Hannah Nicklin

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May 1, 2009
In Creative
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Loss V

I fall in love a lot. I travel by train every day. And I people watch. I don’t know whether or not everyone secretly looks at everyone else, or if it’s just me. But I like to look. I do like to watch people. And I don’t mean to, but I do, I do fall in love. It’s the way they close their eyes as the warmth of the sunlight filters through the carriage, or the battered, well loved book I see them secretly smell, or the fact that they keep their laptop in a battered old leather satchel. Last week I fell in love with someone because he had ridiculous shorts on. There was this guy, who did a silent punch in the air when he finished his Sudoku puzzle. And this other one, who just stared, stared into the dark, when all you could really see was the dirt on the dusty windows. I loved him because he didn’t need the time and place where we were to be clear for him to see what he was thinking. I don’t drive. I own a bicycle, but they’re not really up to the long distances are they? So I travel a lot by train. And fall in love daily. I imagine a hundred different futures. And hundred different whispered vows. I don’t think it’s weird. I can’t be the only one. I told a friend once. She laughed a bit but I think she thought I was weird. She asked me why I didn’t talk to any of them, and to be honest, I didn’t know what to say. “Well, I mean they never talk to me do they? And they’d probably think I was weird, wouldn’t they?” The truth was, it had never occurred to me.

April 30, 2009
In Creative
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Loss IV

I have a teddy bear. I know. I’m an adult, right? I have this bear. A ratty old thing. I think an aunty bought it for me at one point. Before I can remember. It’s knitted, made of wool, it’s got straggly arms, brown eyes and a little green knitted belt. I’ve had this bear for a very long time. Though don’t ask me how many times it’s been washed. When I was little my mum used to steal it off me, put it in the washer. Now I’m in charge it’s been a while since it’s been wet. It never used to smell right afterwards. Boyfriends came and boyfriends went, usually going a bit faster if they poked fun at the bear thing. I once dated a guy who had a security blanket. It smelt a bit weird. But the bear, yes. It has a name. It’s called ‘superted’. I’m not crazy, I don’t talk to it, that’s just it’s name. And it sits in the crook of my arm when I sleep, there’s a bit, just between my arm and my right breast. If it doesn’t sit there when I sleep it feels weird. Empty. My husband puts up with it. Sometimes I dream that I have two. Bears, not husbands. Those dreams are always distressing, because I don’t know which one is real, or how to divide my attention. You know, in that weird kind of dream logic. And then sometimes, I have these nightmares. Maybe my nightmares should be about losing my health, or the kids, or my husband cheating on me. But they’re not. They all revolve around this horrible moment when I find out my bear has been damaged or eaten or stolen or dissolved or torn beyond repair. And I feel everything fall away then. I have no anchor. And I wake up, and I can’t even find tears, it’s not like that. It’s like something from the very heart of me has gone, just for a moment. Like how my right arm feels when I have to sleep without it.

April 29, 2009
In Creative
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Loss III

Divorce is harder than death. It is. With death you have the irrecoverable loss of someone to deal with, but with divorce, you have rejection too. As a process, divorce is much more cruel. And, theoretically, reversible. Death is inert. Divorce is mutable, an unstable, unknowable value. With death there is a grieving process, an equation, it makes sense. Divorce is messy, an indivisible fraction, remainders all over the place. Divorce is harder than death. I’m not saying it’s any more of a loss. But it’s a harder one. More complex.

April 28, 2009
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Loss II

I associate burnt baked beans with his death. I got the letter, it was hand delivered. Of course you know, you know by that point. But you open it, you open it because you know, you also know that it’s not true. Not true. I read it. And then tea was burning. The beans were black, actually black. Fine one minute, and then all black and stuck to the bottom. The sausages were ok, they were just in the oven. But the beans were black. I suppose some time must have passed but I didn’t, didn’t know that it had. I turned off the heat, and I put the pan in to soak. Big, great big puffs of steam. And I wondered if, I wondered how much he suffered. What it was like. You don’t want to. You scream at yourself not to. But you still do. You still wonder if the body, if it tries to breathe – like a dream where you have to move but you can’t. The feeling of gasping, needing, your lungs bursting for air, gasping, and breathing water. Thicker. Thicker. Thicker than it should be. And I was ashamed. I was ashamed that this, this officer, or whatever, was standing there, seeing me in my pink fluffy slippers, cooking beans and sausages for tea. I mean it’s the look of the thing, isn’t it? I felt ashamed. Guilty. Obviously he was perfectly, obviously he was very respectful, but I couldn’t help feeling that he, he was looking down on me.

I still eat baked beans. I don’t like them, and it always makes me think of him. I see him. And sometimes he’s a little, rotten, baked bean, lying at the bottom of the sea in his black tin can. But I still eat them. I don’t want to be someone who – I mean you have to carry on don’t you? You have to. You have to.