Last Christmas

Last Christmas by George Michael 😢 💔

Oh how I hate that song! Every year for the last 39 years it’s followed me around, from mid November until Christmas Eve, everywhere I go: in supermarkets, smaller shops, craft fairs, or in pubs and restaurants, it’s playing again and again, and over again. It’s got so bad that I can’t even put on my kitchen radio during December in case they play it again.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart But the very next day you gave it away This year, to save me from tears I’ll give it to someone special…

Over and over again.

And I’m right back in time. Christmas 1984.

I often wonder how many people suffer the same turmoil as I do when they hear that song. I can’t be the only person who went through heartbreak during 1984. In fact I know that I’m not.

Over the years I’ve met several people whose marriage ended that year. Not that my marriage actually ended in 1984, it was February 1987. It probably should have ended in 1983, but I was stupid enough to take back my husband after I discovered he’d had an affair.

Things temporarily went okay after we got back together. In fact we were like a young loving couple again for a while, but after the initial reconciliatory euphoria, it wasn’t long before doubt and suspicion about my husband crept back into my mind. His initial loving attentiveness gradually waned and he became the same old miserable bad-tempered person he’d become over the latter years of our marriage.

My marriage didn’t actually end until 1987, but in the summer of 1984, after having got back together after my husband’s affair, not his first, I might add, I realised that I was rapidly approaching 40 and things were not going to get any better if I didn’t find some other interests besides work, marriage and bringing up my children, who by now were both grown up and had left home.

The summer of 1984 I remember as being a fantastic summer weatherwise. My husband and I and a group of neighbours used to meet up most evenings and go for a cycle ride. They were mostly men. Their wives soon gave up coming, so it was just the men and me. My husband had bought himself and me matching Peugeot 10-speed racing bikes. Our group would do a 10 mile circuit every evening, often stopping off for a beer at the local pub in the nearby village. That didn’t seem to affect the lads but after a half of lager my legs turned to jelly, so the ride up the hill leading from the pub meant that I soon lagged behind the men on the ride! But Pete, one of the neighbours, would wait for me. Not so my husband! He was way up ahead with the other lads. Mind you, Pete made it very clear that he fancied me. He wasn’t bad looking either. 🤣

That year I’d formed quite a close a friendship with a male colleague. He was keen on swimming and suggested that some of us went swimming during our lunch break. Other workmates soon dropped out, but John and I went about 3 days a week for several months. He taught me how to swim the crawl properly, by breathing into my armpit, and used to encourage me to improve by swimming just ahead of me, knowing that I would keep trying to keep up with him. We usually managed to swim 32 lengths, which was half a mile, before we had to return to work.

Other workmates started to play squash after work at our local sports club, so John and I joined them. None of us were very good but we managed to play passable games. Most of the girls at work soon stopped going but I was quite enjoying trying to beat the men, which I actually did now and again.

I was getting fitter and fitter with all this exercise, and one day, on the way back from the swimming pool, John said he was entering into the local half-triathlon, and why didn’t I enter it as well, seeing as I swam and cycled regularly. I replied that I couldn’t run, I just couldn’t. John suggested we went to our local country park and run round it together. “You’ll soon start running faster with me chasing you!” he joked.

I wasn’t having John chasing me round the local park. No way! That evening I took myself to the park with the intention of running a hundred paces, then walking a hundred, then running a hundred etc etc. But after the first hundred I carried on and much to my surprise I actually completed the two mile circuit, amazingly still with energy enough to do more. Two days later I completed two circuits, and the next weekend I managed three. On the Monday I asked John to enter me into the half-triathlon as well, which he did.

And so the summer continued. I practiced the half-triathlon at weekends. A half mile swim, a 25 mile bike ride and a six mile run. The half-triathlon was to be in September, and I was trained and ready for it. Unfortunately John had left entering into it until too late and it was oversubscribed, so we were only reserves. However, on the actual day of the half-triathlon it poured with rain all day so, although disappointed that I wouldn’t get a medal for my achievement, I was glad I didn’t have to do it after all.

During the autumn I carried on swimming most weekdays, playing squash a couple of evenings after work and cycling with the neighbours at weekends. I didn’t have much time to worry about what my husband was getting up to when I wasn’t around, but he was back to his normal miserable, bad-tempered self. He wasn’t at all interested in me any more. We hardly spoke, except to argue about something. He began to moan that I was not home with his dinner ready when he got home from work because I had been playing squash. He resented my relationship with John even though I assured him that it was purely platonic. Apparently men that mess around with other women often get suspicious that their wives are doing the same thing, I’m told.

Christmas was coming. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Although my children would be visiting, it wasn’t going to be the usual family Christmas that I so loved hosting. But I made the usual Christmas cake, decorated the house, did the Christmas shopping, all the family things a good wife and mother does before Christmas, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

On Christmas eve I was off work and should have been cleaning the house from top to bottom, but Christmas eve was on a Monday that year and I’d had all that weekend to make sure the house was sparkling for Father Christmas’s visit. My husband had gone to work as usual and I was all prepared for Christmas, so I could relax for the day.

