Playing The Field

Playing the Field
We invented it, you know, we're the Baby Boomers, we're the ones with the money, the time and apparently the wherewithal. We are the children of the 60s, the ones that learnt to have it all, indeed, to expect to deserve it all.
Every field I have sat in front of, I have played. I have played the feminist field; the best job, best family, immaculate house field. I have exhausted myself and every possibility. But its only now that I have really even begun to understand what I have to play for.
In my head I have lived a life of hedonism, a Machiavellian life of freedom, pop and opportunity, Facing now the reality, I have lived a humdrum existence of work, disappointment and resolute determinism. They (who is the nebulous 'they' of whom we speak so often?) say that everything comes to those who wait. Well, waited I have. I have waited through children, through marriages and through affairs. I have waited through deaths and redundancies, promises and betrayals: and now my time has come.
I no longer care what you think of me, I care little of how you look at my hips and think that I could be slimmer, my breasts and think they could be perter. I no longer care what you or anyone else thinks because I am free. Free from the judgements that have kept me down. Really free to play, to love and to laugh..
Those social norms that have hemmed me in no longer bother me, no longer restrain. They are there but I no longer care. Your death set me free. For so long we obeyed commands, you had this scan, that blood test, that drug. For so long you were 'observed', questioned, cajoled and loved. But in the end the regime overwhelmed, the disease won, the battle was lost and I was free, free to play in a way I'd never played before.
No appointments to keep, no results to wait for, no side effects to battle with. No tears to mop and no sense of impending doom to combat. The fight is over, the battle lost. What tosh. It was never a battle, it was only ever a game, the disease always the victor; simply letting you get in a few runs before bowling you out forever.
And now I can begin. I thought I knew what playing the field was but maybe that was only because I had viewed it through the myopia of respectability and general expectation. Now I see the field in technicolour, multi layered, like a pop art dress I had in the 60s, swirling, patterned and unstructured.
Everyday I have a choice; get up / stay in bed; eat / not eat. Phone that man from the dating site / not bother. Phone that woman, make an effort. Live softly and gently / live loud and outrageous. My field to play is large, is limitless, the rules are soft, the gate is wide. I need only to push and go through. The gate is open, the field is wide, let the games begin.