Wow ... I can't believe it's been nearly three months since my last post.
I just didn't know what to say. After nearly two years, there was so little movement it felt like I was repeating myself. A song stuck somehow in the same line. The line goes something like this. I can't go back to the way we were. I am not ready to move forward on my own. This is me. This is where I am. I am OK with it.
In the three months things haven't moved much - except I can truly say I am better than OK. I am really [censored]'g good.
My last post was end of August, so I had just come back from the trip to Greece with the girls. Since then I have been to Poland for a long weekend (on my own). I had always wanted to go to Auschwitz and, as I had a rare weekend without the girls, I booked it last minute. I recalled my H going there a few years back as he had a stop over in Krakow. He didn't tell me after the fact, and when he tried to show me the photos he took, I pretended not to be interested (I was resentful that he got to do something I had always wanted to do). In any case, I went on my own. I walked around, with the headphones provided to me by the tour guide, and, tbh for the most part I felt like a tourist in someone else story. A voyeur taking photos. It was humbling. There were some lovely moments too. A stroll through Warsaw after a late dinner, light rain falling, watching people laughing as they came out of restaurants and bars. It really is a beautiful city.
What else. My life is full. Work is keeping me busy (as always) and I have good friends who I enjoy spending time with. My birthday was in October and I went on a girls night out with some friends and we spent the night pretending to be Beyonce (the phrase here is dancing around handbags - not sure what you'd call it in the US). I also went to dinner and did an escape room thing with friends in London.There have been too many other really great days/nights out to mention. I only want to say that they would never have happened before we split up because I had the girls and it never occurred to me to be anywhere but with them.
That doesn't mean to say I've neglected the children. I just needed to fill the times when I didn't have the children, so I built a life separate to them. And I know now that the life I've been building is worth living.
I've also been trying to do things with the children. Nothing big, we went to a farm to get pumpkins on Sunday and I've planned a halloween party/sleepover for their friends Thursday. We've been into London a few times to watch shows - I found a company that does classic movies but in unusual venues - Romeo and Juliet was in an old church, with a choir and actors playing key moments from the movie, Harry Potter in a studio converted to look like a winters garden full of gnomes. It's been wonderful, but exhausting.
So, things that started out as a way to distract myself from my situation have turned out to be just my life. I wish he was a part of it. It really is a good life and I think it is the one he probably wanted to have - a life full of memories and not just doing housework, running errands, and planning holidays.
But he isn't.
I don't really know how to describe my situation anymore. He is still very much a presence in my life. Apart from the not touching, if you saw us, you would think we were together. The resentment (on both sides) is still there. It rears its head (money, control) but we both push it down when it comes up because neither of us want to rock the boat. He still doesn't ask what I am doing and I still don't ask what I am doing. We do volunteer information more now. I am not sure what that is about. He planned a birthday lunch for me and then said it was his mum (his mum made sure to tell me it was his idea), he asks me to do things with them. He retreats if I do something he disagrees with or doesn't like (e.g. if I say I am going out or I have plans) but otherwise he tries to be more inclusive of me. I think we are moving towards a more positive place, I just don't think that place is one where we are necessarily together.
