What I can do

Work didn’t pick up – we sort of killed time until 5 and then wandered home. Tonight I am going to this BBQ, there is this part of me that is baulking but I know I have to push myself out there, meet people, be sociable, in some ways I guess I need to forge an identity on my own. The latter is much more for myself than for others because it seems that people have never really seen me as “half of a couple”, certainly not my friends anyway. But I feel like that’s how I’ve seen myself to a large extent and I need to build up a bank of experiences on my own to prove for my own benefit that I am just as much on my own as I was as part of a couple.

I met some more people today and talked some more about everything. Still getting the same, incredibly enthusiastic response when I tell others about this job and this upcoming trip, especially in the context of the breakup. Mum keeps telling me again and again that it will be amazing, and that I will be great. She hasn’t been so openly proud of anything I’ve done in a long time.

I know that just slowly, I’m emerging from this foggy, unhappy mess. I know that even if I don’t feel like things are improving, there are things I can do now that I couldn’t do 3 weeks ago.

I can get out of bed without crying.
I can get through a whole day without crying.
I can read novels (as long as they do not hit too close to home).
I can listen to lots of different music (currently Starsailor).
I can talk to strangers.
I can listen to other people talk about themselves without feeling like I desperately need to talk about me me me me me.
I laugh.
I can make bad jokes.
I can sleep, most nights.
I can be away from home and my family.
I can look ahead – sort of – to what is next.
I can combat the urge to call him.
I can eat.
I can feel emotions other than utter despair.

This man who I met on the shuttle to the airport (from the last town where I worked) talked quite a lot about his experiences with life and love (and two divorces). He said that someone once told him to think about the phrase, “Life is an illusion” and work out what he thought it meant. I don’t know what I think it means yet. But maybe it’s all to do with perspective, how I construct my world from the inside and how I view what happens. And, I guess, how fallible, fickle, unpredictable the world is.

Things do have a way of working themselves out though. That’s how I’m comforting myself.