Grace in your heart...

[Treasur]

Heartbreaking. Got this email, written at 0230 this morning.

Dear W

It's very late or very early, depending on your point of view I guess. And I'm sitting here wondering what has happened to get us to where we are. Listening to Mumford and sons first album on repeat for the third or fourth time. What's going round and round in my head is that this is all so silly. So very silly. And it's left me reflecting on how we got here and how it happened.

Over the past few months I've thought long and hard about my behaviour, my emotions and my feelings. What they've done to me. What they've done to you. I suppose most fundamentally what they've done to what remains of us. And the truth is I'm sorry for what I've done and for the things I haven't done. It's made a hard situation harder. I think at times neither of us have covered ourselves in glory, but I can clearly see my part in that and apologise. I could spend hours writing an excuse for it, and I have had my share of struggles to contend with along the way, but ultimately they're not the point.

And of course it's made me reflect on the past 20 years. A long time. On the good times and the bad and all of the things that have led to the now. And I suppose the now is what matters when alls said and done. I need to move on. You need to move on. We have talked and talked and emailed and texted and we're still stuck. In my reflections I've come to appreciate how very hard that must have been for you with everything else you have to contend with, and again, I apologise. The time for that talking has passed. We are different people now. We have both evolved, and I don't think either of us want to be stuck anymore going round and round and round in circles. We both need to go forward into whatever comes next.

And I don't altogether know what comes next for me. I might be running away and I might be moving forward but I'm looking at a new job which might be in a new country. Maybe it'll happen and maybe it won't but for me it feels like moving on.

And I guess it means we need to come to an agreement about how we split things up. I'll get my solicitor to send through what I hope will be a definitive settlement offer. It'll be fair, certainly fairer than they recommend, and a reflection of how things were for what I think of as both halves of our marriage. It'll probably take a few days but it will give us the chance to move on down the separate paths of our lives.

There is still a part of me that hopes when things are all settled and finished that we might be able to sit across a table with a cup of coffee and talk as two people. Who shared a lot together. Good things and bad things. Happy times and sad. Whether it happens in a month, a year or longer. But I don't know if that'll happen. And I can be at peace with it either way.

I think that sleep might come now that I've written this. So I suppose the best thing to say is goodnight.

H