting. So I read, and then read some more, and then some more. Now as you have probably noticed from what I mentioned earlier, I am very easily influenced by what I read. As a child I wanted to tame dragons, storm the fires of Mordor, ride on the back of Aslan as we raced to save Narnia together.
Well the books may have changed but my imagination hadn’t. Only now I didn’t want the perfect adventure, I wanted the perfect man. The strong dark, six foot six millionaire billionaire who ran his own company by day, and disappeared off on secret espionage missions at night. The one who would take one look at me, and instantly fall in love. Who would always see me as beautiful and never find fault with me. We would live happily ever after in our mansion, surrounded by our six perfect children. The sex of course, would also be amazing. From day one I would see fireworks (literally, he would have set them up to go off when we finally sealed the deal). We would sail into the sunset and live happily ever after. We would never worry about anything, never have a cross word and never, ever stop loving each other.
Of course life isn’t a romance novel. In the end that is not what happened, not even close. I never met that man, I met Robert, my husband. We met when we were both young, we were each other’s first loves. We never actually dated (unless you count necking in the house of friends whose parents had gone out, after drinking cheap wine) so he didn’t ‘woo’ me. When we moved into our first flat, we didn’t have two pennies to rub together. We started with second hand furniture, no cooker, a small portable telly, and a big new bed.
The next few years were rough but happy. He wasn’t my billionaire but he was mine and that was enough. Then we moved onto our second stage, starting the perfect fairytale family. This part would be easy, right? Unfortunately not as easy as we thought, after heartbreak, disappointment, and pain layered on pain, we came close to giving up. Not just on having a baby, on everything. On our happy ending, on life and on each other. Luckily we didn’t, and one day our wishes finally came true and we got our little miracle.
After that things started to fall into place. We bought our first family home, our son came home, and we got on with the business of being a family and this is where you find me today. Eighteen years after I picked up that first Mills and Boon and my life is very different to what I expected. I never went on my adventures with Frodo and the gang. Anne Shirley and I never became bff’s, and I never married that tall dark and handsome millionaire. My husband has never once referred to me as his fragile little dove (or even Mi Amore, I always wanted someone to call me that). We never moved to the mansion in Paris, and that idyllic family with no trials and tribulations never existed.
Instead I have a man who has a slightly worrying addiction to Call of Duty. Who on being asked “Does this dress make my bum look big?” answers with the age old classic, “no the fat on your bum makes your bum look big”. We have had more than our fair share of rocky patches, fights, and times where we really thought we couldn’t take one more step further. But we have also laughed ourselves silly watching cheesy comedies. Smiled as we snarked in our own secret language, and cried as we faced heartbreak and total joy together, hand in hand. We have been driven to the edge more than once and always come back stronger.
Instead of meeting the perfect man I met the perfect man for me. The one who smiles as I squee over my latest ridiculous obsessions, who tells me I’m beautiful when I feel truly at my worst. He is my favourite cushion to cuddle up to whilst watching TV and the perfect hot water bottle on a cold Scottish night. He has taught me that in life you are only as strong as the person holding you up, and that Happy Ever After, is only the beginning of the story.
He is my other half, the better half of me, the person who makes me better.
So in the end you can keep your billionaires, stuffyour prince charming’s and throw your brooding Heathcliff types off the tallest hill in the moors.
I wouldn’t swap my better half for any of them.
Of course this hobby also caused me to need glasses at age seven (eye strain from reading under the covers by torchlight). Got me into trouble at school (reading under the desk when the teacher was boring me rigid), and nearly got me run over by a car no less than four times (Reading on the way to school despite the fact there was two main roads between home and school). But this isn’t a tale about how much I read, but rather what I read at a specific period in time and what fantasies I happened to create in my head while I was reading.
As a pre-teen I gorged on the adventures of Anne of Green Gables, Pippi Longstocking, the twins at St Clares and the naughtiest girl in school. I longed to be a red headed adventurer. To walk on my hands and float down a lake pretending to be the lady of shallot. Or to run off to boarding school and make lifelong friends, conquer my weaknesses and learn how to play lacrosse (even though I had no idea what lacrosse was). As a teenager I lost myself in the worlds of Morder and Narnia. I fell in love with Mr Darcy and remained baffled at the interest Heathcliff held for Cathy (or anyone for that matter).
