MOVING FORWARD

Quotes of the Day:

“If your world doesn’t allow you to dream, move to one where you can.” - Billy Idol

“If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” - Seth Godin

Hmm. Thinks…

Couldn’t choose between the two quotes above so I went completely off piste and chose them both.

The Billy Idol one had to be at the top as during the late ‘80’s, I had nearly every one of his albums on cassette tape and yearned for peroxide blonde, spiky hair too although I wasn’t brave enough go through with it. My husband wouldn’t have liked it.

Plus, Billy autographed my best friend’s breasts in a New York night club with her kohl eyeliner. She didn’t wash for weeks.

Seth Godin’s quote is exactly my take on life. It’s too easy to sit back and before you know it, it’s all over.

Long before Seth Godin came to the fore, it was exactly this that made me finally decide that arguing with my then husband on a several-times-a-day basis, was indeed a very unhealthy environment in which to bring up my two very young and precious children.

Much as I would like to relate to you all the gripes and grouches that added to nailing down the coffin of my first marriage, I really don’t think that is fair. The Ex is still alive and despite the fact we (thankfully) have had no contact for years, he’s not able to have his say here so it would be grossly unjust of me to have a massive pop at him.

All I will say is that I’m sure he is as relieved to be divorced from me as I am from him.

September 1987 wasn’t the best of times.

Things had become so bad at home that He-Didn’t-Know-It-Yet-But-Soon-To-Be-Ex and I were constantly at each other’s throats. For respite, I went off early one Friday evening to Cambridge to have a very early supper with my ’Billy Idol Signed My Breasts’ friend, leaving He-Didn’t-Know-It-Yet-But-Soon-To-Be-Ex to babysit the two kiddywinks. I wasn’t away very long in reality. We had a good chat - well, I guess I bent her ear - and I left hers at about 21h00.

Arriving home - and it really was a pretty nice home with a rather too comfortable lifestyle - I was greeted with a thunderous Mr Grumpy in the hall. On venturing upstairs, both the children were tucked up in bed, with my 7 year old son still crying in his sleep This was some three and a half hours after I had painfully left him crying as I went out. His pillow and face wringing wet with tears, he was still doing that ‘gaspy breathing in thing’ that children do when they have cried themselves out . Apparently, he was terrified I was never coming back because ‘Mummy and Daddy are shouting so much all the time’.

My daughter at 5, was less aware and seemed to be sleeping peacefully but who knew what was going on inside her head? She kept it all inside.

It was at that very moment it hit me like a ton of bricks.

At the ripe old age of 27, do I really want to wake up at 60, still with the same man, having wasted my entire life unfulfilled, arguing constantly and being unhappy? A big fat no to that one, thank you very much.

Not right for him either.

Is it right to put my two precious children through the torture of living in the same house with two desperately unhappy parents, or would it be better for them if we were to go our separate ways and find happiness apart?

I slept little that last night. It was a very dark and unpleasant time for various reasons which I won’t go into but suffice to say that as Saturday morning dawned, I told him I wanted a divorce.

It didn’t go down well as you can imagine but by that time, anything we previously had during those nine years of marriage was dead in the water.

He wasn’t ever going to leave as his family owned acres of the small Hertfordshire village we lived in, with parents, an uncle, cousin and brother all shoe-horned in and within spitting distance of each other.

It was down to me to make the move, and I knew by going I was legally putting myself on the back foot.

As I packed up my tiny silver Mini Metro Turbo with my two precious children, their toys and clothes, a few of my clothes and a red portable TV, I wondered what must be going through their minds. I felt terrible wrenching them from their home, their father, their very worlds, but I knew it was best for their sanity as well as mine.

There was absolute quiet in the back of the car. Neither of them uttered a word.

For me though, as I made my way down the drive on the way to temporarily stay with my parents, it felt as if I was shedding a very uncomfortable skin.

A wave of euphoria came over me that I had never felt before, nor have I ever felt since.

A tide of relief so strong, that I knew whatever the future held for the three of us, it was completely the right thing to be leaving on that day.

It wasn’t going to be easy, oh boy it so wasn’t, although I didn’t quite realise that at the time. What I did know though, was that it was the only way forward.

Time to move on with my life and find some happiness and joy that me and my children so richly deserved.

Simon’s offering today: ‘Sadly, today I took my cat to the vets to have it put down. He told me I would have to book a further eight appointments.’

The elevated emotions of yesterday have subsided. All is now calm.

It seems to have struck a chord with a handful of other self employed folk who have previously experienced similar contumelious behaviour, and others who were shocked to hear of people’s insouciance towards others, knowing full well the situation I’m in at present.

Put simply, I think it is bad manners. I feel exonerated and justified in yesterday’s fury at people attempting to get me dancing to their tune, not mine.

Had a bit of a blip earlier today when I decided to try lifting up a small half full saucepan of spicy pumpkin soup, not long after I had lifted a half full kettle. Stupid but not an impossible task, I thought. Just too soon it would seem.

I’m hoping it was my back saying ‘Oh no you don’t,’ as a piercingly sharp pain seared through the wound area. Thankfully it went off after about half an hour, so I presume all is well.

The nurse Manon and her trainee arrives this evening for the very last time. No more anti coagulant injections. My thighs are starting to look like I have been comprehensively punched as each ’pique’ leaves a small bruise.

I guess this also means that the foul compression stockings can be disregarded at long last too. A bloody great double hurrah to that one!

Exercises are going from strength to strength, walking going well, tired still, but morale lifted from yesterday.

Definitely moving forward.