So....where to begin. Well as one of my previous blogs stated I have turned 50, its an age that has struck dread in my heart for a couple of years or more, my bestest friend and I have marvelled at how fast the years have sped by to get us to this point, how the hell have our lives passed so quickly!
It wasn't as painful as I had dreaded and I can now actually say the number without stuttering, gagging or feeling faint, I am still me, still the same, still don't feel grown up enough to be thinking any of the stuff I have to deal with.
I wanted to write then that its a defining moment in your life when you think that to be considered middle-aged is incorrect, that to be literally in my mid-life would mean I would have to live to be 100.....a highly unlikely event! This sounds a little depressing and I nearly didn't write it but in fact I think it just makes my life feel more precious, the fact I know that I have fewer years left to live than I have lived means that I have to make them important, real, worthy and memorable! It doesn't feel like a downward slope more like a peaking of my world!
I have applied for a development role at work, a position in the Training department and I am currently waiting to hear if I have been successful. Its no major career move but I am quite proud that I have re-discovered my confidence enough to consider such stuff, there have been many months passed where I felt the stuffing had been so well and truly knocked out of me that I would never have it in me again to go-out-and-get! Its felt like a long process.
Anyway we will see, I shall hear this week and if successful it will mean that my part-time 3 days a week will come to an end while I complete the secondment and I shall be working full time with less time to waste, wallow and generally loiter in corners of my head and heart that I should avoid.
Now on the subject of my heart I have met my wonderful ex-love again. Since we met back at the end of April there has been pretty regular contact, nothing of mind blowing importance just gentle forays into each others world, emails a few days apart, funnies sent to make each other smile. I have wondered quite why and how he has suddenly been so comfortable with the contact that he once rejected and told me was unwelcome. For a woman whose glass is always half full I have a very negative thought pattern when it comes to my Love.....surely it must be that he has met me, realised he feels nothing for me at all now and feels comfortable simply being a buddy with me?......or maybe his life is so complete in his hard-worked-for-marriage that now contact doesnt touch him?.....or maybe he has had another huge deluge of guilt at how I was hurt and feels an obligation to keep my chin up??
So during these 'happy' email exchanges before my holiday in Portugal it went like this.......
He: ...Forgot to tell you I have had a haircut. A proper one, will send pic when it is looking ok, currently looks bedheady :-S Can't be long till your hol. Sunshine soon :) x
Me: ...a proper one? last time you told me that you'd had all of 2 " off lol :) x
He: .......as for haircut its traumatically shorter! :) x
Me: ........me too! I have been cropped today! I'll show you mine if you show me yours :) x
He: Deal! x
Me: 2nd July? x
He: ....should be cool for coffee and gossip x
So on Friday I once again set off to meet up with him. Last time had been odd, I blogged about the distance between us, the awkward hug, but despite that there was comfortable chatter, laughter, giggles and smiles, all the stuff that we were so good at (well...not ALL the stuff...hee hee) in the snatched 45 minutes I had with him. After last time I pondered how I felt about it all and felt what I had wanted was to meet and look at him with new eyes, not the love soaked ones I had seen him through before, but with a clearer head, calmer thoughts and a few barriers in place. It worked but only in respect that I didn't fling myself at him, I didn't weep and I didn't beg him to reconsider. I spent gentle time with him and parted from him intact but I knew that my love for him hadn't altered or diminished, it was simply now under control, in a place that I could regard it......
I had decided that depending on how we approached each other this time, that I would maybe ask outright, what was all this new 'comfortable' contact really about? What was it that was now keeping us in touch?
This time was so different, apart from the contact in between times it felt so much more comfortable. He plonked himself down beside me dispensing the need for the picnic-table-barrier between us, he had brought us a picnic lunch to share in the park, the things he knew I loved, the things we shared as lovers. There was a marked difference in his body language that I felt able to mirror as opposed to having to hold myself in check.
And so we chatted, we did what we are so damn good at, we made each other smile and feel wonderful, we spoke of how things were in our lives at present. Not wonderful, for either of us. And then he suddenly said a sentence that surprised me and had my head muddled......he said "It doesn't go away does it?"
No it doesn't, it hasn't. And I was brave enough to ask if he still loved me and he does......For the first time since he put up the barriers between us more than a year ago he let me into his true thoughts and feelings.
It felt like a revelation. It felt comforting, that I wasn't the only one that felt like this, I haven't been going mad, it really was all real.
Nothing has altered. He is still doing his damnedest to make his marriage survive, he has to and I so understand that.
He spent his lunch break with me and told me he only had to go back for an hour then would be finished for the day, I said I would wait for him. I got the blanket out the car and lay on the grass under a tree and read my book, lost myself in the black and white words on the pages rather than think about the words that had been spoken. He came back full of smiles and apologised, said he felt cruel for telling me this stuff when it really altered nothing for us but I didn't want his apology, I felt relief. I know now that what we felt was real and true and good, it wasn't just about the sex, the femdom play, the kink, the lust, it was about us, him and me.....it was real. It is real still I guess......We spent another 2 hours chatting, smiling and enjoying each others company.
So now I am left with a muddled head and a jam packed heart and I have to learn to live with this knowledge and believe that if its meant to be it will be.....and if its not....well I have the most wonderful love to carry me through years......
