Sackcloth and Ashes

Last week I got a new teeshirt and I absolutely love it. I’m never going to wear it.

I saw it on a YouTuber and I loved it so much I paused their video and ferreted through their merch store to buy it. That’s something I’ve never done before. It’s bright banana yellow with the words ‘Creatively Juicy’ splurged across the chest in vivid primary colours.

I’m not overly fond of teeshirts, and as a rule I hate any clothing with mottos or puns. The only words I want to share with the world are my own, not the recycled and mass-reproduced witticisms of some graphic designer. I don’t even like buying cards with any words beyond the compulsory ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Congratulations.’ Nobody and nothing, especially not articles of clothing get to speak for me. But I had to have this shirt. ‘Creatively Juicy.’ It felt like me. And I wear who I am.

Last week I was colourful, ostentatious and, as I was proud to flaunt, creatively juicy.

I’m creeping up on thirty now, but even as a teenager I never concerned myself with what was in fashion. I’m very content sporting obsolete trends. In the summer I favour Hawaiian shirts with large simple patterns in one flat colour against white. In the winter I wear long sleeved shirts with light jumpers. I love lots of colours. The colours of rust, moss, crab shells, the Irish sea; they feel like part of me. All year round I like to wear a flat-cap when I go outdoors. I keep bees, so you can sometimes find me drowning in a baggy caramel bee-suit in the spring and summer. And everything’s always scruffy.

I wear who I am. I’m scruffy, right to my core. My younger brother Bowen’s scruffy too, but in a different way. You’ll always find Bowen outside smearing engine grease onto his chainsaw-proof work trousers or rubbing chicken feathers and char off one of his polo shirts. He wears who he is, and he’s a gruff, forthright farmer boy who drives a vintage tractor. I’m an delusional children’s illustrator flitting from project to unsuccessful project trying to scrape enough pennies together to get my life to start. I’m smart, creative, trusting, a little too honest with everyone but myself, and chronically disorganised. I wear who I am. And I’m not a leavers’ hoody, skinny jeans and stark white trainers.

But back to the teeshirt.

Last week I was soaring. I was about the happiest I think I’ve ever been. The sun beamed upon Northern Ireland, the bees were zipping in and out of the hives and I’d just heard back from the florist. I had an empty red beehive, and I’d asked her to create a diorama with live moss, shamrocks and mushrooms inside and she agreed to do it. This was going to display a little clay box I’ve made. It’s made to look like an ancient stone chest carved with Celtic knots and patterns and reliefs of a queen bee, myself and my girlfriend, and inside it is a dainty gold ring with a rough diamond. I was going to propose this summer.

Tiona’s been in my life since she was six years old. I remember our first interaction. Even though we live right next door to each other in the sparsely populated countryside of the Ards peninsula, we didn’t meet until we started attending the same church, one we still attend to this day. Tiona was wrapped around her mother like a bushbaby in the seat directly in front of me, her huge green eyes, always a little frightened looking, fixed on me. I taunted her with some funny faces. She didn’t warm to me then.

When she was thirteen she found out I kept a collection of fossils. Tiona had a curiosity for geology at the time so she walked up her lane and down mine and we spent the afternoon talking about rocks. She became interested in the origami I’d been doing so I lent her some of my books. Not long after, we started beekeeping together. I’d never been able to share so many of my interests with one person before. I treasured it.

The years spun by and my life and hers wove together like the roots of neighbouring trees. We went to the same church, the same groups, the same summer camps, we shared friends and secrets and troubles. We bought matching llama jumpers at Belfast Christmas market and wore them everywhere together. Any time either one of us was struggling to keep going, the other one was always there to haul them onward.

Everyone already thought we were dating, but it wasn’t until after a day of pretending to be a married couple in IKEA showrooms that we suddenly saw each other in a different light. Within a couple of hours the idea of not being together seemed impossible, let alone absurd. So we made it official. No one was surprised.

We’ve been dating for two years, two weeks and two days now. Every day has been heaven. Her eyes are just as big and green and solemn as the six year old I first saw clinging to her mum. I love her. I can’t imagine loving anyone else. I want to keep loving her for the rest of my life. And that’s why I dragged together what little savings I had to buy a humble ring. She would wear who she is; hammered gold and uncut diamond. Completely beautiful in its natural form.

It was going to be perfect. The plan was that we’d be inspecting the bees together when she’d pull out a frame and see the words ‘Tiona, You’re a Keeper’ written with red mapping pins in the empty cells. While she furrowed her brow in confusion I’d remove the lid of the empty hive, reveal the little mossy scene with the box perched atop, then I’d kneel, offer her the ring and ask her to marry me. Tiona, of course, would immediately accept, we’d close up the hives, celebrate with our families and some day in the future she’d tell everyone about my elaborate proposal and make everyone cry. It was going to be diabetes-inducingly romantic.

So I was happy. I had no money, no home of my own, no financial security, but I had Tiona. That beautiful freckly woman was all I needed in the world. I was vibrant and sunny and vivacious. I was a banana yellow teeshirt.

But Tiona’s never going to tell the romantic story I’d written for her.

Over the past week I’ve noticed her disengaging from me. Our usual ping pong conversations over messenger have become a game of cricket. She recoiled from me when I went to touch her. She’s overflowing with alibis.

