Scales

Last week, I made it to a gym class and actually got a shock when a skinny, drab-looking creature stared back at me from the mirror.  Who needs Weight Watchers to shift those post-baby kilos? My face tells a story of pain, a new harsh crease above my nose, grey skin and hollow eyes. I can barely recognise myself. And for a dose of extra drama, I got light-headed and fell down at the end of the class: How very 19^th century ladylike!

Here’s a guy who must have practised his scales Chopin – Nocturne 8 in D flat, Op27/2

 

Good vibes

It’s almost a month already, since I was hit by a metaphorical bus (must have been a double-decker), and the lows still keep on coming. Desperation so thick and dark it makes me want to howl, and I can no longer remember who I am. I know I used to love life and be happy once upon a time, but at times like this, it becomes a concept as abstract as quantum field theory. Yet even though I feel lonely, I am not going through the days alone. Good vibes keep coming our way from friends and family all around France and the UK, helping me hobble along until I get back on my feet. Never had I spent such an inordinate amount of time on the telephone, drunk so much tea or received so many presents and invitations. And I cannot thank them enough for their time, attentions, sympathy, soups, and for not dwelling on the fact that I look like death warmed up and shrunken in the wash :o).

Really cool song for today Groundation - Groundation chant

When did life get so complicated?

Tonight, my son actually opened up: Hail hail hurrah, a boy who talks, let’s have a merry dance! The poor thing somehow felt responsible for his step-dad and I splitting up. A classic child-response to separation we thought we had pre-empted by saying that our separation had nothing to do with the children, that we would always be there for them and all the standard crap you get from “help your children through divorce” blurbs.

Then of course, things get quite a bit more complicated when the man your mother is separating from is not your actual dad. And the current situation has thrown my little boy into existential turmoil revolving around: Why did his own daddy leave, and what is going to happen with the man he had adopted to bring him up, now that the link that brought them together no longer exists? And the thing is that up until now, T had always said he loved my son like his own, and even mentioned adopting him a few months ago. Since our separation, he has seen both children together and so far, I had not really thought about them being treated separately. But the scary truth is that I no longer really know or understand T, and I no longer know if I can trust him not to dump my little boy much the way he dumped me, because the going gets tough and he feels like fleeing his responsibilities rather than facing them. (Sigh and reach out for the triple strength ibuprofen)

Archive - Londinium
 

Need you now

My son's woken up from a nightmare, and here I am, wide awake: It’s a quarter after two, I’m all alone, and I need him now.

Sleep has been so hard to find lately, I feel so tired, so immensely sad…I just wish the power of my longing could turn back the clocks. That I would stop waking up at 6.20 every morning, stretching my leg towards his, only to be met by a cool patch of sheets. Yes, this is all unhelpful thinking, what good is it going to do me, blablablabla…But at 2.30 in the morning, there is no strength left in me to beat out the misery. I miss my companion.

Antebellum – Need you now

Banal

If I got a euro for every time I’ve heard someone tell me "this sort of brutal separations happen all the time" in the last month, I could be off cruising around the coconut islands for a fortnight. The thing is that yes, I’m sure you too have heard about your great auntie’s butcher’s wife sudden unexplained walk-out,  and seen the statistics. But wait a second, this is my life we are talking about here! My life and my children’s family…And no, it is no consolation to know that what we are going through is somehow banal. In fact, it hurts. Think I need a t-shirt that reads "I am not a statistic".

Garbage - Not my idea

Autumn day

One afternoon in early November, less than three months ago. T had just started a new placement at the ambulance service and was really enjoying it. He came back full of stories from his early morning shift, I told him about my latest assignment on bariatric surgery, the children were at school and nursery. It was just the two of us, and an afternoon of pale Autumn sunlight. And guess what parents do when they get such rare opportunity? Sleep! I took a break from work, joined him in bed for a tender time and a nap. Later, I went back to work, he went to pick up the children, I made some soup, boy moaned about having too much, girl guzzled it with much satisfied humming. Once the children were in bed, he may have watched one of those TV crime series, which gives me nightmares, while I got on with some work. We hung the laundry together before going to sleep.

