A leaky radiator
To be perfectly honest I conceived this first post when awake at 3am following another late Spanish dinner (more about late Spanish dinners at some point in the future). Still, though, this won’t be just about a leaky radiator—there’s a metaphor somewhere in there, I promise. But before we proceed I want to say hello to those of you wondering who the hell is landing in your inbox.
Hiiiiii (insert a jumping up-and-down GIF here), my previous subscribers whose names I successfully imported into Substack from the other lists I had—and neglected—over the years! If you can’t remember me or don’t care to stay, please feel free to unsubscribe. But if you feel like hanging around and going on a journey of this second chapter of my life with me—I’d love for you to stay.
First things first. That is, first chapter first.
I used to have a full life traveling the world as part of the US Foreign Service.
Then, two years and a few months ago, my husband passed away.
Everyone said not to make big decisions following a loss but I ignored all good-meaning advice and moved abroad almost right after his passing.
I wrote about how I arrived at that blatant flouting of the bereavement rules for the Business Insider and I did it with a lot more eloquence than in those three bullet points.
And now — the radiator.
It’s old, made of iron, and it keeps my house warm. But it’s been leaking ever since the end of renovations in my apartment. (Yes, I didn’t only flout the rules on major decisions, I also ignored all good sense and agreed to have renovations in a foreign country and a foreign language). I wake up every morning to about 1/4 a cup of water and go to bed every evening to about the same amount. The plumber who worked on the renovations has been back a few times but from what I can tell he’s only made things worse.
Last night when I woke up at 3am as a result of too much food eaten too late, my half-exhausted, half-high-on-cheese brain started making parallels between the leaking radiator and my life. Sadness is a night owl—it arrives in the evening and stays until sunlight—and so, naturally, awake in the dark I thought back to my previous life and how I still couldn’t quite believe my husband was no longer in the same realm. The evidence that he’s now occupying a different plane in the universe has been around for two years and three months and still, the drip of incredulity at his death hasn’t stopped. Kind of like that radiator—it continues to leak water despite the evidence of the plumber having worked on it several times.
(It’s very possible I need a different plumber or even a different radiator but you can’t deny there are parallels. And I did promise you a metaphor.)