moving on

World of wonder

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Golden circle rainbow,
Golden circle rainbow,

I wonder a lot! About everything.

I wonder how I got here, I wonder about a million “what if’s”. I wonder if I’m doing a good enough job of these two precious lives in my hands, but most of all I wonder about the future, what it holds for me and my boys.

Then I decided to stop. Just like that. Just stop worrying, looking back, fretting about what may or may not be. To stop procrastinating, to remove the mystery of the unknown and grab life by the balls and live my life the way I want to live it. This in part was driven by the need for change (which is bizarre given the amount of change I’ve gone through lately) but also in part from reading a quote which really resonated with me;

” if you cannot find the story you want to read, write it yourself”

As someone who has been defined for the past two years by the tragedy of my story this really hit home and provoked my curious wonder to take a new perspective. What if I write my own narrative? What if I’m my own hero? What if I don’t need a villain to make my story interesting?

Hmmm.

There are so many amazing things in this life that we all dream of doing, seeing, feeling, experiencing, yet we plod through life never getting around to it. Why?
Maybe it’s because most of us have never really realised how quickly everything we have, everything we are, everything we believe in can be taken away.
I have.

Through my turbulence lessons have been learnt, and now I realise that living life for today is the only way I want to live, moreover it’s a lesson I want my boys to learn.

I cracked open my Bucket list page on Pinterest, poked a metaphorical pin in the middle, and voila Northern Lights here I come.

Not only is this something that I had dreamed of doing for as long as I can remember but I also longed for some quality time with Oliver.

Credit card in hand, him and I set off for Reykjavik leaving baba with my family for a few days. The Blue Lagoon, the Golden Circle, the Geysir’s and the Northern Lights all firmly in our sights.
What sights they were! We saw rainbows of massive and frequent proportions, Magnificent Waterfalls roaring with splendour, Barron landscapes scarred by molten lava now hardened into its own kind of beauty, Dancing multi coloured lights in the vast dark sky’s of the North Atlantic sea, Boiling, aggressive jets of water sent soaring 30 feet in to the freezing Icelandic sky by the force of mother nature herself…the list goes on.

Simply wonderful!

In amongst all this I saw something much more important. A healing child. A boy becoming a man. One of the two loves of my life growing and learning, letting go. I saw him relate to me like he has never done before, we are friends. We have respect for one another. We talked, we laughed, we explored.

Now back home, baba in my arms I don’t wonder if we will be ok. I don’t wonder if I’m doing a good job in raising decent human beings with self confidence and a moral compass to be admired, I don’t wonder about what went wrong. But, I wonder what will top Iceland. New York? Tokyo?

Only time will tell , but I can say bucket list item number two is in planning…I can’t believe we haven’t done this before.

Stranger Danger

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As children we are warned of the boogie man, the stranger offering sweets on the streets, the man alone in the park. We are taught to protect ourselves from the dangers of the unknown. The dark side of society, portrayed as the big bad wolf hiding, lurking in the shadows. We are armed with knowledge and we tighten our defences.

Then we grow up. We dream of love. We imagine our own fantasy fairy tale. The picture perfect partner to share our lives with. Someone to cherish, challenge, support and respect. We long for butterflies in the tummy; a passion that leaves our mouths dry and palms sweaty. We live for that racing heart and trembling legs euphoria of real unfiltered love. Of course we kiss a few frogs along the way, and we all suffer from soul sucking heart-break somewhere down the road. And it changes us. We learn, we grown, we go back to protection mode as taught to us in our youth. But then, there he is…your person. The other side of you. Your complete; in perfect harmony together. We open ourselves up. We give ourselves freely. You trust him with your heart, your soul, your secrets, your dreams, your deepest desires…your fears. You are at your most vulnerable. But that’s ok, those lessons mamma taught you don’t apply here.

Right?

After all you know him. You know everything about him. Don’t you?

So what happens when these two opposing worlds collide?

When evil resides behind the mask of Prince Charming… your perfect partner is the stranger. The con man, the opportunist, the master manipulator, liar, thief, adulterer, pervert… Narcissist! An unrecognisable person whom the very thought of chills you to the bone, leaving your once rampant hot blood running cold. What do you do?

It’s tempting to build a wall of protection that could rival Berlin around your very being, to crumple like your once sweaty sex sheets on the floor, to gather your army of bitterness and fire killer words without aim, or simply to retreat. Hide away licking your wounds of shame, despair and sorrow.

