Most of you who have read my blog know that a while back I embarked on an extra-marital affair which involved intense love, deep friendship and adventurous and rather deliciously kinky sex! There are days I still feel as if I haven't moved on from or repaired from the pain and loss I felt when it ended. There are some days I still feel that I miss him so badly it feels like a physical hurt and yet as time (the great healer it is portrayed to be) passes there are other days I feel I am making progress.
I can look back now and on bitter days see the affair for what it was, I can twist it into the sordid escape that some would have seen it as and I can calmly look back and remember it with love, sorrow, regret, joy, nostalgia. It can involve tears, laughter, smiles and secrets thoughts. It all depends on how my mood grabs me and how the thoughts form in my head (and often what time of the month it is! - damn these hormones!)
The same can be said for my marriage and homelife, sometimes I feel ready to flee, sometimes I consider it safe to stay......I really must be a nightmare to live with!
But while I was feeling of a slightly positive mind the other day I thought and considered my husband. He is a good man. He is a good provider, reliable, safe, calm and tolerant. He is not a drinker, smoker or gambler. he doesn't womanise or trawl the internet wanking at random porn or engaging in cyber sex with folks of dubious backgrounds, he doesn't beat me, belittle me or expect me to be a domestic goddess. He has never demanded that the laundry/meals/housework be done and has allowed me my freedom to pursue whatever I have desired. When I worked full time he supported me and helped with home and children, when I took a break from work he allowed me to without pressure to resume. He is a good man.
Ok, ok......he is not the most exciting man in the world, he is not the life and soul of the party, he isn't imaginative, eloquent or passionate. He doesn't melt my pants at the sight of him and he has admitted he doesn't fancy me so much now I have put on weight. He watches too much sport on the television and walks around with his earphones in listening to sport on the radio. His jaw clicks on occasions when he chews and I can't bear the sight of his feet.
But he is a good man and perhaps it is time I stopped hankering after something that I maybe should never have tasted and settle for what I have in front of me. Perhaps it is better the devil you know.......
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Still Trying To Make Some Sense
I have today returned to see my doctor.
I have been increasingly 'lost' over the last few weeks again and a friend made me promise I would seek help if I needed it. At a tremendously low point around 10 days ago I actually sat and wrote to down my feelings. Its a bit like calling out the engineer to an errant home appliance, it plays up for weeks and as soon as you get the man in over-alls through your door it works to perfection!
Well I sometimes feel a little the same. I am so used to painting on the brave face, the smile, putting up the front, the happy facade, that when I get to the surgery to attend the appointment I made 4 days ago when I was a blithering wreck in continual tears and unable to function, I smile serenely and tell him I am fine (go figure!) or I call and cancel as I feel I am wasting his time........ I can't get the words out, and he chats to me and gives me encouragement and positive thoughts and I leave (smiling- because thats what I do) and at the time think its all ok.
Its not.
So he sat and read the A4 word document I had printed off this morning and I sat and wept silent tears because I knew what I had written down to him. My 10 minute appointment lasted 40 minutes (if you were the lady with the baby in the pram who was waiting to see him after me I am so sorry!) and we talked and I sobbed and we talked some more.
I am back on anti-depressants, he wants to see me again in 3 weeks and we will talk some more and he is going to refer me to see a 'new' counsellor who attends the surgery. I like my doctor, he (quite unprofessionally really) let me hug him when I left, but he is a good doctor and he explains how things work and why he has given you certain drugs and advise. He is not a doctor who scribbles out prescriptions without making eye contact with you, I like him and trust him. But I know that he can't make me better, that a lot of that has to come from me.
So here I am........so many months down the line...still trying to make some sense of it all.....
Saturday, 9 January 2010
What Makes You Happy
I logged in this morning and have been catching up on my favourite blogs. I have a bit of reading to do as it has been a day or two....but the one that caught my eye this morning was from Crystal Jigsaw..... what CJ describes as a MeMe blog, the idea of which she had 'stolen' from a blog she follows......
So I thought I would shamelessly follow with my own.......
"Ten Best Things In My Life That Are Free"
Some days are really rather hard and it is very easy to get bogged down by the negatives so sitting here now thinking of my 10 things may be very good therapy for me...
