Week 19 - Andrew - Laundry

The evening the washing machine broke, Paul hung himself. I was lying in bed, he got up – he didn't even kiss me – and he went downstairs and hung himself.  He wrote a note, put it on top of the mortgage and credit card statements, and, like a tumour metastasizing, turned our horrific marriage into something far worse but ultimately finite.

There's a temptation to imagine that marriages that end in suicide end poetically and tragically. Declarations of love in a tear-stained note, a last painful look at the sleeping children, and then the lonely construction of a noose and a gallows.

I can tell you, when you are looking at a swinging belly in a liverpool jersey, the smell of shit, and the realisation that now there is only you left to deal with this – It is not poetic tragedy. It was not a surprise. He had painted a picture. He thought I would put this together, and fall to my knees, one hand clamped over my mouth, a silent wail – the whole thing.

I stood for a second, and called him a fucking eejit. And do you know – I was relieved. I've heard people say 'my life is over. I was relieved that mine was. Fucking Liverpool, GAA, Debt, traberdine tiles, no work, small towns, endless commutes, sweaty pints, rants, apologies.

When I was nineteen, I went to Australia on my own. I bought a giant boat of a clapped-out Ford Falcon with a scottish girl I met in a hostel, and we burned up the east coast, her driving, me with my long brown legs out the passenger window.

I met Paul in Australia. I liked him because he was tall, and he was good looking – before pints and chipper put paid to that. When we got back, he bought a house. Hundred and ten percent mortgage. He borrowed more from the credit union to do it up. New kitchen, bathroom and extension.

Then it turned out I couldn't have kids. Paul kept doing up the house. He bought a jeep. Then the work stopped. I kept my job – they'll always need nurses, although they won't pay them well – but Paul sat at home.

He didn't cook, he didn't clean. He took obsessions – we had a home gym. A built in barbecue, cycling, golf. All of them with costs – “These will pay for themselves”, he used to say. I was so anxious to keep him active I never mentioned the costs. I took more and more shifts.

Paul had never been happy. When we were young, I mistook this for stoic silence, and a silent, ancient country solidity. It was the opposite. He was pathetic, a man struggling with an illness as banal and fatal as cancer.

Why couldn't he have talked to anyone about it? That's one I hear a lot – It's also untrue. He talked all the time about it. Lying on the couch – 'maybe I'd be better off dead'. When the bills came – 'I can't take this'. Long, long angry rants about how he couldn't do this anymore. He made it my fault. I hadn't stopped him buying the house, I hadn't kept an eye on the money. Why wasn't I making an effort.

Would he do anything constructive? Would he fuck. It's hard to love someone so self-obsessed. It's hard to get dressed, put on lipstick, and go out for a night with someone who is so intent on not treating what's making him miserable.

I stood there for about two minutes – it might have been an hour, but I don't want to be dramatic. I called the guards, and made a cup of tea. I function well under pressure, and i'm not squeamish. There were jobs to be done. I heard a Garda whisper 'cold bitch' to her colleague about me.

I don't think i'm a bad person. I didn't do anything. I married a man who caught a disease, that turned out to kill him. The disease took me, too – It took my life while it was there. It won't kill me, though.

People look at me like i'm a tragic widow. I'm going to be the girl with the long brown legs again.