Here Be Dragons

I'm in uncharted territory now. Places in a relationship I never thought I'd be. Places for which there is no guidebook.

You'd think asking around might help. After all, I'm hardly the first person to find myself in this situation, any of it.  But when I speak to other people, the best they can offer  -  for all their good intentions  - is something along the lines of: "I was there. It was shit".

What to do for the best depends on your perspective. A kick-ass feminist workbitch like myself wants to be independent, lead a life of integrity, hold out for someone who thinks she's The Very Thing.  A kind concerned loving mum like myself wants to do the best for her children and see if they can make it through childhood with their family life intact, and without too many emotional scars. You see the problem.

I've had my Period of Shittiness. I've resigned myself to the shitness of things, and got through the Period of Resignation. I went through the phoney-separation and the Period of Bridget. And now, well, I don't know what period I'm in.

I think it must be a sort of Captain Cook or Christopher Columbus sort of period. Should I find out more about them before I name my latest life-stage after them? And even then, I'm not sure. I feel they set out with more excitement and optimism than I have.  Maybe I'm more like someone who's forced onto a journey. Convicts condemned to Australia? Irish people sailing to New York during the potato famine? I'd like to think of a journey into the unknown that has a reasonable likelihood of an eventual positive outcome.

I know. I'm going to call it the Period of Map Making. What do you think?

Watershed

I've been doing some thinking. A lot of thinking. There have been a lot of things to think about.

And then when I was done with the thinking, I did some deciding. That part turned out to be easy in the end. I reached a turning point  -  last night, actually. It's time to move on, and leave behind what's holding me down.

I said I was not waving, but drowning. Further out than everyone thought. I should have added that I was drowning because I was being pulled under by a person I was trying to save.

All I have to do is decide to swim away. Not a hundred miles away, just beyond arm's stretch. A few strokes will do it. And already my head is free and I can breathe again.

Meanwhile, there's inner re-branding going on.  I'm not going to be Hard To Love any more. I'm going to be adorable, gorgeous, sexy, warm and fun to be with. How's that for a start?

Happy birthday to me. Here endeth the Period of Bridget.

Miss Demeanour

Things are the same, and yet not the same.

It's very odd. A sort of phoney war I suppose. I don't know whether we are waiting for the storm to break, or whether we simply can't be bothered to tackle anything any more.  He's determined he's not going to move out  - and I thought about just moving out myself with the girls and buying somewhere else, but I don't have enough for a deposit. Apparently you need 25% now.

Although I do own the Dino... which would be plenty for a deposit...

I've changed, you see.  I still look like me, but I'm uglier. I'm Evil-Zombie-Me. I'm like the armed wing of Me.  I am taking no prisoners. I am taking no shit.

Although first I need to make it through the holiday we've booked...

This involves a protracted ten day period of time together.  It also involves complicated travel, time in a country where neither of us speak the language, and four very tired people.  I'm sure it'll all be just dandy.

I'm still angry. How dare he, how very dare he, dump me, now? Thereby denying me the opportunity to be the one doing the dumping, at a time that suited me better. I am mightily put out. What happened to sticking it out until the children left home? Mind you, that would make him, hmmmm let me see, about 112 or something so I guess he has more of a sense of urgency.

I'm not sure how this plan of being Great Friends is going to work out. We don't really like each other very much.  And now I'm in my Unbalanced Zombie phase, I don't see that things can improve.   Look on the bright side, though.  If I turn out to have something substantive wrong with me, at least I will get to have a nice lie down, and someone will bring me my breakfast in bed and a nice cup of tea. Small comforts.

Freak Show

Or maybe I will join the circus - on account of the freakish lump I have discovered in my neck. I always thought my claim to fame would be as the Bearded Lady, on account of the stray eyebrows straying right down towards my chin now, sometimes, but this is in a whole different league.

Aforementioned neck-lump could be worth a lot of money. I checked out my insurance policies only recently: no, dammit, they don’t pay out if I take my swallow-dive off Beachy Head; although they do pay for me to go to the Priory if I have a breakdown. Which I may still do - it looks really nice at the Priory, and there would be clean bare rooms with crisp white sheets and silence and a break from all the shit.

I’m a Key Person. It says so on my insurance policy, in thick black letters at the top so it must be true. It puts my value at about £300k – I’m not sure if that’s new-for-old, or taking account of reasonable wear and tear. I expect Himself to be hanging bunting on aforementioned neck lump when he finds this out, £300k coincidentally being the exact amount we “need” before he can stop working like a maniac and everything will be ok. I am not entirely sure of the logic of this calculation, or the specificity of the amount. I believe it serves a purpose purely as a notional figure just beyond the horizon – a number which can’t quite be reached.

One way he could mark his success, if he ever flipping would, is to think about how that figure has changed over the years. When we were first together, we watched Indecent Proposal (would you sleep with Robert Redford for a million dollars? Hmmm let me think.....) and we worked out that an appropriate sum in our situation would be the amount outstanding on the credit card. This was about £1000 I think.

Now the Life Changing Amount is three hundred times more. And still he’s running after – what? I believe it will turn out to be a relief to be thrown out of the moving car onto the verge.