Then what? You live alone, to afraid to move on, to be vulnerable again, scared to be happy because you know – you just know it’s gonna happen again!!! Nope not me, I remember the lessons that mama taught me. This time I may go a little slower, I place my feet with a touch more caution, but I get up. Over, and over again. After all you can’t keep a good woman down.

Despite the new knowledge of his continued and deepening disgraceful behaviour now in my possession I feel strangely calm. I’m no longer shocked. I feel no shame. No hurt. No fear. No hatred. No self-pity. I’ve cleansed myself, literally and figuratively. I’m Shiny and new. Not the same person in any way shape or form, but I love that. The fear of the unknown, the anticipation of the life that is waiting for me forces my heart to beat faster and stronger than it ever did before. Any pain or hurt I may feel in the future will be embraced as it simply tells me I’m still alive, I’m taking risks and I’m living really living!

Now I’m forearmed and protected after all I now know the stranger once in my bed.

A year of firsts

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I sit here this morning, this bright yet chilly September morning, reflecting. I’m melancholy, I’m confused. Honestly I’m a disaster zone, a mass of war-torn wreckage scattered with the landmines that are my pent-up emotions; poised to explode at any given moment often with no trigger other than a flash of memory. A momentary lapse of concentration allows my mind to veer, accessing the part of my brain that I have done so much to lock away. Pulling forward the lovely comforting warm memories of what life was like precisely one year ago.

Sept 24th 2014 I was smitten head over heels in love. Drugged with happiness holding my new baba Albert close to my overwhelmed, ready to burst heart, surrounded by my little family; Oliver the doting big brother and him… My “husband”
Things were at last perfect. I couldn’t have been happier.
I watched as my big strong yet often silent husband tended to our fragile, shiny baby boy.
So gentle, so loving. And all the pain from the past year was gone. This was our time. This was going to be the making of us. We were so happy at last.

We had already had a tough year. No a shitty fucked up year. A year in which “he” turned my world upside down. His selfishness, his fear of truth, his lack of morals or respect drove me to the brink of insanity over and over again. Little did I know that things were about to get much, much worse.

A year of discovery, of firsts eagerly awaited my arrival. The first affair I discovered, the first illegitimate child to another woman, the second the third. The gambling, the lost jobs, the many married women, the prostitutes, the divorce papers, the loss of my job, the criminal charges he claimed against me, the lies he told… All to keep his secrets safe.

Now one year on I’m still holding my babe in my shaking arms whilst I read the complexed documentation
that landed on my doorstep this morning from my lawyer. My divorce lawyer.
The documentation which picks over the bones of what I believed to be our once happy marriage. 11 years with a man whom I loved unconditionally. The man I put on a pedestal, only to watch him fall. Try as I did to catch him he was, and still is determined to hit the self destruct button whilst all I can do I stand by and watch.
And there, right there lies the source of my confusion.

This is the fate he chose for himself. This is the result of his choices not mistakes, conscious decisions. He took all I had, everything I built for us and threw it away with such vengeance, such disregard for the consequences, not just for him and I but for those around us but especially our children.

For that I hate him. Yet conversely I see his fate, I see the darkness that is heading his way, the shadow that he will forever live under is slowly wrapping itself around him and he is oblivious. His sad existence consumes me. I pity him. He does not deserve my pity but nonetheless I do.
I have spent months-12 to be clear trying to understand my part in all this and now I do. I see it clearly. He was, no is, intimidated by me. My success, my friendships, my ability to love, to show empathy. To live a clean regret free life and he hates me for it.

Now I’m happy with my boys. I’m celebrating all I have, and every single day I feel blessed to have these two amazing characters by my side. I no longer love “him” and I no longer think about “him” and I know for sure that I never want him in my life ever again. So as we teeter on the edge of the one year mark I can’t help but to reflect on this past year of firsts. But now I look back and I see this year of firsts differently. I see a year of watching Oliver turn into a beautiful young gentleman, of Albert, babbling, smiling, crawling, walking, eating solids. I see all those amazing moments that we created together and most importantly I see a new year of firsts on our horizon. One in which he won’t feature.
So in this new year of first I will stand strong, I will smile at your craziness, I will pity your sad existence and I embrace all you have to throw at me good bad and indifferent. I will continue to celebrate the joys of my life and I will love my boys enough for both of us!