I had a flashback to a scene from When Harry met Sally … Carrie Fischer’s character was divorcing her husband and they were sitting in the living room sorting through who gets what and I seem to remember a fight over … uh … was it really a wagon wheel table? My memory may be playing tricks on me for the purpose of this blog post but … at the end of the day it all boils down to Stuff. You want it even if you don’t want it. I’m not terribly sentimental about stuff but there are certain things that belong to me; they are part of me and part of my story. If they went up in smoke I probably wouldn’t miss them but the idea of them being in someone else’s house out of spite is not a place I care to go. I’m used to my buttons being pushed but it feels like they’re being pushed with an electric probe these days. I’ve felt a fair amount of spittle fly into my face lately, but since learning a new use for my word, Trust, I can let the hostility slide over me. I can Trust that I will be bombarded with verbal, email and sms abuse about anything from the state of the garden to the friends I hang out with but I can now also Trust that an apology isn’t far behind. For most things…

“I think what I am doing is very different from what you did.” The sms glared at me from my Nokia screen and I glared back until the screensaver came on. Like so many things these days, the ‘conversations’ tend to end right there, requests for elaboration futile.

“I hate to generalise,” a male friend of mine said, “but it’s weird; it’s just a guy thing. Ego maybe.” I was telling him about my husband’s big Secret about having a Girlfriend. I knew of course – small world that it is, my people know her people – but it was still just a rumour until he told me himself months later … and only because I inadvertently prompted it. I had, after all, told him the moment I met My Guy even though we were already separated. I was relieved by the news and felt smug about how he can no longer be self-righteous about my ‘affair’ and I threw my head back and laughed at his hypocrisy about not being able to move on until the divorce was final. None of it really matters you see – it is such a tiny blip on an antiquated radar – our relationship has been over for years and I want him to be happy in the same way I found life after death … albeit temporarily. But playing the guilt and blame card still? … trying to absolve himself by comparing? … hmm, it just doesn’t sit right.

Is that really just a guy thing? Does Ego really excuse hostility, hypocrisy and self-righteousness? I hope it’s just a phase. Like my great-grandmother, Dottie, used to say, through her cracked lips and crooked teeth, “This too shall pass.”