1. Climbing into my bed all showered, clean skin, clean sheets and clean pyjamas
2. When one of my beautiful daughters wants a 'mummy hug', they are 17 and 20 now and no longer fit on my lap but do their damndest to some days, they wrap me in their youthful limbs and squeeze me and I bury my face in their hair and inhale them!
3. A seasonal one......How thrilling is it to be the very first person to walk on virgin snow! ☺
4. Waking in the morning and realising that you have slept the whole night through without waking! Sadly even then I rarely feel completely refreshed but it still gives me that glow of satisfaction.
5. Watching the ocean. Sitting on a beach or a cliff top and watching the waves, whether they are small rhythmic laps on sand or the more exhilerating pounding of tidal waves against rocks......
6. Laying in my garden on a summers days and gazing at the blue sky through the canopy of leaves on the large lime tree, colours I now associate with summer.
7. A moment of brief conversation that makes you smile....in a store, the petrol station, a waiting room....
8. Walking into my kitchen to find everything washed up and tidied away, with 2 girls you would think it might be more often than it is...but thanks to my husband I do get that pleasure.
9. Losing myself in a good book, its pure escapism. I can't get into one at the moment, I have 3 queuing up to be read, I suspect it is my frame of mind at the moment not the books, so I will bide my time and try again in a while
10. Having my parents, friends and folks round for food and chatter...
Writing this has been so much harder than I ever imagined it could be! I started out with such positive thoughts and by the time I got to 8 and 9 I was struggling. It made me realise a couple of things. Firstly, how much of our life is spent doing things that DON'T make us happy, the mundane, the necessary, the obligatory stuff and secondly, that we should make sure we do the stuff that DOES make us happy far more often.
Its been a good exercise.....I think more of us ought to take the time to make lists of their own.
So I thought I would shamelessly follow with my own.......
"Ten Best Things In My Life That Are Free"
Some days are really rather hard and it is very easy to get bogged down by the negatives so sitting here now thinking of my 10 things may be very good therapy for me...
1. Climbing into my bed all showered, clean skin, clean sheets and clean pyjamas
2. When one of my beautiful daughters wants a 'mummy hug', they are 17 and 20 now and no longer fit on my lap but do their damndest to some days, they wrap me in their youthful limbs and squeeze me and I bury my face in their hair and inhale them!
3. A seasonal one......How thrilling is it to be the very first person to walk on virgin snow! ☺
4. Waking in the morning and realising that you have slept the whole night through without waking! Sadly even then I rarely feel completely refreshed but it still gives me that glow of satisfaction.
5. Watching the ocean. Sitting on a beach or a cliff top and watching the waves, whether they are small rhythmic laps on sand or the more exhilerating pounding of tidal waves against rocks......
6. Laying in my garden on a summers days and gazing at the blue sky through the canopy of leaves on the large lime tree, colours I now associate with summer.
7. A moment of brief conversation that makes you smile....in a store, the petrol station, a waiting room....
8. Walking into my kitchen to find everything washed up and tidied away, with 2 girls you would think it might be more often than it is...but thanks to my husband I do get that pleasure.
9. Losing myself in a good book, its pure escapism. I can't get into one at the moment, I have 3 queuing up to be read, I suspect it is my frame of mind at the moment not the books, so I will bide my time and try again in a while
10. Having my parents, friends and folks round for food and chatter...
Writing this has been so much harder than I ever imagined it could be! I started out with such positive thoughts and by the time I got to 8 and 9 I was struggling. It made me realise a couple of things. Firstly, how much of our life is spent doing things that DON'T make us happy, the mundane, the necessary, the obligatory stuff and secondly, that we should make sure we do the stuff that DOES make us happy far more often.
Its been a good exercise.....I think more of us ought to take the time to make lists of their own.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
New Year and Other Nonsenses
I found it quite shocking when I went back and read my blogs from last new year! Oh how focussed and positive I felt then! Or at least that was how it came across.....how depressing! That 12 months on I seem to have moved no further, am still in this limbo-land of uncertainty!
It made me think back over the ups and downs of the year.
