Coping with transition

The transition from person to non-person occurs as one gets older and is no longer relevant to the lives of one’s associates - them. The possession of money, or power, or something equally desirable, though, gives one status as an actual person. Otherwise disappear …

I’ve been morphing into a non-person myself for some time now. What I didn’t realise until the other day is that I’m sub-normal, as well. This rather unwelcome information was conveyed to me after the birthday party of a close relation - my brother.

Now, one of this said brother’s themes is the supposition that we were rejected by our parents. You see, we were both born in Sri Lanka, where our father was a tea-planter and, as was the custom with such settlers, were sent ‘home’ to be educated. ‘Home’ in this case was Gloucestershire in England with our grandmother. As I was too young (one year old) to go to school, a nanny was employed to look after me. My brother’s contention is that she was a gaoler, rather than a nanny, who guarded me so closely that I never had any friends and barely became articulate.

This theme was enlarged on again during the course of the party, at which plenty of champagne was on offer. And maybe this largess was what inspired another relative to remark to me, “Now we know why you have too many hang-ups”!

Being comparatively sober myself, I was temporarily lost for words. Perhaps this was just as well, as further revelations could have been too shocking to survive. The question was - had these hang-ups always been in evidence, or had they developed by degrees and in a similar way to non-personhood - in slow transition?

You can guess that ever since that fateful evening I’ve been trying to figure out what these hang-ups are and nervously asking my friends if I appear sub-human to them. I know that I have a revulsion for corpses, but that is a phobia - necrophobia, to be exact - and surely Nanny can’t be blamed for that, as I have no recollection of being exposed to dead bodies during my formative years.

I eventually remembered my brother saying that he actually hated birthdays and had forbidden his children to even send cards. “Oh,” I had remarked. “That’s odd - I love my birthday.” This had elicited the response from my critic, “That’s because you want attention”.

As usual, in the face of sudden accusation, I failed to point out that I myself provided about a million birthday presents each year, so why would I not enjoy an occasion when I got a few back? Hardly hand-up material, you would think. And certainly not Nanny’s fault, either, as she was always meticulous about seeing that I got suitable presents.

But hang-ups are really about things you don’t like, aren’t they? So I’m casting about to identify a few possibilities. There is the fact that I am totally inhibited in a bunch of strangers, ie a party where all the people are someone else’s friends, or some kind of opening ceremony, such as I used to have to report on for the Farmers’ Journal. Some people love this, voicing inanities to all and sundry, while I cringe in a corner, wishing I was invisible.

Then there is my dislike of the moon - the way its spooky light makes me feel nervous. I blame this on the war, though, not on Nanny. It could stem from the time I was walking back to my billet across Woolwich Common, outside London, when I looked up to see the moonlight glinting on this huge object suspended in the air just above - obviously a bomb … No use to run - just wait for the explosion. It so happened that one never came, because the contraption turned out to be an escaped barrage balloon.

And I suppose these aversions alone are enough to make me sub-human. There’s many a true word spoken in jest ...