DISCOMBOBULATED

I am feeling a little discombobulated. I don’t know why. I haven’t really got anything very much to complain about, I just woke up this morning with that “how did I get to be here?” feeling that lurks about from time to time.

The feeling makes me anxious and it makes me question my decisions and it makes me wonder what might have been. I think about all the couples I know who have survived an affair and I think about whether, knowing what I know now about the way the world works I would have been so convinced that I could no longer be in my marriage. It makes me wonder about how other people choose to lead their lives – some agreeing to living together for the sake of the children but leading totally separate lives, some not liking each other, some seeing other people in secret and when I think like that it makes me sad. Mainly for the children. It makes me wonder why I couldn’t piece it back together for the sake of my children’s happiness. Then I remember a friend telling me that I tried, tried, tried my hardest to keep it all together at the beginning, but that my husband was not interested – he was distant, cold and hard. Then my barrier went up and as he softened and pleaded I was the one who grew cold and distant and hard. I found a letter he had written me in one of my packing boxes the other day – it was heartfelt and powerful, but it came a year too late. I don’t remember being even remotely moved by it and yet now it makes me weep. Why is it one of life’s tragedies that the moments of emotion between two people so rarely coincide?

I went out last night with some girlfriends. We had a lovely evening listening to a jazz band play Hotel Costes style music in a very cool venue but I didn’t want to be there on my own and I didn’t want to make random small talk with strangers. I talked to my girlfriends. It made me realise that perhaps one part of my long slow road to recovery was finally over. I no longer felt the need to be meeting other men in order to feel desired or wanted or even loved. My desperate need for attention came from my ridiculously low self-esteem as a result of the “what’s wrong with me?” questions I had during my marriage. The desire for validation is a female trait that I seem to have in bucket loads. Or is it simply immaturity I wonder?

Anyway. There we are. Questioning my life again. There is a lot of press at the moment about children and how they suffer during divorce and yes, of course they do suffer. I don’t know how I would have coped with the divorce of my parents. My children don’t talk about it very much. My youngest child wears his heart on his sleeve and his pain is palpable. It grieves me deeply. All I can do is try and ensure that they see their father as much as possible and hope that they know they have two parents who love them deeply. I think it is better in many ways for them to have two calm households and a mother who can be herself rather than living with parents who argued constantly. That was a miserable existence for them and not the way I would have wanted them to learn about relationships.

The ice is melting slowly between my ex husband and I. When I took my two oldest children into London the other day, I rang and asked him if he wanted to join us for lunch. He couldn’t. Today he is celebrating the long overdue success of Sunderland beating Newcastle with our teenage son. Male bonding. Nothing like it.