FRIENDS

There are women who have walked arm in arm with me through many years of my life. Women who understand me better than myself . Friends who help give me a place in this world. Their arms form a super-strength spider web of sisterhood that will catch me no matter how hard I fall. These friends are constant, a part of the many pieces of myself. There is one that has flown far away, I cannot feel the comfort of her presence, our bond reduced to an invisible thread that wraps around the globe. Some of these friends are wives, some of them are mothers, some of them have grown-up jobs full of importance, some run their own successful businesses. They are smart and brave and wise. They are all unique and extraordinary.

A few of them are understandably cool towards the arrival of my husband back into the family fold. They had to watch my pain, see my face crinkle into uncontrollable tears, the sparkle and life snuffed out. To stand on the sidelines and see the one they love hurt has hardened and changed how they feel about him. With backs arched, claws out, teeth barred, they sense danger and want to protect their little one. I understand. If it were the other way, I would be the same. My newer friends, the ones I have gladly picked up along the path of marriage and motherhood have found it easier to find forgiveness. They did not see me dressed in silk and lace at the altar, fresh faced and young, full of hope and love offering up my dreams for him to hold. They have not been on the whole journey.

I tell of how he has changed his ways, become a better man, put wrongs to right. Their eyes and silence speak a million words. They have little faith left in my man and want me to stay out of harm’s way – his way. I hope he will prove to them in time that he is an honourable man that has made mistakes, but is worthy of a second chance. Life is too short to hold the broken pieces and sharp edges of disappointment next your heart. If he fails… God help him, they hunt in a pack.

Summer Lovin'

Your hair has gone beach babe blonde, your little button nose has been kissed by the sun as well as by me. Days are spent with sand between our toes, wind in our hair and salty sea around our ankles. You are a King adventurer, brave and fearless, ready to conquer the summer ahead, green crocs on feet and shorts hanging at half-mast. I want to endlessly drink you up, kiss and squeeze your trunk clad bottom as you race in and out of the sea. I want to protect you from the badness of the world and let only the the goodness through. I want to be the soft, warm towel that envelopes you and makes you dry.

These days you make me roar with laughter and I think my heart might burst right through my chest with pride in you. I want to keep you close, so close, wrapped in my mother love, but I cannot. You are not my baby anymore but a soldier, marching with strength and power into your own world of independence. I have started to need you more than you need me. So I will let go, loosen out the cord but just a little, just a fraction. I will give you the freedom your adventure heart desires because I know there is plenty more time for mother love ahead. I will take a step back but I will always be within reach.

Love and madness

He came back. Like a boomerang he went to the physical limits of separation and then started off where he had begun, with me. I didn't have to take him back, I could have left him there abandoned in the grass, but I didn't. I have found it unnervingly easy to forgive and forget and move towards greener pastures, rarely glancing back at the painful memories scattered like fragments of broken glass, lethal and laced with danger, that lie behind us. He seems changed, happier, comfortable in his own skin again and well, I made vows. Vows that are supposed to keep you together when nothing else would. It has made me think that love really is akin to madness. The madness I felt during our separation, the madness for letting him back so easily, the madness of marriage. But what is this life if not mad!

How are you?

Do you ever feel like you are living a lie? I do, especially now. The next time someone asks me how I am, I would love to say. "Awful. Actually awful, probably the worst I have ever been in my life. Thanks". But I don't. I never do and probably never will. Every time I hear myself say, "Great, thanks", a voice inside my head says, "No you are not. Your husband has left you, you are totally heart-broken and facing life alone. You are therefore not great!" The thing is my realities keep crashing into each other lately, huge head-on collisions. To all intense purposes I look the same, I get up, put my make-up on, accessorize, I look the part. I laugh and sing and play with my beloved son. I chat to the butcher, to the people I meet in the park while walking the dog, I smile, I laugh, I appreciate a sunny day. I think my life is good. Then my other reality will come crashing in, my husband has left, I am on my own, I am not sure if I am Mrs now or not and suddenly it all changes. The picture is still the same, but everything is different, everything is painful, everything is tinged with sadness, everything feels like it is ending not beginning. The thing is I do not know how to live this life, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do this life on my own, cause I made a vow, a promise with someone I thought I would be with forever. I had his child. We became parents together. We do this life together. I do not have the instruction manual for how to do it alone. I threw away the guarantee, I didn't ever think it would break. So here I am one careful owner of a broken marriage, that I have no idea how to fix or how to live my life without it.

Heavy Heart

Broken, cracked, bruised whatever way you call it when your lose in the game of love your heart hurts like hell. Mine feels heavy, really, really heavy. Like a boulder, cold and hard sitting in my chest making it difficult for me to breathe against it's weight. On the days when my heart is a boulder there is a chain reaction to another one, a smaller one that lives in my throat, it is probably more of a stone or a large pebble. It makes me take large gulping swallows that cause the tiny furrows between eyebrows to deepen with the pain. My whole face will crinkle up like a newborn and I am crying. Crying huge gulping painful sobs of hurt and I have to remember to breathe but breathing is difficult because of the weight in my chest where I have the boulder in the place my heart used to be. And i can't see any end to the pain, I am in it's epicentre and sometimes i feel as though I am being crushed by the sadness and the brokeness of it all. I know I just have to wait and let time take it away but time as a companion can offer little comfort.

A long good-bye?

So here I am still in the head melting maze that is 'separation'. I went to see my husband's therapist last week (God seeing that in black and white is so weird. When did I become one of those people whose life required a word like that?) Anyway it went better than I expected. He helped me towards an understanding of the mental block my husband is up against when it comes to our marriage. So here I am trying not to put up too many barriers so that we can exist on some sort of friendly level - a neither here nor there - until he can work through his issues. It's horrible, I am not sure how long I can keep it up, well actually I know how long I have to, until 30th June. That is the deadline we have given it. So much for forever, our forever will start or end then. Is a peaceful pact the best? A harmonious environment for him to work out what he wants. Should I be putting on the best show of my life, "Look at me, see, the best wife you could ever want, how could you possibly leave?" Or should I be pulling down the shutters in the knowledge that this is just a really long and painful good-bye?

Spring Days and Old friends.

I have always loved Spring. To feel the days slowly stretching so that we get more than a few precious hours of daylight, hopes of a warm long summer ahead and to see the bouncing yellow headed daffodils, cannot fail to lighten my spirit. And that is how I feel right now - lighter and maybe even a bit brighter. I travelled to London and met an old uni friend on Sunday. We wondered aimlessly around the shops for a couple of hours in the sunshine. It was close to bliss. When you find someone who seems to know yourself better than you it is a rare and wonderful thing. We met on the first day of fresher's week nearly fifteen years ago and were inseparable for four years. Since then we have lived in opposite ends of the world and have probably managed to see eachother every six months or so and yet everytime it seems as though not a day has past. When two souls meet I think they keep having a conversation unbeknown to us forever. Our souls - like swans - they mate for life. I like the idea of my soul having it's own independant etheral life outside of me, it's own social network. I can see it hangin out with all it's soul friends, maintaining it's invisible connections, allowing me to carry on knowing that they are there - my true soul mates, if I need them.