​I started off the day more or less okay, though with less sleep than I’d hoped for, and also waking up with a black cloud of “let’s beat up Shawn” hanging over me for not being all I’d hoped to be over the past few days. Without going into details, just a lot of the usual letting myself down stuff and deciding I’m a shit person for always letting myself down… ufff… it was hard to get up.

But I got up! Because Morcilla was looking a bit perkier and I had to prepare her special breakfast of Hill’s ID Prescription Diet, and also dole out a bit for Luna (or I’d never hear the end of it). So a spoonful of this apparently delicious paté for Luna on top of her bics and a fresh bowl of it for Morcilla. Both cats happy.

Then I got on the ol’ laptop, coffee in hand, and started on the usual online stuff. At some point I thought to tell my downstairs neighbour that Morcilla was feeling better and… well fuck me. I got back a pleasant response re: Morcilla but then it was like getting stuck in a time warp of weird.

My neighbour is 80-something as far as I know. She has no family to speak of, so she’s mostly on her own. After I first moved in – summer 2017 – we met up for lunch at a local bar and everything seemed fine. But then things went weird and suddenly I was being accused of being a BAD PERSON and all kinds of other WTF nastiness… all of this happening when I happened to pass her in the entrance. She would literally scream this in my face. And so I backed away…

Over the years there have been goodish and bad times with the neighbour. By goodish I mean she would sometimes stop screaming at me whenever we happened to cross paths. It seems my major crime is that I am not being a Good Neighbour, in that I don’t invite her up for coffee and a chat, that we aren’t always in contact, that (her words) SHE FEELS MORE ALONE WITH ME AS A NEIGHBOUR THAN IF I WASN’T THERE AT ALL.

I mean, fuck. We are in touch on WhatsApp, I am there for her if she actually needs anything, she knows she can call. For example, when she was recently very sick with “a cold” she asked if I had a Covid test at home and could I show her how to use it. So of course I popped down with the test, got it done, it was negative. No problem. But today I was apparently someone who would be better if they didn’t exist. Her words.

Now I know these are the words of a cranky old woman who lives a alone and is in a lot of daily chronic pain and so of course I shouldn’t take this personally. Except I do because they mirror the words I use against myself ALL THE TIME. Without realising it (I think?) she is reinforcing every awful thing I ever think about myself and I end up with that hard knot of anxiety in my belly because of course I’m awful otherwise why else would people keep saying so?

Then I went out with flatmate Peter to have a cold beer and a couple of tapas… just to get out of the house today before the Semana Santa crowds took over. Stopped in at Taberna Zurbarán and – oops! – like many bars during Semana Santa they had removed all chairs and bar stools because of the crowds. 

But when they saw me with my crutches at the end of the bar one of the guys magicked a bar stool for me, saying “don’t tell anybody!” and then other bar staff – totally run off their feet – stopped in their tracks when they saw me and it was all “Hey Shawn, so great to see you!” and then the owner of the bar came over with a tapa on the house (that gorgeous tortilla up there), just because. And then suddenly I felt like, hey I can’t be such a horrible person, otherwise all of these lovely people wouldn’t be so lovely to me. And just like that… my day changed.

People get this notion of me being something I’m not, or rather, they take one part of what they perceive to be me and then blow it all out of proportion to suit their opinion. As if I am only just one thing. But one thing I have learned over the years is that if anyone tells me I “intimidate” them (and this happens a lot!) I basically head for the hills because I already know they’re not seeing me as me and nothing good can come from that bullshit.

BUT… today some lovely people at one of my favourite tapas bars made me feel welcome and special, simply because we know that we just like and appreciate each other. Nothing other than that. Because nothing else matters.