My old sofa is gone, and my new sofa is assembled and in place. My wonderful man took the old one apart, down to the bins and we assembled the new one. It was all very quick, straightforward and very easy.
I was a bit worried that I might feel a little sad in some way, as the old sofa had been a wedding present from my first step dad - who I no longer have any contact with. I think the reason my mum and him split up (when I was 8 or 9) was that he was constantly having affairs. He was married at a later date, with two children, and I think he carried on with his drinking and affairs during that marriage. I don't think he ever saw anything wrong with anything that he was doing.
Anyway, when he split up from his wife, he unburdened a fair bit on me, which I absolutely hated. I think I was in my mid-late 20s at that point, and I think he must have been in his 50s, but I didn't want to be on the receiving end of what he was saying.
Next thing I knew, he had a new girlfriend. It was super weird when I went round to his house to meet her, she opened the door, and she was pretty much the same age as I was.
Last contact I had with him, he'd moved away to Colombia to be with her, and called me up to see if he could come and stay for a few weeks in my (tiny) flat while he was back for a holiday. My flat is tiny, just two rooms, and the rooms are small (it's very bright and airy though, as faces east-west, and it's got big windows). Understand that I am very small, and pretty diminutive, softy spoken and self-contained in my movements. He's six foot four, with a very loud, bombastic voice, and larger than life in everything. He also asked if I had any 'student' friends who's floor he could sleep on. I think I was about 30 something years old by that point and hand't had any sort of contact with that sort of student life for over 10 years. That's the last I spoke to him.
Well, my new sofa looks absolutely beautiful and has transformed the entire room. It's smaller and neater than the old one. And I bought it with money I earned.
Other news, I had a nice couple of evenings freelance work. I caught up with someone in the industry I had worked with before and had known a little. She said i was looking really, really well and very happy. So we talked a little about how I was and what was going on in my life that was making me so happy. Then, the elephant in the room, she asked about XH. I just told her about the alcohol and she came back at me with a similar story about a R she'd had with someone in the industry. So I think it's probably a common issue in this industry (along with drugs). I guess it's one of this things where the industry environment encourages/enables a certain type of behaviour, and at the same time, the industry it is attracts certain personality types to become involved in it.
Do those kinds of personalities ever change? It must be difficult to change (if that's what you've decided you want to do), when you're surrounded by the thing(s) you're trying to give up. Change is hard enough anyway.
I have to admit, at times I'm scared of slipping back into who I was before. Keeping moving forwards is hard work. But maybe I feel that because I also feel that my life is more open to possibilities that I might never even have thought of before? So there's a sort of emptiness there, in the future, which isn't actually really emptiness - it's more just a space that's full of possibilities and opportunities. Like, I never would have imagined that I would be running and improving on my running as well. I couldn't even run for the bus in my past life. And yet it's something I chose to do and started since BD. So what else might there be in the future, that I had never thought of and never imagined would be a part of my life? Obviously some of those things I'm discovering together with my wonderful man. But there might be others as well.
I don't feel old, or tired, or worn down by all of this. I feel OK about it. Well, better than OK really...profoundly at peace and very calm about everything.
