Today would have been our fourth anniversary.

How things change.

Changes

I said goodbye.

Today I tried to think of his voice, and it took me ages - I just couldn't get it to come into my head.

I can't remember and I can't decide
What was the season and the colour of your eyes?

I can't remember the colour of his eyes.

I'm letting go I think, bit by bit.

Angry

For fuck's sake, how HARD is it to be in the apartment for half an hour to let the removalists in and point out all the stuff that's not yours?

You broke up with me, turned my life upside down, and since then I have had to make countless trips to get all my stuff out, I have had to organise ALL of the practical things, all you have had to do is sit on your arse and wait for it all to happen and now you are refusing to give up half an hour of your valuable time to give just a tiny bit of assistance?

PULL YOUR FUCKING FINGER OUT. You are SO SELFISH.

Why the hell did you email me about it anyway? It's not between you and me, N is organising the removals and made that perfectly clear to you. Why must you continue to drag me down when I just want to get on with putting my life back together?

Seriously, just get OUT of my life.

Love After Love

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

(Derek Walcott - courtesy of my friend A)

Third party

Today I had my first session with a psychologist. It was really good - he is kind and firm and very straight-forward, which is exactly what I was hoping he would be. Unexpectedly I actually cried quite a bit, more than I have in one go for a couple of weeks now. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I think it was a combination of his kindness, his incisive questions at crucial points ("What is the purpose of deceit?") and having someone able to reformulate and summarise so succinctly and exactly HOW I have been feeling for the last 6 weeks.

Apparently, when I've done all the necessary crying, I won't cry any more :)

In the end it's been a bit of a teary day, but it's definitely different from the sort of teary days I was having 6 weeks ago. Now it's triggered by something - a song lyric, a kind word - and it erupts and then rapidly settles and I'm able to get on with whatever I'm trying to do. Sometimes I resent the interruption - and I get frustrated with what I often perceive to be a lack of self-control - but apparently it's healthy and normal and has to be done. If it has to be done, I'll do it.

So - a few things from today, things I'd like to remember:

• the point of deceit is to hide something - and so the fact that I didn't see any of this coming is not my fault, there is nothing I could have done, and I should never blame myself for it
• his turning towards others may have been just as much him turning away from me
  
• at the moment he's "centerstage" in my mind - but time will gradually move him into the wings
• one day he'll just be someone I loved once, someone I knew once
• all decisions are emotional ones - there is no such thing as a completely "rational" decision
• I don't know how he is grieving, and how he is or isn't, isn't important for my recovery and isn't the point - he is not a reference point for me
• he wants absolution from me but guilt is a violation of one's own ethics, and if that is what he has done he has to deal with it for himself, not look to me for a solution
• This process is about letting go - of him, of us, of responsibility, of all the issues and joys and good and bad times - and it is about accepting that he will not come back

We talked about my imminent going away too, but not as much. Maybe next time.

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find the things like that on your way
as long as you keep thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
Sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

(Cafavy)

Deja vu all over again

I'm back from Perth - I had such a good time! Unfortunately the same dreary feeling descended upon my return; I felt like this when I came back from interstate last time as well. It seems that the further removed from the wretched "situation" I am, the better I am. So Thailand should be a perfect tonic based on that theory, right?

A and C (the friends I stayed with in Perth) were so great. They'd actually talked between themselves quite a bit about me and my problems, and they are a bit older and wiser which always seems to help. A and I chatted about it for quite a while today before I left. She thinks that at least a very significant proportion of the breakup was due to what she calls "Exam Psychosis"; she and C both did their exams last year and she says that at times she really didn't think that they'd make it, and perhaps in hindsight one thing that helped save them was that "divorce is so messy"! This is hard to believe, looking at them now - they are such a balanced, healthy, functional couple and it's difficult to see them ever having such difficult times.

But their experience - and that of their friends, and of mine - is that it really is that bad, and that it does destroy people and their relationships. In the end it still doesn't matter, because it doesn't change where I am right now. For what it's worth, A thinks that when the whole exam thing is over, and after the post-exam traumatic stress, he will think about this and he will realise one day that it was Exam Psychosis that led to the split - and that by then it will be too late. This is probably true, if he ever does have that epiphany, which I actually don't think he will. He is so good at pushing things he doesn't want to think about to the back of his mind - as I found out so recently - that I don't think he'll ever get to the stage of processing it to that degree. Plus, he will probably start his next relationship before the exams are even over - "just pragmatically", of course! - so there's some more processing killed.

And in any case, as I have known all along - even if he did come to see that he made the wrong choice, I don't see how it could work ever again, even if I really wanted it to. I can't see how any amount of counselling, any amount of talking and discussing and confiding, could possibly make me believe that anything had really changed. When I have those down evenings, I want the old future back, not a new one in which all of this has happened. Even if he came back and said, "I was wrong", what would I do? I think I'd probably say, "Prove it". And how can someone do that?

Anyway, his last email was just recycling the same old shit that he was spouting back in the first week after the relationship, so to imagine he will ever think it through to the extent that I have seems just a tad unrealistic.