December – The Unhaving
//Every December is the season for Unhaving.
Unhaving.
Or,
Breaking with the past.//
Te Quiero.
When I teach Spanish, these are my favourite verbs to start with – tengo and quiero. Tengo is ‘I have’ and Quiero is ‘I want’. I lure the beginners with an unfailing first command – “quiero un café, por favor.”/” I want a coffee, please.”
They nod their heads in gleeful enthusiasm whilst being fine receptacles of this first sentence in Spanish, which is going to buy them their triumph of ordering coffee – in Spain, Mexico or the eternally-coveted Cuba. Then I go on to explain that every verb, in first person singular, in the present tense – ends with an O.
Tengo – I have
Hablo – I speak
Necesito – I need
When I teach kids I do it a little differently – because kids are smarter and learn much faster and ask me if we are going to play ‘Simon dice’ this class? When I asked them – what do you think ‘Lo siento’ means?, the eight year old Vivaan said, “I love you?”. I laughed and said No. it means – I am sorry. You’re going to use it way more than I love you, right?
Vivaan didn’t seem to think so.
Te Quiero, is I love you. (Or, I want you)
When translated word to word, it stands for – You, I love. (Or – You, I want)
Te necesito – You, I need.
In Spanish, the YOU, precedes the verb – the you that I go from wanting, needing and then having, to perhaps unhaving too.
//Every December is the season for Unhaving.
Unhaving.
Or,
Breaking with the past.//
As another year slumbers towards its inevitable end, as it heaves and hauls itself up a flight of steep stairs and unfinished ambition, as it leaves us all pensive rather than pretentious, and reflective more than restless – we find this season, the lulls of December, coaxing us ever so gently, to break with the past.
A girlfriend texts and says she’s done. She’s so done with him, his ways, his empty words, his emptier deference, his grand gestures followed by long bouts of silence, his conflicting patterns, the January promises that leave nothing but a wake of waiting, the abandonment, the fleeting reappearances – all building up to a December of unfulfilled promises.
“I can’t do this again, Ash. Every December I have the same conversation with him. Every single December. I ask to end it and he says No, he says he will be a different person, he says he will try harder. He says he wants more of me too, but he can’t, he can’t at the moment – because of this, and that, and that I should be patient with him. But I am so tired, so done waiting. I don’t’ want this anymore.”
“You don’t NEED this anymore, Sweetheart. It’s not want – it’s NEED. We forget to use the right verb.”
“F2uck. YES. I don’t need this anymore.”
No Te necesito. A.k.a I don’t need you.
The text, coiled and uncoiled in her anguish.
“Another year end and we have the same old conversation, same old digging up of things, same old raking up the past – the template, this worn out, tired template – is all the same. I am sure you’re also equally tired of it, by now. And I am too.
I am exhausted too, from having to spell out, every single year, the littleness of what I ask from you and of you. I am the backbone of two kids and a dog, I don’t sit around waiting to be rescued or for help to arrive, I go and find it, I want something? I go, strap my seatbelts on and drive, I go and get it. You may not know the nuts and bolts of how I got here, but I sure didn’t get here walking on snow flakes with glass slippers. And I’ve gotten this far, hurtling barefoot, twigs crunching beneath my feet – towards the sharp stones and uneven terrain, unstopping and unrelenting.
So what I will NOT have,
Year after year,
And especially this year,
Is have you tell me that “this is all I got”
I am not going to shrink and contort into a shape that fits your meager love. If I want more, I want more.
Not less, not left, and not left of centre.
I want the birthdays, the coffees and the weekends and the sleeping in on Sundays, the love that sprawls and allows for languor. I want this love that is un-meager.”
And she was done.
She was truly, deeply and irrevocably done.
As one more December trawled by – leaving in its wake, a piece of heart – quivering, small and mumbling, in its voluble sadness and grim stoicism, but knowing within – that to have again, to begin having again, it must, it simply must, go through its autumnal unhaving.
Year on year.
And this year too.
Why, hello there February.
You’re here already.