Lamb - Gorecki

Family

As I pass yet another Valentine’s day display in a kitchenware shop, it is hard to stop myself from being violently sick over the stylish fine china - whose life expectancy I would roughly estimate as 1.5 days in our household. I can practically touch the great big dream-shaped hole in my life. So much has been lost: My companion, our family, our future. Yet as I look out of the window, not all has gone: The sun setting over the snowy mountains, the smell from the bakery around the corner, and a thin but sturdy wall of protection around me – the love from my family. Knowing there are people I can call in the middle of the night, hearing them bang on about feeding me up and getting some sleep. Being loved unconditionally, when Valentine’s day feels like an insult...

Moriarty – Jimmy (To my lovely sister)

Rage

Incandescent rage has irrupted into my life after yet another night of being woken up every 20 minutes by a teething baby. My fatigue only equals the anger I feel that I should be the only one getting up every night, rocking and soothing anxious children to sleep when my own world has only just crumbled. That this man has not only suddenly forgotten all that we shared, all that was good about us, he has left me virtually jobless in a still new city, with no family and two little kids. He has broken the deals we had for our respective careers, for our future. And if this wasn’t enough, he is currently enjoying the single lifestyle of hard working and partying, spending money we haven’t got on flash furniture and recently thought it appropriate to lecture me on crying in front the children. No really, the cheeck of the new T is seemingly limitless!

This has to be my all times favourite angry song
Rage against the machine – Killing in the name (to be blasted at full volume for full effect, ooh yeah...)

Karma

Have you ever felt ashamed of the way you treated some people in previous relationships?

Bile rose in my throat this morning as I contemplated the fact that I too, in the past, have abandoned some perfectly good men who truly loved me, because I was fleeing my own problems. I remember how suffocated I felt, how liberating the escape, how sad they were that they really wanted to make me happy, yet I wouldn’t let them. What if this was what happened to T?... What if he too felt he had never truly loved me? What if he never looked back?

Except of course there are two significant (p=0.02) differences between my past mistreatment of men and the current situation: One is seven, and feels abandoned yet again by the man who was supposed to bring him up. The other one is not even walking, yet her own father has walked out on her family.

Massive Attack – Karmacoma

(To J I hurt so badly, to S and S, you were all so good to me)

Take your life and shake it hard

About a year into our relationship, and heavily pregnant, I left my whole life behind, and uprooted my England-born son to move to France. I left a good job, a home, my friends, my support network, my whole life to move in with T. He had to struggle with the scary proposition of leaving behind his day as a care-free student to become a husband, dad and step-dad all rolled into one. Times were happy but tough, and when our daughter was born, our lives had truly been shaken so hard they were unrecognisable. In spite of all this, we learnt to live together, struggled through sleep deprivation and insecurities to gradually become a new but perfectly formed family.

T used to sing our colicky baby daughter to sleep with this song  Israel Iz - Over the rainbow

The letter

Two weeks on, the initial shock is beginning to recede and life has reluctantly resumed. So far, I have somehow coped –read: I have occasionally managed to brush my teeth, and the children get fed (though mostly frankfurters, rice and green beans from a jumbo bag in the freezer). But just when I thought the worst was over, I can feel myself sinking even lower: T has signed up for a flat and started removing things from our home, and the violence of this disappearing act, combined with the resurfacing of my own deepest insecurities have projected me into a world of bottomless anxiety. I can feel myself looking down a dizzying abyss of the darkest depression and a primal fear grips me. Gather me up because I'm lost...