Now writing like this makes me feel a little guilty. As others have pointed out to me (and I am not so up my own arse I don't realise) there are many others in the world worse off than me.
I have my health (even though if I don't do something about my weight this year that could suffer) I have friends and family who love and support me, I don't have to beg or steal to feed my children, my country isn't war torn or threatened by famine or drought. I really am in a very fortunate place.
But of course it is all relative, and yes while I do have all these things there are still things in my world that cause me distress and unhappiness. It is different things to different people. You could say simply that if my day involved a 5 mile hike there and back to provide drinking water for my children I wouldn't have the time and energy to dwell on a broken heart and discontent in my marriage (I also wouldn't be so overweight!) and of course that is true. But the fact remains my water arrives with the slick turn of a shiny stainless steel tap, abundant enough for twice daily showers and watering the garden and soaking my feet if I so desire, so I do have the time to dwell on my lifes trivial inadequacies!
I have written before, very early on, about how I hate this label of 'depression'. I now no longer take any form of drugs for it nor do I receive counselling although there are dark moments that I consider I need both. The thing that I find most frightening is the speed at which some times I can feel myself spiral down.....No! Not spiral...plummet!
It can be a gradual process, a series of days or weeks that I can feel myself slipping lower and into darkness, sometimes it is possible to buoy myself with company or activity, sometimes it is not. But there are other times where I can wake and write or speak such positive things and by mid-afternoon I simply want out! I want to shut myself away and hide and ignore the world and no amount of cajoling and counselling can make me feel differently about it, me, us, them.....
Looking back over my blogs it reads like a roller-coaster, so 'up' and focussed some days and so desperate and devoid of life others. I know that I have a hard path to travel this year, I know simply that I cannot get to the beginning of 2011 with the same problems I have now and have had for at least the last 5 years.
Hopefully there will be no threat to my western world that will stop me still having the 'luxury' of fretting over 'trivia' but I need to make very sure that it is indeed different trivia. So I won't write positive, upbeat drivel that will make me look foolish when once again in a few weeks I write of my woes..... I shall just say I hope 2010 is a gentle year for all.
It made me think back over the ups and downs of the year.
Now writing like this makes me feel a little guilty. As others have pointed out to me (and I am not so up my own arse I don't realise) there are many others in the world worse off than me.
I have my health (even though if I don't do something about my weight this year that could suffer) I have friends and family who love and support me, I don't have to beg or steal to feed my children, my country isn't war torn or threatened by famine or drought. I really am in a very fortunate place.
But of course it is all relative, and yes while I do have all these things there are still things in my world that cause me distress and unhappiness. It is different things to different people. You could say simply that if my day involved a 5 mile hike there and back to provide drinking water for my children I wouldn't have the time and energy to dwell on a broken heart and discontent in my marriage (I also wouldn't be so overweight!) and of course that is true. But the fact remains my water arrives with the slick turn of a shiny stainless steel tap, abundant enough for twice daily showers and watering the garden and soaking my feet if I so desire, so I do have the time to dwell on my lifes trivial inadequacies!
I have written before, very early on, about how I hate this label of 'depression'. I now no longer take any form of drugs for it nor do I receive counselling although there are dark moments that I consider I need both. The thing that I find most frightening is the speed at which some times I can feel myself spiral down.....No! Not spiral...plummet!
It can be a gradual process, a series of days or weeks that I can feel myself slipping lower and into darkness, sometimes it is possible to buoy myself with company or activity, sometimes it is not. But there are other times where I can wake and write or speak such positive things and by mid-afternoon I simply want out! I want to shut myself away and hide and ignore the world and no amount of cajoling and counselling can make me feel differently about it, me, us, them.....
Looking back over my blogs it reads like a roller-coaster, so 'up' and focussed some days and so desperate and devoid of life others. I know that I have a hard path to travel this year, I know simply that I cannot get to the beginning of 2011 with the same problems I have now and have had for at least the last 5 years.
Hopefully there will be no threat to my western world that will stop me still having the 'luxury' of fretting over 'trivia' but I need to make very sure that it is indeed different trivia. So I won't write positive, upbeat drivel that will make me look foolish when once again in a few weeks I write of my woes..... I shall just say I hope 2010 is a gentle year for all.
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