I put on the radio. Band Aid were singing “Do they know it’s Christmas?” Then came Wham with “Last Christmas I gave you my heart But the very next day you gave it away This year, to save me from tears I’ll give it to someone special…” How appropriate, I thought, remembering how hard I’d tried to forgive and forget my husband’s latest infidelity, all to have it thrown back in my face, with him back to his normal miserable, argumentative self. My heart that I had given him again last Christmas and for the last 23 years, all my adult life, was no longer with him.

My heart had been well and truly broken but someone had touched it again, albeit only in a platonic way. My heart was elsewhere, with someone special.

Then on came Madonna, singing “Like a virgin, touched for the very first time, like a virgin…” I sat listening mesmerised. That’s how I felt, I thought, remembering John’s Christmas kiss on the Friday before, in the car after our swim.

I didn’t want to be there any more. I wanted to be with someone special.

I wanted to be a dolphin, swimming freely in the sea, I wanted to be with John… Two dolphins swimming away in the sea, not a care in the world…

*****

Later that day, after several rather unusual psychotic events, I found myself in the psychiatric ward of our local hospital. At first I resisted medication but eventually I knew I’d never be allowed out of the room they’d locked me in, with nothing but a mattress on the floor, if I didn’t succumb.

*****

I woke up in the middle of the night, having been somehow transported into a private room with an en-suite shower. I looked out the window. It had snowed, it had snowed a lot. I’d no idea what time it was but there were absolutely no footsteps or tyre marks in the snow. It was like a beautiful white carpet spread all around. I felt an immense sense of peace, and beyond the hospital grounds I could see the church in the distance, all lit up. There was a bright star above it, twinkling. It was magical and, as the star pulsated, it looked as if it was beckoning me towards it.

I wasn’t locked up any more. I wandered down the corridor and noticed that the double doors at the end weren’t locked. As soon as no-one was looking I slipped out of the doors and walked out of the hospital. I didn’t get very far. Someone grabbed me and led me back into hospital. I hadn’t even realised that I had been walking across the snow in the grounds, heading in the direction of the star, in my bare feet, wearing only a tracksuit!

I spent the whole of Christmas in hospital, during which time I continued to have several psychotic episodes triggered by various different things, too many to describe here. I even set off the hospital fire alarm at one point because I could see smoke, which apparently was actually steam billowing from the kitchens below my room! Turns out this was all because I hadn’t slept for three nights, not since that Christmas kiss.

Luckily they’d only sectioned me for three days. I was returned home, perfectly fit and of sound mind, the evening after boxing day. My family all came for a Christmas Dinner the day after that and we had a wonderful time.

My husband became very attentive afterwards but the damage had been done. I moved into a flat I rented very shortly afterwards. I loved it. I spent weekdays there, went home at weekends. I was able to read the paper and do the crossword in peace. I watched TV programmes that I wanted to watch and played music that I wanted to play. It was wonderful.

My husband was on his best behaviour when I went back home every Friday night, having done all the shopping for the next week. I met him and our neighbours in the local pub, after having restocked the fridge, freezer and cupboards. I spent Saturdays cleaning the house, cooking meals for us both to reheat during the week, and gardening. Sundays we spent going out somewhere or visiting friends and family. Hardly anyone noticed or knew that I was living away from home during the week, except our next door neighbours, of course.

Seemingly we got on well with this arrangement. My daughter got married and I had arranged everything from my flat. The wedding went well. None of our families were aware that we were actually living separately most of the time. Everything was absolutely hunky dory.

In September my husband suggested we had a holiday in Wales in our caravan. In October we duly travelled to Betws-y-Coed. It was a lovely holiday. On our return it never really seemed to be the right time for me to return to my flat, we were getting on so well.

Christmas 1985 came and went without incident, in spite of the constant reminders of Christmas 1984 when I heard “Last Christmas” while out shopping. It seemed to be the right thing to do to give up my flat in the New Year, which I did, with slight trepidation.

By this time my job was occupying my interest. I had been promoted and was computerising all our previously manual systems. I was still swimming some lunchtimes, but often I stayed late at work to finish off something I was working on. My husband didn’t seem to mind any more that I got home late. I had prepared plenty of meals in advance for him to reheat if I got home late.

1986 came and went without too much domestic hassle. We even tried looking for a new house in a nearby village, which fell through the day before we were due to exchange contracts. Christmas 1986 I can’t even remember much about. So it came as a great shock to me when I arrived home on February 11th 1987 to THE LETTER.

My husband had left.

I spent six months coming to terms with living on my own in the marital home. By the end of October I decided I didn’t like my marital home any more, so I found a newbuild in a nearby town and put our house on the market. I got a buyer that very day. They wanted to complete by the end of November. Panic set in. The house I wanted to buy wouldn’t be ready until next Spring. I contacted the landlord of the flat I’d rented in 1985 and as luck would have it, the very flat I’d rented would be available in mid December.

It took me all month to pack up my home into two separate loads of boxes, two thirds of it to go into storage and a third of it to go to my flat. It was a very traumatic month, I can tell you. I think I cried every evening while I was doing it.

However, on the agreed date I, and all my possessions, including an aviary full of budgies, plus two pairs of cockateils, left our marital home, ready to start my new life on my own.

The rest is history.

*****

Creative Writing December 2023: Last Christmas