Andy has been in this flat for ten years, six years with a girlfriend although the last three years he has been alone here. The obvious thing would have been for us to get our own flat, somewhere new for our new start but it really seemed impractical when his place had so much to offer; spacious, nice garden, parking space, near Hampstead Heath, near the tube…shops less than 5 minutes away. So, we decided I should come here to live.
Over the last six months I have slowly been making the space ‘ours’. Adding all those little ‘touches’ and subtly replacing the majority of essentials, like dishes, bed linens (courtesy of Ikea). Adding lamps, rugs, pictures, etc. etc and the list goes on. Yesterday I changed the furniture around in the bedroom and moved the bed from against the wall to allow me to get up in the night without climbing over Andy. (Scaling another human in the middle of the night is really not that comfortable when you are a woman of ‘that certain age’.) When I mentioned I was going to do this he told me that ‘WE has tried it that way before’…..!!!!!! I ignored it as he does tend to slip in the ‘WE’s’ quite frequently when he is talking about the past (the ‘WE’ being him and an old girlfriend). This morning I was commenting on how nice the windows looked since I repainted the woodwork and re-hung the curtains. He then reflected on how ‘WE’ had used those curtain hooks before’!!!!! That last ‘WE’ pushed me over the edge. Let’s face it…we all have a past ‘WE’ but how unless we are talking about the current WE, shouldn’t the past become and ‘I’, especially when I am in an ‘old WE’s’ flat. Maybe I am being sensitive as it is going to take a while for this new space to become my home but right now, for today, I feel like I am sitting in someone else’s WE……and pardon the pun but it pissed me off!
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