Then one day, I was sitting in my nana’s waiting on Sunday tea being served and bored senseless when she asked me if I would like something to read. After greedily grabbing the book from her hands, I was dismayed to find out it was a Mills and Boon. I had always avoided these, but I was bored, and depressed and spending Sunday afternoon in my nana’s, so I went for it, and there my friends is where my beloved, if short lived obsession with Mills and Boon was born.
I found them to be almost perfect. I nicknamed them as candy floss for the brain. They didn’t have the emotional impact or depth that the heavy hitters I loved had, but they had a charm of their own. They could be enjoyed without thinking too much and more importantly they could be started and finished in one sitting. So I read, and then read some more, and then some more. Now as you have probably noticed from what I mentioned earlier, I am very easily influenced by what I read. As a child I wanted to tame dragons, storm the fires of Mordor, ride on the back of Aslan as we raced to save Narnia together.
Well the books may have changed but my imagination hadn’t. Only now I didn’t want the perfect adventure, I wanted the perfect man. The strong dark, six foot six millionaire billionaire who ran his own company by day, and disappeared off on secret espionage missions at night. The one who would take one look at me, and instantly fall in love. Who would always see me as beautiful and never find fault with me. We would live happily ever after in our mansion, surrounded by our six perfect children. The sex of course, would also be amazing. From day one I would see fireworks (literally, he would have set them up to go off when we finally sealed the deal). We would sail into the sunset and live happily ever after. We would never worry about anything, never have a cross word and never, ever stop loving each other.
Of course life isn’t a romance novel. In the end that is not what happened, not even close. I never met that man, I met Robert, my husband. We met when we were both young, we were each other’s first loves. We never actually dated (unless you count necking in the house of friends whose parents had gone out, after drinking cheap wine) so he didn’t ‘woo’ me. When we moved into our first flat, we didn’t have two pennies to rub together. We started with second hand furniture, no cooker, a small portable telly, and a big new bed.
The next few years were rough but happy. He wasn’t my billionaire but he was mine and that was enough. Then we moved onto our second stage, starting the perfect fairytale family. This part would be easy, right? Unfortunately not as easy as we thought, after heartbreak, disappointment, and pain layered on pain, we came close to giving up. Not just on having a baby, on everything. On our happy ending, on life and on each other. Luckily we didn’t, and one day our wishes finally came true and we got our little miracle.
After that things started to fall into place. We bought our first family home, our son came home, and we got on with the business of being a family and this is where you find me today. Eighteen years after I picked up that first Mills and Boon and my life is very different to what I expected. I never went on my adventures with Frodo and the gang. Anne Shirley and I never became bff’s, and I never married that tall dark and handsome millionaire. My husband has never once referred to me as his fragile little dove (or even Mi Amore, I always wanted someone to call me that). We never moved to the mansion in Paris, and that idyllic family with no trials and tribulations never existed.
Instead I have a man who has a slightly worrying addiction to Call of Duty. Who on being asked “Does this dress make my bum look big?” answers with the age old classic, “no the fat on your bum makes your bum look big”. We have had more than our fair share of rocky patches, fights, and times where we really thought we couldn’t take one more step further. But we have also laughed ourselves silly watching cheesy comedies. Smiled as we snarked in our own secret language, and cried as we faced heartbreak and total joy together, hand in hand. We have been driven to the edge more than once and always come back stronger.
Instead of meeting the perfect man I met the perfect man for me. The one who smiles as I squee over my latest ridiculous obsessions, who tells me I’m beautiful when I feel truly at my worst. He is my favourite cushion to cuddle up to whilst watching TV and the perfect hot water bottle on a cold Scottish night. He has taught me that in life you are only as strong as the person holding you up, and that Happy Ever After, is only the beginning of the story.
He is my other half, the better half of me, the person who makes me better.
So in the end you can keep your billionaires, stuffyour prince charming’s and throw your brooding Heathcliff types off the tallest hill in the moors.
I wouldn’t swap my better half for any of them.