Dear…?

Dear.

Dear Book?

Dear Self? Dear Sam.

Good. Got that sorted out. What next?

Lucy is making me write this diary. Except it’s not a diary. It’s a “book of thoughts”. “Letters to myself” is how she put it, hence the “Dear Sam” business, which of course is me. Lucy says that her friend, whose name escapes me, has a theory that conducting this internal correspondence will help Lucy and me to relax about things. The idea is that if Lucy and I periodically privately assemble our thoughts and feelings then we’ll feel less like corks bobbing about on the sea of fate. Personally, I find it extraordinary that Lucy can be persuaded that she’ll become less obsessed about something if she spends half an hour every day writing about it, but there you go. Lucy thinks that things might be a whole lot better if I stopped trying to be clever and started trying to be supportive.

It’s now five minutes later and I find I have no thoughts and feelings to assemble. Lucy has been right all along. I’m a sad, cold, sensitivity-exclusion zone who would rather read the newspaper than have an emotion. I always thought she was exaggerating.

Dear Penny

I’m writing to you, Penny, because in my childhood you were my imaginary friend and I feel that I’ll be more open and honest if I personify the part of myself to which I’m addressing these thoughts. Does that make sense? I do hope so because, quite frankly, if ever I needed an imaginary friend I need one now. The truth is that I want to have a baby. You remember how our favourite game when I was a child was looking after babies? Well, things haven’t changed at all, right down to the fact that I still haven’t actually got a baby to look after. This thing, so simple to many women, is proving very difficult for me. Sam and I have been trying for five years (I hate that word, we used to make love, or have a good shag, now we “try”), and so far not a hint. You could set your watch by my periods.