Life can change in the blink of an eye. Looking back there were so many moments when I knew, but chose to ignore. How could the person, my person, my person for the last 24 years be doing what I knew deep down inside he was doing?

I first noticed a distance between us in the December. The anniversary of my mum’s death was in mid-November and November had always hit me hard. As a teenager and young adult I hated November, nights were drawing in and weather was getting grim. It was cold and bleak and all I could ever think that would lift the mood was buying red tinsel! In fact that had always been our inside joke as it was time to start thinking about Christmas. So the fact that I had lost my mum in November just compounded my sense of sadness. For some reason November 2016 was particularly difficult; in hindsight I suspect it was because I was already missing the mediocre support he offered me, totally ignorant to the fact that he had started his betrayal 5 months previously…

I remember coming out of the fog that was that November and thinking about red tinsel and getting ready for Christmas, trying to drag up some enthusiasm to get plans in place for our daughters. But he wasn’t really there, even when he was physically there he wasn’t really present. Something had changed, he was short tempered and irritated with me, and with our girls, eager to get out on his own, happy to run errands even to the extent that when our younger daughter wanted the ‘must have’ Christmas gift that year he arranged a bizarre work trip via Houston to collect one; I now realize she lived in Houston of course! He was so proud to have found our girlie a Hatchimal. How funny that I took that at face value, hindsight is a crazy thing!

Christmas was a challenge, my Dad was visiting but The Former Mr Right used that as an excuse to disengage further, refusing to collect him from the airport citing a row I’d had with my Dad that summer as justification. All he wanted for Christmas was tickets to travel to Las Vegas in early January to spend a few days with his oldest friend who always attended a conference there in January. I remember being so hurt that despite his extensive travel with work his greatest desire for that year was to travel again and leave his daughters and me at home while he was living it up in Vegas. How very very naive of me… because of course she was there with him too.

I don’t remember if I felt I’d lost him at that point but I do remember him buying new clothes; I vividly remember pink shirts, 3 pink shirts and I remember thinking really? I do remember before he left telling him I was worried about us and him reassuring me and telling me it would all be fine that we would discuss it when he returned. For the umpteenth time in that whole nightmare I believed him… it would be OK, my person was reassuring me so it would be OK. I think that is when the ache began, the ache of doubt; it started as a niggle deep within me, but soon became an actual physical pain right in the middle of my back. It was as if I was missing a hug; just being held, which of course I had been for months and months, probably years if I’m honest. Today I use that pain to gauge my emotional wellness, when it resurfaces I look to how well I’m nurturing myself and darn it’s accurate! I was reminded to look after myself a little better today, after a particularly emotionally charged day when that old familiar ache began to resurface.

How many of you, I wonder, have similar aches or similar physical gauges of your emotional well being? I’d be interested to hear about them if you do…

Be kind, be gentle…

Denise xoxo