Sod it…

I’ve had enough of vague and not getting understood. I’ll be blunt.

I’m still in love with my husband. He’s not my ex, because the divorce hasn’t gone through, and my solicitor is being a bit slow due to his caseload. I still love him as much as I did on the day I married him, and possibly even more than that, because we were together for quite a while in the grand scheme of things. People probably think I’m completely insane for loving Paul the way I do, but it’s not something I can magically switch off. I can’t suddenly stop having feelings for the man just because I had to leave him.

Note I said HAD to leave. I didn’t want to leave. I only left because I was afraid the past might repeat itself with regards the violence. If he’d promised not to do it again and kept that promise, I might still be living there. If he’d gone and got help for his problems before November, I might still have been there. He says he’s been to see someone about his temper, and I really hope he has, but that doesn’t make things easier for me. It means that the Paul I’m in love with is still there minus the bit I had to leave for.

It’s sad to think that Paul is probably the only person I have really ever fallen completely and utterly in love with. I still love my first husband to bits, but it’s a different kind of love. He will always be one of my best friends even if we don’t speak that often. Paul is different: loving Paul hurts even now. I was jealous at Beltring because he was all over a girl and they were practically eating each other’s faces off less than 12 feet in front of me, knowing I was there and couldn’t help but see them. That stabbed like a knife. I was jealous when he said he was off to help another one of his female friends, driving down to her house to pick her up, take her back home with him, spend some time chilling, watching DVDs, chatting, sorting some of her problems and then the next day taking her to London to hand her over to her boyfriend. He did all that because she has problems: she’s anorexic, bulimic, depressive and agoraphobic. A very noble thing for him to have done, but it makes me very hurt to think he can do all these things for other people, but doesn’t care about helping me. I just told him in a text message that if the situation was reversed and he needed me, I’d be there for him. I’d want to help him, give him the answers he needs, and generally get him through it in the most painless way possible.

Perhaps I am asking too much. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Perhaps he hasn’t cared for a long time, since I stopped being the thin dolly-bird for him to show off. Someone described me as Paul’s “Trophy wife” and perhaps that’s got an element of truth in it. It does feel like he didn’t want me when I put on weight, some of which was down to my thyroid condition and the following bout of vertigo. I started losing the weight though, going to a slimming club to try to get back to the size I was when I met Paul back on the 2nd July 2000. Strange that I can remember the date so clearly. I also know that our seventh wedding anniversary falls in less than two weeks, and I will probably be sat here miserable, thinking back on the good times, and missing him so much it hurts. I do that a lot anyway, but knowing it is the anniversary of the day I married the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, to grow old and die with, makes it so much harder to bear.

Foolishly, given the chance, I’d probably go back to him or at least have a very hard time deciding whether to or not. If I did I’d lose friends and my family wouldn’t be happy about it. I’d lose the Bear, who has been so caring and considerate and who has helped me get this far so I have a roof over my head, a little money to keep body and soul together in the way of benefits, and he tries to stop me doing silly things to myself. At the moment he has taken all the medicines out of the house with the exception of the ones I need to take today because the other night I just wanted to escape reality for a while and took more of my sleeping tablets than I should. I wasn’t trying to kill myself, just trying to have a break from the hurt and the nightmares that even come while I’m awake. I wasn’t after attention or pity: I just wanted a break from feeling like my whole life is in ruins and the only person who could help sort out some of the pieces doesn’t want to know.

I self harm as a way of diverting my mind from the pain inside to the pain I’m inflicting, but last time it didn’t work. I cut myself with scissors: that didn’t hurt, so I tried a kitchen knife. That didn’t hurt either, so I tried a serrated steak knife, and even that didn’t hurt. That’s when I took the sleeping tablets. If I couldn’t divert the pain, then I could at least try to escape from it. I do see a counsellor, but to be honest, it’s not helping as far as I can tell. I’ve been seeing him every month since March, and as far as I can see, things have just got worse, although I can probably put some of that down to having seen Paul at Beltring, and to the things he did while there. He said he didn’t do it on purpose, that he wasn’t French-kissing the girl in front of me for any malicious reason. He said “it just happened”. Part of me wants to believe it, not to have to think that the man I love so much would do something to hurt me so badly, but the other part of me thinks he did it to show me what I was missing, to make me jealous, to make me upset and to hurt me badly enough that I couldn’t enjoy the party. I left early for the record, because the pain inside was too bad to bear.

We spoke by text yesterday. I’m not going to go into the details of that. Suffice to say I probably said more than I should about my feelings for him, which is probably why I’m no longer bothered about hiding them on here. He did say that I was being out of character though, and to be honest, I am different to the way I was towards the end of the time I was living with him. People have commented on the difference in me. A very good friend was even nice enough to tell me about one of the problems I have with my personality, and that means I can now do something about it. He was very reticent about telling me, but I’m really glad he did, because it now means I can hopefully solve it and it won’t be a problem any more. Paul did tell me about it, but didn’t go into detail, so I couldn’t quite grasp what the problem was. Part of me wishes we could have sorted out the problems before I felt I had to leave. I know I had things he disliked about me, and me him, but if we’d communicated, perhaps neither of us would have had to go through all this mess.

