What'll I do

Coming home on the train from Wales away my final exam last week left me lots of thinking time as I listened to MSP. It was a grey rainy sky and that always leads me towards maudlin thinking but this time I couldn't help but think back to the marriage and what might have been signposts towards its eventual decline. Mostly though I thought back to the moments leading up to the big leave and the horrible atmosphere and feelings that it generated. The knock away of my hand when we were in bed when I reached out to hold her, that morning kiss that was a staple of her morning routine before she left for work by kissing me on the forehead, all of that gone. It also made me think back to those dreams that we'd both share, particularly the ones where one of us would end up leaving the other and the awful feelings that would engender in us. It would upset us both to have such a dream and promises of it never happening to us were always made. 

Who knew that they would actually come true? The background of the whys were never explained in the dram. If they had maybe she wouldn't have been so forthcoming with the promises and the such like?

'I had a dream last night whereby I left you. It was horrible. Until I realised that I'd left you because you had depression. After that I didn't feel so bad.'

So out of these thoughts and feelings came on the trip home and I let them too. Hiding them away or pushing them down into hidden darkness it ok for a part time solution but it eventually always come back bobbling to the surface. The next day it was better. I didn't feel too down about it and managed to construct a few days of gym and tasks that needed doing. However, that feeling, that yearning to have someone to hold and tell my problems to and for them to tell me theirs still exists. It's not as troublesome as it was but yeh, it's still there. 

I suppose now I'm a bit more prepared for it, that is true but it still hurts. Well, not so much hurts as aches.

The below song was playing on my mind when thinking back to those feelings and ties in nicely with those dreams we both used to have.

I feel like the colour blue...

In the aftermath of the UK General Election I am feeling somewhat down. Not my usual down that is associated with that illness just a general sort of down. The result hasn't helped, what will happen to the already over-strained mental health services with them in charge keen of ever more cuts? but it seems to be more down to her not being here. I think it started with a dream that involved her as the TV played on with the in-coming Election results in the background early this morning. I had it on my mind to get to the gym and cinema to watch the new Avengers film. This morphed from thinking about going on my own to then considering going with her before I woke up and gradually realised that wasn't going to be possible. The result is now this residual feeling of miss and loss. I suppose it is some mark of the progress I have made without her that had this been months ago I would have been feeling even worse about it but as it is I'm feeling down, a little empty, yes but not in near despair as would have been more my previously usual reaction. Whenever the feeling of loss comes up or that feeling of dull ache crops up, especially today, I tend to browse dating sites in a superficial attempt to quiet it down. It rarely works and is no substitute for an all embracing hug but it seems to quell it for a few minutes or so. But that full ache comes back. That empty space of hers is sometimes so apparent and tangible that I don't know quite what to do with it or how to deal with its effects. It is getting better but the ache still lingers on as does my mind that always goes back to see what mistakes I made in the marriage. A fruitless task but something I struggle to stop especially on days like these.

Three

3

3 years since the divorce.

Might as well be 3 months. Then again it might as well be 3 decades. Both time spans feel familiar depending on what sort of day I’m having. If there is one thing I have learned in that time it is that you are constantly trying and learn to live without that former permanent presence in your life. I know that sounds like a blatantly obvious thing to type but there you go. It’s not only trying to carry on without them but also learning to shut away those things about them that you liked and found comforting. Learning that, if the day comes when and if you meet someone else, everything will be new and that sometimes that newness can be scary and disruptive. But it has to be. Everything has to be new. Trying to think of the next one as a revamped former will only lead to more messy heartache. It’s easy to forget how comforting a partner can be, their likes and little ways become a part of you and your day to day life. The way you can both shut out the world briefly and just enjoy each others company with a DVD and some wine and some intimate chatter that is something you miss acutely.

There is also something else that becomes apparent and something I’d rather not have to live with. That being past mistakes in the relationship in the magnifying glass of your mind’s eye with an all too apparent HD like clarity. It’s there whether you want it to be or not, stood there; silently staring at you breathing softly but noisily in that way that lets you know they are there. Past arguments, mistakes that you would have done differently if given the chance to go back, everything.

'Hey, remember that time when you weren't nice during that argument?'

Not now.

‘Deal with me.’

I can’t.

‘Remember me.’

I don’t want to.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

And the guilt grows with nowhere to go with no way to assuage it or even manage it. 

I just have to hope that time will allow it to shrink away because what else can I do with it?

There may be some hope as the last few times I have dreamt about her I no longer wake up wanting the dream to carry on or waking up in an emotional state.

It’s not much but after these last few years it’s a... well, see below.

