I have been bobbing along through the last eleven weeks with little or no emotion after the initial shock. I had hardened myself and not really seen it as something that was real or tangible.
Now though, with the receipt of the respondent agreement, it finally FEELS real, real and quite disgusting. Like I have swallowed some sort of REALLY sour boiled sweet and I have the horrible, tart residue biting from my tongue to my stomach. All down my oesophagus. I just feel ill. Ill and moody and just not very pleased.
Obviously, nobody wants to have to go through a divorce. When I got married I hadn’t anticipated its untimely demise.
See, it’s difficult for me right now… I was speaking to the estranged the other day and I was telling him that I cannot remember why I married him, and I honestly can’t. I have been trying so hard to remember, reading old blogs and letters, looking at old photos. I just can’t remember what part of me thought it was going to be a good idea to marry someone I hardly knew that didn’t make me feel like I was the most important person in the world.
Things with the estranged and I were always overwrought. There was always an air of… what’s the right adjective to use in this situation? Perhaps, ‘reservation.’ Yes, I will stick with that one. I always had a thought in the back of my mind, even as early as when I gave my ash-beast that final hug at the greyhound station (thanks for that, by the way… I love you), wondering what I was getting myself into. I was always slightly hesitant… and I should have seen the signs.
I know I loved him, but I wonder if I was more in love with the IDEA of him… some sassy british emo boy who would whisk me away to the magical land of accents I’d always dreamed of.
I still do love him. I love him in a way that you love someone who you were close to for a very long time but have now become very distant. I love him fairly secretly and from far away. I find it easier to not have to actually face the emotions I still have for him because they make me feel all gross and lost.
I hate seeing his face because it reminds me that I fucked up and wasn’t strong enough to make this work… it is the face of the one thing that I couldn’t make right by crocheting, baking or cuddles. The face that used to look at me with such amazing love… such adoration. His face now only offers scowls and snarky smirks and I hate that. I hate to know that something that used to be so beautiful could have turned into something so ugly, just with the flick of an emotional light switch.
I hate hearing his voice because it is the one I spent so many hours listening to as I ramped up my foster parent’s phone bill. I hate it because that voice used to say such sweet things to me and make me feel so… in love. That voice has turned into something that I only associate with nagging, hateful remarks and snide comments.
I just want him gone now. I want him gone so I don’t have to face him whenever he is in the house. It is just awful and painful and not good for either of us. Our promises of getting through this as friends just seem further and further away with each passing day. I can’t stand being around him, so how should I be expected to play nicey when he is in one of his rare ‘I won’t be satan to danie’ days?
Urgh!
Then there’s the muffin. I just… it feels like every single day I love him just slightly more. I don’t know if it is possible or how much more my heart will be able to hold, but goddamn it feels good. I just feel this massive, swelling, glowing thing inside of my chest and it makes everything in the world seem perfect… like I have found that missing piece, that thing that I have been missing for the last six years, the one, special, blue-coloured cog that makes this machine emit nothing but sparkles and glee.
He makes every tiny little thing that I deal with on a day-to-day basis just so much easier, simply by being him and having that wonderful voice and those big blue eyes.
Amidst this forest of love though, there has to be the reality… the branch-covered ground. And there are a LOT of branches on the ground. Some of them are pretty and made of some special bubble-gum-scented wonderful and some seem to have been created in the mind of geiger.
I have to make sure that I don’t let this love balloon fill up TOO much because if it pops (which is clearly, always a possibility) I really don’t want to have to fall too hard.
He and I have been progressively having more serious talks. Primarily, this is due to the fact that I have been speaking to a lot of people about him and me and what our history looks like (I am aware that I haven’t really touched on this a great deal in my blogs, I promise you I will soon. It is an epic love story that deserves to be told, and perhaps made into a film by Hollywood. The film would star Janine Garofalo as danie, Jemaine Clement as the muffin and Johnny Depp as pow pow). I really haven’t gone into all the details with ANYONE… the most I tend to tell people is that the muffin has been married twice, he has three kids (and has been fixed so’s he cannae have anymore tiny muffins) and he has broken my heart countless times.
Clearly, just from that little snippit, there is reason for concern, but honestly, none of that really means anything to me… none of it has even offered me so much as an afterthought to the glory that our day-to-day wonderful is made of.
At least not until lately. See, because he is aware of the things he has done, he tends to be VERY cautious when speaking to me, skirting around any potential emotional mines that might be planted around topics such as his current wife, the kids or him breaking my heart. I try to make him understand that I am not an emotionally fraught girl who can’t distinct between the past and the future, that I am instead someone who is both forgiving AND in love with him and nothing will make me not want to be with him.
Even the big one… the clincher….
See, since November 2005 danie has been broody… and not just normal broody, but like, weepy-when-she-sees-a-really-
He dotes on his daughter, molly, the most as she is the one he is closest to and he cannot WAIT for me to meet her.
I try… GOD I try to make him understand that it will most likely be one of the hardest things ever to meet her for the first time. To know that I will never, ever have one of those that is just mine… it makes the pit of my stomach get all tense and my eyes immediately moist. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it will be for me to meet her. Like, just seeing photos of him with her, whilst they are glorious and she is just the cutest, most wonderful little girl ever, she’s just HIS and I will NEVER have one, ever.
I will never, ever be able to break the news to him in a supercute way that we will be having our own babycake.
I will never have him hold my hand during ultrasounds.
I will never, ever be able to have him play guitar and sing to my belly.
I’ll never be able to get all weepy when I’m in my last month, feeling super-fat and horrible, just to have him hold me and tell me how beautiful I am.
I’ll never have a tiny danie/danish of my own.
It’s just… when I think of it. The empty I feel in the pit of my stomach is indescribable. Knowing that there is this massive realm of life that I will be missing out on, it just totally baffles me. I don’t think it will really, actually hit though until I meet molly for the first time. Until I see that he has another, actual, tangible girl in his life that is tiny, looks exactly like him and is not even a little bit mine.
Of course, I will prance with her and help her bake and generally be the best step-mum I can be, but initially, it will be heartbreak, absolute heartbreak.
Clearly, with this heartbreak comes the muffin, ever-attempting to save me from myself. He says that if it is going to make me ache that much, I shouldn’t settle for him but… I know though, that not being with him would break me more than not having a tiny muffin to love. I know that the amount of wonderful things he and I are going to create are going to be so massive and will hopefully pale the fact that we will never have a tiny of our own in comparison.
I love him so much and I can’t help but feel really, REALLY deep down that it is going to be okay. That despite the fact that we will never have a tiny muffin, we will have masses of other things that will hopefully fill that void. I have no doubt in my mind that this is going to be okay and that I will never, ever live to regret this decision.
