Nobody wanted to do plan B. The riders stood around in their tight racing bottoms bitching that it wasn’t what they signed up for.
‘‘Even though it’s not what you dreamed about, sometimes a plan B can be good in ways you don’t expect,’’ he said.
Not to make everything about me (LOL) but of course I’m plan B.
I’m what comes after your life comes crashing down, and plan A is derailed. When all your hopes for the future are scuppered.
It’s not great being someone’s plan B.
Plan B is the plan you didn’t want to have to resort to, but circumstances have forced your hand.
As plan B, sometimes I feel like I’m just here to hold the Yorkshireman up and keep him going through life. Be a tireless cheerleader, an inexhaustible ray of sunshine, pulling him up the hill like the little engine that could.
There’s a wee voice that says that he can’t possibly love me as much as he loved Louise because I’m secondary, subbed in during the second half — a reliable player but no Beckham.
Nothing I do makes any material difference as his cement is no longer wet — all the footprints and initials made in better times have set. I’m here to keep the lights on.
His friends act like I’m some kind of endlessly empathic good fairy — say how good it is to see him smiling, credit me for his happiness ... they don’t know what it’s like to be in a relationship with someone suffering the effects of trauma, when grief brain means he loses the mental list that had my birthday present at the top of it.
I think the reason this hurts so much is that I’ve always felt like someone’s second choice. Second fiddle to my vivacious younger sister as a child. As a grown up, the girlfriend who is a younger version of the ex-wife right down to the Gothic novel collection, just more of a pushover. The cool girl who never minds how selfish, cheap or disrespectful you are.
Plan B is the side chick, the backup: if the night goes south, she’s a warm bed to fall back in.
The Yorkshireman was mortified when he realised I was genuinely hurt by the idea. He hadn’t meant anything cruel by it, because he’s not an asshole. He’d meant to be philosophical, to convey that best laid plans can never allow for the future, that goodness can come out of loss and grief and pain, and this was it. Us. We were the plan B.
Unless you’re terribly fortunate or terribly sheltered, I’m pretty sure life hasn’t gone the way you’ve expected, either.
I once seriously believed, with the hubris of youth, that I’d be a famous writer. Now I work in local government writing newsletters and scripting social media videos about wallabies. And I’m OK with it, grateful to have been able to make a career from my talent.
The Yorkshireman played hockey for Great Britain when he was younger, these days he’s a tiler with a sore shoulder (but he still likes to squish a chirpy player up against the boards and would never let another cyclist take a podium from him). He won the game of life being married to the same woman for 31 years, raising two sons together.
She isn’t here to celebrate her family’s latest triumphs: the youngest getting an apprenticeship and the eldest making further inroads into a career as a professional rugby player. I am though.
Me, who once didn’t understand scrums or car talk but now screams encouragement from the stands, able to differentiate an Audi S4 from the A4.
What a glorious mess this life is. You can’t plan for it, you’re just along for the ride and even when things don’t turn out how you thought, they can still be completely magical.