It is a mess, isn’t it? The Bear and I had a bit of a heated discussion last night (not an argument, I was just a bit upset and he played Devil’s advocate as well as sitting on Paul’s side of things to get me to see things from other points of view) and I know he didn’t agree with some of the things I said to Paul on the texts, but understood why I had sent them. He made the point that maybe I was hurting Paul with some of the things I was saying, perhaps dragging up things for him that he would prefer to be left, and perhaps I did. I don’t know really, but I know I don’t want to hurt him, just have him understand what’s in my head. I sent a text this morning apologising if I’d upset him, but I’ve had no reply to that text or the last two sent yesterday, and doubt one will be forthcoming.

I suppose at some point I will have to face the fact that Paul is either honestly not interested or he’s pulling away from me because he’s facing the same nightmares as I am. Bear was absolutely livid at Paul though, because I phoned Paul after taking the sleeping tablets and he said he was busy and could I phone him at half eight. Apparently I was slurring my words and very slow because the tablets were taking effect: Bear was sat across from me when I made the call and heard me. I only have vague recollections of the next bit because I was fairly out of it. By half seven I had basically passed out, so didn’t make the phone call, and Paul was angry that I hadn’t phoned when I said I would. Bear couldn’t understand why Paul hadn’t noticed something was up when I spoke to him in the first place, although I did say he was driving at the time, so probably not concentrating that much although according to Bear it should have been fairly apparent to anyone, even if they were busy, that something was definitely wrong with me, and Bear also asked why Paul didn’t phone me when I didn’t call at the appointed time, as he was waiting to eat. My answer to that is probably because he doesn’t want there to be any record of him contacting me by phone, or he can’t be bothered paying for a phone call to me.

The bit of my mind that hates me wonders if it makes him feel good having me chasing after him and telling him that I still love him. When I told the Bear that I’d been sending texts and said roughly what had been said, he threw his hands up and looked exasperated, because to his mind, I have handed Paul ammunition to use against me, things that he can use to hurt me and stuff he can read to his friends and laugh over because it will be seen as pathetic. He will get slaps on the back from his manly mates at having someone so pathetically infatuated with him, and it will all be a grand joke. Oh well, if he does, he does. If that’s what makes him happy, then so be it.

Bear has also told me off on several occasions for making excuses for why Paul did what he did, and for his actions even now. I do make excuses for him, like him being tired, working long hours, being too busy to reply, being too busy driving to notice anything amiss the other night and a myriad of other little excuses I make for him every day. I should stop really, as sometimes there is no excuse.

Recently I had a friend on the phone very distraught after something had happened in his personal life. He was told in no uncertain terms to come to my house for a bit of tea and sympathy and to see if there was anything I could do to help him. This was while I was clinging onto my own sanity by a thread, but that didn’t matter: my friend needed someone to help, and I helped. My parents were here at the time, and I had already put the contingency plan into action for sleeping arrangements, but my parents decided to head down to my sister’s overnight rather than during the day because the weather was so hot, so that helped with the bed spaces. My friend stayed over and we had a lovely couple of walks along the canal as well as a nice lunch out (I paid my share: I insisted despite him being a pain in the butt about wanting to pay for everything) and by the time he went home, his head wasn’t quite so messed up. He’d had a couple of days to think and someone to bounce thoughts off (with a bit of help from the Bear too, although the pair of them ended up licking land rovers and my mate now wants a land rover with armour. Don’t ask… It’s a bloke thing…) and went home feeling happier and with a plan.

I was tired: I was busy with having parents here: I was on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. None of these stopped me wanting to help my friend because he was so upset and needed to talk. None of these things would stop me speaking to Paul if he needed to either. The only thing that stopped me phoning when I was supposed to was about 90mg of Temazepam. For the record, it’s only because I’ve been prescribed them for far longer than you’re supposed to be that saved me from being dragged into hospital. My body is sort of used to processing them now, so there were slightly less nasty effects than there would have been otherwise. The Bear had to stay here all night watching me according to the NHS Direct nurse, and was told if there was ANYTHING that seemed wrong, he had to phone an ambulance.

Anyway, I’m still here, getting thinner (lost about 8lbs in a couple of weeks… Not great, but nothing to get too worked up about) and I’m back in touch with someone I’m very pleased to be speaking to. She’s an absolutely brilliant person (although she’ll probably kill me when she gets the letter I’m writing her… The paper will probably send her blind!) and I’ve missed talking to her. I best stop waffling on now as the Bear has to go, and I have asked him to post this for me. I’ve also asked him to post a pic of me with my cousin’s baby in her Christening gown, but heaven only knows if he’ll be able to work out how to do it… We shall see. If so, I hope you like the pic. If he ends up putting something on here that he shouldn’t, PLEASE phone me so I can slap his paw for being rude!

Normal service will be resumed as soon as the Bear stops being rude and works out how to use technology…