The Veil

'And the same picture plays over and over.
And I'm in the back row, watching them....
...in the grubby, broken cinema of memory.
I'll go back to the corners of the past, even the shadowy, sordid corners...
Just because you were there then.
I'm trying to hang on, hang on to something even though I know it's gone. Even though I know you aren't there anymore.
You.
The loved one.
You're gone.
Nothing will change that.
All I can do is pack away all the things I remember, put them in a drawer with all the other useless souvenirs.
And just carry on.' 

V for Vendetta
Alan Moore David Lloyd

Let me hide under the sheets

I had a bad day yesterday. My first really off day in a while. Which I suppose is something, especially when I consider last year's New Year start. After all it was this sort of time, maybe a bit later in the month, that I had a bad dip that almost culminated in another attempt at taking my life.
It had all started so well on the Monday too. I'd played some Futsal and had played well and won the games and only drawn the once. I even had to remind myself on the way back home that it was ok to enjoy things in life sometimes. It's easy to get so swallowed up with this damn illness that you can feel a bit guilty whenever the feeling of enjoyment comes up. 
I tried to allow myself that moment of niceness as I listened to tunes on my music player letting the fays events sink in.
The next day was fine, I had some training and had an injury to my jaw area but it didn't really prepare me for the day after where I felt worn, low and empty. It was a classic black day. No emotion, no energy just nothingness. I spent most of the day in bed, thankfully I didn't have much on and what I did have I cancelled.
All I can do in a time like that is get the tea and toast on and stare at the TV. Maybe get some tunes on and read a comic on my tablet. Anything else is generally out. And that includes talking as well.
It is something I have written about before but is this what I can expect from my life now? Is my black so entrenched that all I can hope for is days off from it's grip?
And what's really scaring me, though I'm trying hard not to really think about it, is when I go abroad. What then if I have a bad day?

Words are very unnecessary

Thinking about embarking on finding a romantic relationship with that still surrounding me is worrying. 
In fact it's probably less worrying and more likely to make me not bother embarking. I know all to well how it ended the last time. The very thought of going through the closeness of a relationship scares me. And the less said about anything approaching a sexual relationship the better.
Perhaps in this regard this is all on me. By that I mean to say that as someone pointed out to me last year people are different and just because my ex-wife reacted the way she did that's not to say the next girl in my life will. If I look back then I can see that did have some merit as I girl I did see didn't react to my illness the way I  expected or feared but I don't think I was ready to try a relationship. She sensed me holding back and even though I didn't think I was at the time I must have been. And seeing what happened not long after that it was probably just as well I didn't.
It was a shame as she was lovely and now she has moved on herself with a relationship.
Still, the idea of it no matter how enticing is still scary.
Perhaps I'm better off just not bothering?

'Your wretched loneliness doesn't fool me'

Thinking about relationships or even attempting to embark on one is causing me some confusion. Confusion that is rising from do I or don't I? As I've covered before in previous posts, I still miss my wife. My ex-wife. Earlier this week when I passed a garden centre and saw an advert for coal and logs it immediately transported me back to a time when we had our own open fire and would buy logs or home make our own fire-lighter bricks and the ache inside deep inside was strong. It reverberated around like a yearning. A yearning for my old life with her.
With all of that can I really expect to start anew with someone else, with all of that still swirling around inside, ready to unleash on me whenever something of her pops up to remind me?
It feels like it's lying there dormant just waiting to unleash memories and feelings as soon as something triggers it. Much like certain blogs or websites use Trigger Warnings to warn individuals of certain elements contained within I think I should have the same scattered throughout my life to warn me of potential hazards.
'Trigger Warning: Passing through that area we used to both drive through together'
'Trigger Warning: Playing a song you both discovered and liked'
'Trigger Warning: Feeling stressed waiting for that hug she used to give you'
The whole thing is tiring but I don't know how to curb it all. 
Perhaps I can't and time is the only way. I try to remind myself of what she did and that sometimes helps but the feelings still linger.
One day soon she will be nothing more than a memory.
One day.

'It's unreal now you're gone...'

