It's been a long time since I wrote anything. There is so much that
I've wanted to say, but have been unable to find the words to write them
down. Writing was the one thing that always helped me through
everything, before depression, but for a long time the words have been missing from my
heart.
On the 29th November 2013, a year to the
day, my husband and I broke up. I don't know why; he was the perfect
man, the ideal husband, and yet, we couldn't love each other enough. I
did love him, and I do love him, but it wasn't enough. My attention had
lapsed and I had allowed the problems in our relationship and my life to
spiral out of my control. We both had. After a roller coaster couple of
years, with my depression, losing my job, him going off to retrain in a
new field, me setting up my own business, putting my heart and sould
into it and then losing it, I think we'd both just run out of steam. It
was over and I was too exhausted to fight anymore. I had nothing left to
give. I wasn't strong enough to fight for him - for us - I needed him
to hold us together, he didn't. He gave up on me and I don't think
either of us realised it.
At first I felt free: released from a prison I didn't even know I was in, the weight that had been sitting on my chest had lifted. Finally, I thought, it was the relationship that has been making me depressed all these years. I felt releived. I became elated, doing things I would never have done before, going out, being alive.
For six whole months I
thought I was ok about the breakup but then, without warning, the truth
of the matter hit me: He was gone and he was never coming back. And my
heart broke.
Suddenly my head was full of him, everywhere I looked I was
reminded of him. I couldn't think of him without bursting into tears.
I'd walk past his office on my lunch hour, longing to walk in just like I
used to and knowing that I couldn't. One night as I was dropping off to
sleep, I realised that I coulnd't remember the soud of his voice, and
that hurt most of all. The man I'd vowed to spend the rest of my life
with was now gone - gone from the bed we once shared, gone from the home
we'd built, gone from my future and now he was fading from my memory
too.
I have wasted another six months of my life
filling my time with other things so that I don't have to deal with the
fallout of this. Is it a breakdown? I don't know, maybe. From the
outside I have seemed so capable, doing all the things I need to do to
keep going: finding a lodger so that I can afford to keep my home,
taking on freelance work to the point I barely sleep so that I can
afford to buy his share of our house, travelling to the other side of
the world alone - the one thing we always loved to do together, the one
time we were always good together. My friends all tell me how brave I
am, that I'm the strongest woman they know, how proud they are of me.
What they don't know and can't see, is that inside I'm a wreck. My heart
is held together with the staples and plasters and elastic bands of the
things I do instead of greive, but it's bulging at the seams; all that
broken mess needs to get out.
It's only now, a year
later, I think I'm finally strong enough to do the healing I need to do
to allow me to move on. And I think here is where it starts. I have to
write it out. I need to make the words come again. I need to allow
myself to break, fully, before I can begin to mend.
The words I've been unable to find will become my saviour. This is the written cure.
