Quite the nicest present I've had this Christmas was a cup of tea in bed that my eldest made for me. I can't remember the last time someone bought me a cup of tea in bed, such a simple but lovely treat, full of heart. Tomorrow will be New Years Eve and in 2024 a whole chunk of my past life will have gone, many of the people in it, and the home where I nurtured my family since my husband to be and I, moved there in 2001 shortly before our marriage. The home where I saw my girls grow and flourish, entertained friends and ... so much of all that life, the memories, the love, the laughter have all withered away. My husband has decided that the woman he met on the internet and whom has been calling him, her 'boyfriend' since Christmas Eve 2022, is the one he wants to move forward with because he understood we were over. And beside she's sweet and I'm terrifying (apparently). People are complicated aren't they? There are only victims and survivors when a marriage collapses. Whilst I am grateful that the holding pattern of 2023 is now over, I grieve all those memories, all those wasted years, as I realise what an utter failure I have been. I can't pin point the wrong turn, was it getting married in the first place? Did I miss something? But as this year, this life and this marriage steam-rollers to a close, and I face the spite, and those taking pleasure in my pain, I can't see a fixed point where I failed to do what mothers do 'keep it all together'. Perhaps there were too many. It's really hard to love yourself, without tangible proof that you are loveable.
I'm just embarking on a book by Philippa Perry entitled THE BOOK YOU WANT EVERYONE YOU LOVE* TO READ *(and maybe a few you don’t). In it Philippa, a psychotherapist (artist and agony aunt), identifies areas where people most need guidance and tools to help them through life. The first chapter is entitled 'How We Love" and why we crave connection... I seem to be losing all mine, unable to find people outside of my working life who make me feel good, and whom have the time to spend it with me. Perry says "Everyone needs to feel that they belong, maybe to a family, a project, a community, or to another person. We are creatures of connection and we deny this at our peril". Then there's 'How We Change" navigating the New for Better or Worse. I'm probably going to have to read this a fair few times and make good notes-to-self. In recent years I've lost a raft of constants and floated on a lake of uncertaintanties. My girls have grown up and are busy forming their own lives, both my parents have gone, my marriage has inexorably failed, my finances are unstable, my future - a sea-mist. That's a lot to deal with in order to manage the final chapter 'Contentment'. I strive for that, a 'metaphorical' cup of tea in bed, a contentment in life, it's a low ambition to match my low self-esteem but it's something at least.
It's pretty late in my life to be negotiating such a big and unnatural ending, and if I'm honest I can't find the heart or the enthusiasm to think about beginnings. I'm still processing that one of the biggest life-changing commitments I have ever made has crashed and burned, and how destructive that has been. I've made mistakes before, I've endured life events that took strength to pick myself up from but this one has somehow eaten away at me from the inside and if there's a spark of light left in me to rekindle my spirit, I can't find it. I shall have to be content with that emptiness, continue to read books that may or may not have the answer and remain calm in front of the coming storm. 2025 will be here soon enough, and if I'm there with it having survived, I can only hope that there's the promise of a cup of tea in bed and perhaps a home, cosy, welcoming, with a view from the windows, someone to take my hand, hug my shoulders and walk across a sandy bay, leaving footprints behind as sea birds wheel overhead and waves run in and out with happy excitement. (I write that with some irony, that line of 'faux positivity' becomes not just nauseating but also exhausting). A wise soul recently shared some wisdom on dealing with overwhelm, 'just nibble at the edges' they said. Sound advice, I shall nibble at the edges like a biscuit and hope I get to dunk it someday in a cup of tea that has been bought to me in bed.