Small Black Flowers that Grow in the Sky

It is now just over 4 years since the beginnings of this black and getting close now to 3 years since the beginnings of the divorce. I was thinking about that, the divorce, this morning. 
I was thinking about how I tend to enumerate most things and how especially regarding the divorce I am counting the years as they pass like a prisoner counting down the days and years but in reverse, knowing that there isn't anything to look forward to with regard to a release from all of this. Well, nothing definitive. There will be no 'closure' only peace.
How long this will take though, I have no idea. As much as I want it to fade away it won't. 
How can it? How can all those years, those memories, good times, bad times and all in-between just disappear like that? They served as a running stream of emotion that kept the relationship burning so I can't really expect it to just quickly fade from my memory box. 
No matter how much I might want it to in light of the divorce.
What makes it harder to push myself away from those times are the odd moments of intense separation that I feel for her, times where we went away together or just spent time together like say today, a simple Sunday. Maybe we'd have gone out for a walk together, maybe not. But we'd have been together and she'd be there. Earlier on I  was looking at a ski-ing holiday and that immediately reprised memories of our first holiday together which was also our first time ski-ing together. Seeing the advert for that holiday was a stark reminder that for now a trip away 'together' isn't happening.
When I was driving home a couple of weeks ago I had my usual pang of missing her when going through a route that we lived near and I remember consciously asking myself why I was missing her, why I was feeling this way considering how she left me and why she left me and I think it was or rather is because part of me deep deep down doesn't want to let the memory of her go because to do so would equal more hurt and would give in to the realisation that it truly is the end. 
Have I truly let her go and let my mind accept that it is over and that it is the end?

'I wonder what you're doing now, I hope you're feeling happy now'

This act of creation will save me from despair

I don't know how it exactly started. Was it the thought of her and the intense feeling of missing her, her presence, her calming presence that was the beginning? Or was it the general sense of darkness that slowly started to envelope me, gently but ever so surely until I didn't even realise that I was up to my neck in it? 
I felt bad, mentally and physically and by the time I got myself to bed and plugged in the Manics I was trying hard not to let it succumb. But succumb it did as it usually does and when it did feelings and thoughts soon turned to suicide. Suicide to stop all of this. It also became apparent to me that sometimes my suicidal thoughts are there to actually calm me down, soothe me, as off the wall as that sounds. Mostly they seem to pop up when I can't see a way out of this. All I can see are flat moments, the odd plateau, when I try and look ahead. If I look hard can I see another chance at a long term relationship? A career, a stable one without all of this...  illness?

Can't let love back in....

That's even assuming I try and properly look for one and stop my messing about browsing and being ignored on that POF site. The one chance I had for a relationship there, well it wasn't the right time. I think I was holding back. Miss C seemed to think so.
I think deep down I'm scared of what will happen if I do connect with someone, face to face, and a relationship begins. It could start off great, stars, rainbows, good shared times and feelings but what if it strikes? What if it strikes when we've established a good relationship? Will she be understanding or will she start off like that and ultimately do what my ex did and well, do one? Can I really go through that, put myself through that again? That's a lot of 'ifs' I know but still, the thoughts are there. How can they be not after last time?

Today hasn't been the best. I shut out the rest and made the best excuse I could to get out of my scheduled things for today, hiding under the covers, eating little -doritos, cereal, olives-  and mostly watching DVDs. It's days like these that scare me the most, especially when I consider the new job and new country that awaits me later this year.
When I was a kid I always thought that as soon as I was older, a grown up, it would be easier and that everything would be sorted and stable. I'd be instantly liked and respected because I was an older wiser adult and that life would be sorted. I'd also have a mustache.
Not quite eh?
Apart from the 'tache during November. 
That bit's simple. Not quite so the rest.

Trapped by memories

Over the summer I got into another cartoon show. What few readers I have will recall my love for Adventure Time and in addition to that I also recently have gained much love for Regular Show. It is fab and I highly recommend it. 
On a recent show one of the characters spoke about his feelings regarding a former love.
It went like this:

Rigby: "She's not coming back dude, she's gone."

Mordecai: "Look, I know, all right, I know. It's just, I mean, I don't still have feelings for her but I do in a way. It's like this thing that's inside of me and it's always just sort of sitting there waiting around and sometimes I'll see something or I'll smell something and it makes me think of her even though I don't want to."

This pretty much sums up me and my situation with regards to my ex-wife. No matter how far I think I've come and how much time I think I've put between myself and that life something will invariably pop up and take me back. How long this will go on for I have no idea and I suspect that it will carry on for some time yet. I can't just pack away a 7 year relationship with all it's good, bad and in between moments to the back of my mind. 
It doesn't work like that as much as I wish it would sometimes.