Kristin Hersh – the letter

Stand by me

Word of my current predicament is starting to spread with the inevitability of rain on an English Summer day. The good side of this is the somewhat unexpected, and overwhelming wave of support I am getting from everyone from parents at school to neighbours and nursery staff. With two interesting side effects: Firstly, it does really warm my heart and helps me still see the best in people. Secondly, it does make me see T in a different light. The brutality of his change of heart, his inconsistency, the sheer speed with which he has thrown our relationship away to rush towards his new single life all paint a fairly ugly picture. This person is no longer the man I loved.

Ben E King - Stand by me

Waste

Tragedy lies in the details. For the first time today, T did not use let himself into our home, he rang the bell, and I felt the love in my heart begin to make way to a deep, cold hurt. It feels like nothing can stop the spiral of grief, guilt and resentment that is hurtling us apart at terrifying speed. We need to urgently discuss looking after the children and money, but the situation is so loaded, it practically feels like a day out in Kashmir. And to think that a couple of months ago, we were discussing the best timing to have a third baby feels as unreal as the Queen popping round for a cup of tea... The same obsessing question keeps going round my head: How?

Fast track

When we first met, I lived in the UK, while T was an intern in medicine  in France, so we spent hours chatting on Skype and single-handedly kept Easy Jet in benefit. Within a few months, we fast tracked to wanting to spend our lives together and started talking about moving in together and having kids. Yes, I know, bloody love hormones have a lot to answer for... We made plans for me to relocate to France, and actually got pregnant 6 months into our relationship. You think this would be scary, and you’re wrong: This was terrifying. It felt completely reckless, yet completely right.

Walk away

Last night had heartbreaking quality. We had dinner as a family, T was ever so nice, the children whined about eating vegetables and smeared pizza into their hair. Were it not for the palpable sadness, it could have been a couple of months ago, when our lives hadn’t been torn apart. And while I know that denial is all part of the process, somewhere deep inside of me lies the faith that this is not the end of the story.

Ben Harper - Walk away

Cougar woman

T and I met two and a half years ago on holiday. I was a weary single mum, he was a broody newly single med student, and yes, crash bang, it was love at first sight. He is nine years my junior and easy on the eye, which could practically put me in the same league as Madonna had I a penchant for kabbalism. For all the lust love at first sight, I was incredibly scared to let anyone into my, and my son’s life, and kept alternating between being a hysterical woman with baggage, and having panic attacks. In other words, the very image of the totally positive and together woman you’d normally try to project in a new relationship. Amazingly, T did not run away, loved my son, and for the very first time in my life, I knew I’d found someone who accepted me for who I was, who’d seen me at my worst, yet still wanted to build a life with me. This gave him the courage to share some of his own baggage and weaknesses and made us incredibly close.

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Tissues are my new best friends

After the initial bewilderment, point blank refusal of his decision, and anger, I feel an immense sadness welling up inside as I am giving up the fight and beginning to accept reality. It felt easier to think that aliens had abducted the man I loved when he was being cold, but his current concern for me is a reminder that he is still himself, only without the love, and I find it devastating. The amount of crying involved in my daily schedule is simply ridiculous: I knew I should have bought some Kleenex shares!

Ouch

Today, I broke down seeing both our names on the front door, the bright, cheery sun felt like an insult, and I could not even stand hearing my children on the phone. Everything hurts. I am clinging on to my next counselling session tomorrow like a life line, but the hours just seem to expand into a terrifying inventory of all I have lost. If you have been through a similarly cheerful time, how did you drag yourself live through those initial abysmal days?

Poor cow in France

On the 1^st of January 2011, the man whose life I’d shared for two and a half years (T) announced that he didn’t love or trust me anymore, and that he wanted us to go our separate ways. His decision was final and could we please get on with making arrangements. Do you get the feeling you’ve heard about this all before? Yep, me too, and I’d always thought “Wow, poor cow, how could he/she be so deluded they never saw this coming?”. I hope this blog will be an account of my journey back to life. I have an amazing 7 year old son from a previous relationship, and T and I have a beautiful 13 months old daughter together.