Tiona’s an apprentice carpenter, so she works long hours doing hard labour, and in the evenings she’s often either busy or exhausted, so I’m not jealous of her time or energy. But we’ve known each other for so long that I knew there was something on her heart she felt she couldn’t share with me. We’ve always shared everything. This was new. I hated it.

Tiona ended the torture last night. We drove aimlessly around the lesser-travelled roads of the Ards peninsula for an hour or two, chatting, listening to music, pretending we weren’t both in agony. When I pulled up outside her house and she uttered the words, “We need to talk,” I knew what was coming. She loves me. She loves me, but she hates the future she sees for us. Our past and even our present are perfect, but the future is a cold, black void. It keeps her up at night knowing that neither of us have any money nor any prospects of getting more soon. Weeping, she told me she can only see a bleak, hopeless, resentful future for us. Misery upon misery despite our love, misery chewing away at this young couple until only bitter husks remain. She’s right. I’d just been ignoring it but she couldn’t. I’m always a scruffy jumper or a sunny teeshirt, but we both need me to be a suit and tie every now and then. And it’s too late to start rummaging through the wardrobe.

Our relationship isn’t over yet. We’re both clinging on to it. But the axe is teetering above us and we both know it’s going to fall very soon. Probably next Sunday.

I love Tiona. I love her more than all the world. Loving her so deeply means I never want to leave her side, that I want to spend every day for the rest of my life cherishing her as my wife and the mother of my future children.

But more than that, loving her means I want the best for her. I want her to be happy more than I want her to be with me.

I know what we have to do.

I’m dreading it.

Last week I was climbing high on a glorious mountain. This week the ground gave way before me and I’m standing on the precipice of a volcanic caldera seething with angry lava and spewing noxious fumes. I’m going to fall in. No, not fall. I have to jump in. If I don’t Tiona will be miserable, maybe for the rest of her life. That’s not an option.

I’m not going to propose and she’s not going to say yes. We’re never going to get married in the tiny stone church on the hill we’d picked out, and we’re not going to find the imaginary house we’d miraculously be able to afford. We’re never going to create children together. Half her and half me. I was really looking forward to meeting the kids that I now know will never exist.

So that’s why I can’t see myself ever putting on that sunny teeshirt. I wear who I am. And I can’t imagine the sun ever shining again.

The day after we break up I don’t know what I’ll wear. I know who I’ll be that morning but there’s nothing in my wardrobe that comes close to suiting that empty, shredded wretch.

I know what I need to wear. But I can’t. It’s a fashion trend far too outmoded even for me; one I’ve read about in my Bible a thousand times and never understood until today.

Sackcloth and ashes.

I need sackcloth and ashes. I need to shred my shirts and my wool jumpers, cloak myself in hessian and bury my head in ashes. I need the scratch and scuff of the sackcloth to rasp at my flesh until it’s as lacerated as my heart. The ashes would clump and darken into two parallel lines from each eye to my jawline. How dare I dress in a shirt and jeans? What of it if the world looks on and sneers? It’s an insult to everything I’m about to lose and to my own heart if I don’t humiliate myself with grief. I need to wear who I’ll be, and I’ll be lamenting, lamenting, lamenting.

But I can’t wear sackcloth and ashes.

People don’t do that any more. Once, the culture existed where it was acknowledged and accepted as a means to express the deepest, most tragic sorrow, but now that that culture is no longer around to support it, it has become preposterous. If I donned my own sorrow with hessian and ash I’d look like I was mocking. It would backfire. It would hurt Tiona.

I wish it wasn’t that way. I wish every soul wracked by heartache could wear who they are. Black polyester just isn’t enough.

I’m just a silly romantic about to lose the woman he loves. But what about the mother whose infant child stopped breathing in the night? What about the devoted husband of fifty years whose wife is being devoured by cancer? How about the young woman who has just found out she’ll never have children of her own? Or the sister who never said goodbye to her brother before the accident? The friend who was in the passenger seat? Is there no apparel for the widow and orphan? A woman has a specific dress to celebrate in on the day she marries her husband; why can’t she have something to grieve in on the day she buries him?

Moping around in pyjamas, eating ice cream and rewatching Mamma Mia won’t help. The pain wants to swallow me up, but instead of trying to ignore it I know I need to embrace it, let it chew me up a bit and eventually spit me out. That’s what sackcloth and ashes are all about; embracing the suffering, going with the flow instead of trying to stand still in the terrible current and allowing it to carry you to a new shore. There’s a time for sorrow just as there’s a time for joy, and sackcloth and ashes are what I need to wear in that time.

I know it’s ridiculous. No one has put on sackcloth and ashes in centuries, at least not in Northern Ireland. It’ll never happen again. Suffer in what you’re wearing. After I walk away from my beloved Tiona I’ll probably wear what I wore the day before, but those clothes will be a betrayal of who I am on that deplorable day. I wish we could bring back the days when it was alright to weep, pale with ash and shrouded in burlap.

I wear who I am. I’ve been a scruffy Hawaiian shirt. I’ve been an oversized bee-suit. I’ve been a matching llama jumper from the Belfast Christmas market. Last week I was a bright and sunny teeshirt. Perhaps in the future I’ll be that suit and tie I need to be, maybe even the suit with a little flower in the buttonhole. I hope that’s who I’ll be someday.

But for now? For now, for Tiona, I’m sackcloth and ashes.