The Second Great Depression

This time of year doesn't help and what makes it pinch that bit more is recalling a conversation and a moment we'd both had in a cafe at a Sainsbury's back in Xmas 2011. 
It was then that I really opened up to her regarding what was then the beginnings of my black. Suicidal feelings were starting to take hold and I thought it best if I was open with her. I remember the awful coconut hot chocolate we'd both had and the shortbread and it's left over crumbs, me pushing them around the plate and picking them up with my finger after I'd moistened it with my tongue. 
I also remember what she said, about how she'd be there for me and that she wasn't going anywhere too. When I think about it now either she was lying to me or she was lying to herself. I'm not sure which. Perhaps a mix of the two.
The girl who always did and strived to do the right thing that time ended up not. 
All that fuss she made about our vows and us writing them and reading them out to each other on our honeymoon and she couldn't even hold to the most basic one. 
In sickness and in health.
Perhaps she thought it was more a guideline rather than a rule and besides it surely didn't mean mental health? Perhaps that made it null and void?
Another year over and still no real end in sight.

Wolverine Blues

Yesterday was a nice day in terms of wandering in and out of shops, buying a few nice things (Shop assistant at Forbidden Planet to me: Buying some Xmas gifts? Me: Yes, for me!) and getting things done that needed to be done.
It was an almost total reverse of Friday's feelings and I was at times quite happy, my mind racing. I've had this before and it sometimes feels like I'm exhausting these feelings of happiness only for them to run out on me when needed. 
Like today.
Today, I felt tired and worn. Again. In fact, it seemed to all hinge upon one thought of her entering my mind and laying out on bed, hoping to exercise later on, for those were my plans, but knowing deep down that I probably wouldn't. 
I then drifted in and out of sleep and each time I not only felt irritable and uncomfortable but thoughts of her ruled supreme. Each time they did I'd wake myself up on the verge of tears, the very act waking me up. 
I dreamt about her last night and that seems to have been the trigger for today. As soon as I thought back to it the effect did for me quick snap.
In the dream, I was trying to talk to her to say how much I missed her but every-time she had a boyfriend either with her or suddenly joining in to sit next to her un-moving. Sometimes, like today, I miss her so much it scares me. It's days like these that make me feel as though I'm living a life I shouldn't be, like I'm living a life that if it were in photographs  there would have a little space cut out where her place should be.
I know it's the time of year where it pinches much more acutely, her absence, but still it hurts. This isn't really great timing either as I had some good news re: my trip to London and a job interview. 
I got the job which is fab' but current black rules the roost and right now my past wants my time and it's proving very difficult to push it to the side.
Today I am totally bereft of her and it hurts.

Wishing Well

This past Monday I had a little lapse. It had all started well enough but after browsing in some shops, looking for something but generally just nosing around I started to think back to when me and her used to shop. It was probably because a shop that I was in was one we did actually shop together in, only the once but it still brought to life a previously dormant memory. And as that memory came and went I saw other couples shopping together and the memory became stronger. Even leaving the shop didn't help and as I began to slowly trudge around the shopping centre I could almost see me and her walking around shopping as we had done those four years ago in my mind's eyes. As it happened I briefly wished that I could forgo everything just to go back and start again with her. 

Couldn't I? Please?

'Memories haunt me like a curse'

After that I felt myself draining away and it wasn't until I started my day’s activities that I forgot it all. It seems the only way I can keep it at bay. 

Still.

Wishes. I wish, I wish, I wish. If there was a wishing well it would surely have run dry by now. Would I really want to go back? Probably not. Even if that magical reality came true all it would do is reset the clock. All I’d be doing is rewinding the film, playing it over and over, enjoying the scenes time and again. But sooner or later the film has to stop, it has to reach it’s ending, it's conclusion no matter how painful or sad it is. With Xmas shopping now in full flow, the sight of couples and families shopping is difficult to endure and no matter who hard I wish I’ll never be able to rewind the film. Because right now and I'm sure in time to come I will want to rewind my film.

Today is a bad day.

'Let me hide under the sheets...'

This world is hard, this world is cold, this world is agony

How can I maintain an ordinary life, wife and maybe kids, job and all that comes with, house and more bills, etc whilst keeping on a permanent mask to keep all and sundry hidden from my deepest black? This damned depression that won't go away and is now pretty much a part of me, is me, for good or for ill?
How can I even contemplate a relationship with someone ever again and not fear them leaving because they can't cope? What hope do I have of having someone to love and trust? Who'd want me with this?
I walked back to the station in a daze, tears pushing hard, thoughts emotional, playing through my lack of coping ability to do small things lately, playing through jumping in the river that marks my walk to and from the station- how would it go, would I panic? Would I let it envelope me, would I sink or fight it and swim? What would I do?
I'm tired of my own thoughts and I'm tired of this depression and having each day be a fight, a battle in a war that is never-ending and is always raging. 
The only real way out would be a  victory.
A Pyrrhic one.