All I have to do now is make sure I don’t have to get my head amputated. It may cramp my style if I have to forgo my neck. Appointment made – watch this space.

The Way Through The Woods

I know there is a way through this undergrowth of arguments and swamps, roots reaching across the path to pull me down, slippery moss of wrong turns and a mist that muffles words.

I know there is a way through to life on the other side. I know and I am finding my way.

It's hard to listen to your partner talk about a life you've had together without the words "we" and "us". Me me me me me until I was gagging on his self-obsession. He illustrates every point with a metaphor of work, and speaks to me alternately as if I were a child, or an enemy.

He has decided to wage war on life. "I will make no compromises," he announced (not that he made any before)."I will not live my life for anyone else, or do anything i don't want to do." I raised a quizzical eyebrow. "And if people don't like it, they can't just fuck off". Nice.

So off I fucked to make a cup of tea. Love might, I thought, be a series of tiny mutual accommodations, to allow your lives, your selves, to fit together with no rough edges, no tectonic quakes or tsunamis. But you'd have to find someone who at least vaguely matched to start with. If he is shaped like Italy, and I am Sicily, drifted off and booted into the Med, there isn't going to be that fit. We travel there in a week.

Fridget

The realisation dawns. I may as well have a grey duvet. Grey pants, grey bra for that matter - no one's going to see them.  Maybe no one will ever see me naked again  -  and that's no bad thing for the world.

Maybe I will never have sex again.

I'd struggle nowadays to get anyone to meet me for a coffee, never mind a really steamy fuck.  I am an overworked, under-workedout, middle-aged, plain, dull, boring, look-like-I-work-for-the-council mum.  Life has put me very firmly in my place, these last few months.

Maybe I'll never hear someone tell me they're in love with me again.  I've loved more people than have loved me back, that's for damn sure.  I don't think Colin Firth is going to be telling me he loves me just as I am, any time soon.

Like I said, I'm a slow learner.

Great North Run

I thought today of moving north. Of moving home.

If am moving, why not go back where my mum and dad are there for me? Where I can help my brother with all his stuff? Home where no one judges you on the kind of car you drive of the kind of job you have. Home where there are no private schools and straw boaters and UberMummies. Home where no-one knows me now. Home where no-one knows him. Home where they take people as they find them.

Home with that smell of home in the very air. Home.

Foolish

I wake up, alone in a hotel, and think I don't need a special day to be a fool. Make myself a cup of tea peppered with London scum. Watch the street and feel disconnected from life.

In the mornings at home, the girls don't come in and see me when they wake up now, because I'm on another floor. Things are on a different level.

What to do with all this time alone?

Yeah, even the thrill of that wears off eventually.

So I thought I would fill the time with writing.  I've signed up for NaPoWriMo (write a poem every day for a month).  I've signed up for a 6 week online poetry course, starting Monday. And on the 9th, I'm going on a one day workshop. What else are all these lonely garrets for?

Lucky Pups

Much as I loathe them, I think in my next life I might return as a dog.

I reckon if I was a dog, it would be easier to please a man  - in fact, I'd get to be his best friend. Then I received an email from my dad, entitled "Why Some Men Prefer Dogs To Wives".  He sent it to my sister too. We're both having Husband Trouble, so it maybe wasn't the most tactful thing... Nonetheless it contained some wisdom I can apply in my next relationship, see if I can keep a man interested. Like a dog, I am eternally optimistic. Maybe that's why I'm drawn to cats: they're naturally cynical.

1. The later a man arrives home, the more excited the dog is to see him.
2. Dogs don't notice if you call them by another dog's name.
3. Dogs like it if you leave a lot of things on the floor.
4. A dog's parents never visit.
5. Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to get your point across.
6. You never have to wait for a dog: they're ready to go 24 hours a day.
7. Dogs find people amusing when they're drunk.
8. Dogs like fishing, hunting, chasing around after balls.
9. A dog will not wake you up at night to ask "if I died, would you get another dog?"
10. If a dog has babies, you put an ad in the paper and sell them.

No wonder I couldn't keep a man interested. See, my cold wet nose is nuzzling your crotch as you read.

Woof.

Pickle

The Period of Shittiness was followed by the Period of Resignation, and this too passed.

And now I realise I am in a new phase, one which will probably last me for many years, see me through to the time when all I live for is a hot cup of tea up top and a fresh Tena Lady down below. I hereby name this phase the Period of Bridget. 

It mainly involves being by myself a lot, eating meals that consist entirely of custard, or of Branston Pickle directly from the jar, and daydreaming about Colin Firth. It involves drinking every day, and trying not to smoke, and inevitably finding myself wearing the wrong thing at the wrong time (although actually I did that in earlier Periods too). It involves the appalling realisation that all the nice men are married, and intend to stay that way, and will be steering a wide berth away from my confusing new status.

It involves involuntary celibacy and self-hatred and chocolate. It involves binge-drinking sessions with screwed-up female friends which may end in giggles or sobbing or a sccary combination of both.  It involves deep headfuckedness of the worst kind.

And sadly for you, dear reader, it involves writing about it all. Look away now if you don't want to see the final result.