D Day...

D  DAY

It seemed appropriate that on D Day the skies were November Grey instead of June Bright. The rain was torrential as we left the house separately; he in his car and me in a taxi. I picked up my best friend and went to the Court Building. All the small private rooms were taken, so we took seats in one of the rows in the lobby area. Myself and my friend sat, not speaking. I wasn’t capable of it. All the time the tears threatened to spill.
There was a call for a particular courtroom and dozens of people rushed into that room. Around us solicitors and barristers argued and to- and -fro’d between their clients. A woman said “Ask him about the secret bank account I know he has”. One solicitor said to another “He can’t spring that on us now, the agreement has already been made”. Strange, strange, atmosphere. There was a call for Court 31; our designated room. Lots of people rushed in there. Puzzled, I asked the person in uniform if I should go in? Oh yes, I most certainly should.. I stepped into a court room for the first time. There was a Registrar seated at a long bench which had a digital clock like an electronic ribbon running along the top of it.  The Judge sat behind the Registrar at a higher bench. In the body of the courtroom, a rail, two benches and chairs. A witness box on the left hand side of the Judge’s bench.

The Court Register began calling cases using initials; AB and CB. MOR and AOR and so on. As each pair were called, they stepped forward and confirmed their presence. When our initials were called, I stepped forward. The Judge asked was he present. Oh, yes, I said, he’s outside. His name was then called out in full and in he came. Her Honour didn’t look too impressed. On went the roll call. On some occasions a solicitor or barrister stepped up and asked if the case could be deferred as there was a dispute regarding assets between the parties. On one occasion a woman dressed in leopard print top and leggings and tons of jewellery stepped up and was asked was her husband there. “No, he isn’t, he’s in a mental hospital, does it matter?” she said. Apparently it did matter, quite a lot, at least to the judge…

At 11.30 it was over.  I made it to the Ladies Room before collapsing in tears. Afterwards, my friend and I walked through the rain and sat in a pub, drinking. Got a taxi home.

Do I feel different? No. Do I feel devastated? Yes. Do I feel let down? Yes, majorly. Plus; the judge decided that the info re pensions was not conclusive/blah/blah so that’s to be heard in July? So the agony is not over yet…

The clock ticks on...

Time and tides ebb and flow and move us on...inevitably and  inexorably...I am conscious of time passing, the clock ticking down to D Day moment by moment. I am at the same time consumed both  by what if, what if.. and how will I get through it...I am frozen in some sort of unnameable terror and at the same time repeating madly positive mantras as if I can force things, force events, to turn out positive by just doing that. Always at the back of it is this mad hope, mad dream, that life can be different; that dreams can come true in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Now I am beginning to wonder if this makes me a fantasist, a dreamer, an "unrealistic" person. In the words of the Beatles, all you need is love. Well, no, you need oxygen, food, shelter to survive. What  you need to thrive is love.
Parental love. Sibling love. The love of friends.Romantic love (if you get really, really lucky).  Love. That's what matters. That's what gets you through.  I have family. I have friends. I am loved. But somehow it doesn't make up for the lack of romantic love. Somehow it doesn't. Maybe some time in the future it will.

Stress and sea levels...rising...

As always when I am stressed, the west of Ireland calls me. I need fresh air blowing in from the Atlantic and to swim in water so clear you can see the tracks of crabs and sea snails on the sand below. I need the tranquillity of landscapes that wrap themselves around your soul. Seafood and home baked brown bread. Country pubs and céilí music. Somewhere, anywhere to take me out of myself, away from myself and my situation.

Instead I am sitting on a bench beside the river, in the Botanic Gardens in Dublin. The sound of brown water tumbling over the weir is soothing, calming, even if only for a little while. Every day is now spent between trying (and frequently failing) to do my job well and praying that I am doing the right thing. Still the tears spill; still my nights are fractured by dreams of loss, of being lost, of white knights, of chasing I don’t know what, seeking in the dream world what I can’t find in the real world. Then I wake drenched, heart pounding in my throat and I don’t remember what it is that has chased me through the night while I sought badly needed rest.

Years of total professionalism went out the window today; I burst into tears in the office. All my long years of working, my calm, caring, collegial and utterly professional demeanour... We are all human. I’ve tried to be superwoman and today it just didn’t work. In the workplace I find that anger, shouting, all that kind of behaviour is acceptable but just let something feminine like tears occur …and it’s an absolute no no.  Why not? People are people and when they are going through a personal crucifixion well maybe it’s time to change attitudes – and the sexism that underlies them.

Later that evening I burst into tears at the Writing Circle when it was my turn to read.  Sobbed. Couldn’t read the piece I’d written. Mortified.com. I gestured to P who was sitting next to me, who read it as though he had written it himself. As indeed he might well have, as anyone might have. I’m still going to writing things, trying to do all sorts of things, even though I feel the good has gone out of everything.

Q. When do the tears stop? (Me)

A. When they’re finished. (Counsellor)

By now I must have raised the sea level around Ireland by metres, re-salted the Irish Sea and am probably posing a threat to the Antarctic Ice Mass. D Day is a fortnight away. 

Stings of outrageous jellyfish...

Stings of outrageous jellyfish…

The tension, the stress… We did something which we both always enjoyed…we went to the beach. Together. Motoring along in the water, arms gripping my body board I am lost in wonder at how the sea and sky are paling gently. Times and tides move on, and summer days and summer years are gone before you know it.

A frond of seaweed slithers round my legs. Suddenly I’m scalded.  I’ve been stung. I make for shore as quickly as possible and hobble up to the Sun Worshipper asleep on his sun lounger. “I’ve been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war” I whimper as I dance around the place splashing Ballygowan Sparkling over my thighs. “You haven’t been stung, don’t be ridiculous” he narks. Then he notices the puffy weals snaking like whip marks round my legs. “Oh” he says. Why does he always contradict me? Surely you know whether you have been stung or not? This attitude of immediate denial of anything I say annoys the hell out of me. My legs are on fire. Let’s go. I might need hospital treatment.

Half an hour later the cream the Pharmacy sold me seems to be working. Maybe I won’t need to go to A & E after all. I’d look a funny sight there anyway, what with the sand and the sunblock caked onto me like stucco.  We drive in silence. I am not speaking to the driver. Anyone who says to a suffering person “Sympathy my arse” does not deserve to be spoken to.

He pulls into the car park of the pub. I cannot object as I am not speaking to him. Otherwise of course I would be going home.  I sit at the bar having a brandy to counteract the shock to my system and explaining my sanded/sun creamed/antihistamine - lotioned appearance to anyone who asks, and they are many. The Beer Buddha ensconced in the Corner-beside-the-television decides to educate me; apparently the relief of jellyfish stings entails the application of half a cut tomato to the affected parts. “Why didn’t you just rub half a tomato on?” he loudly demands. “It’s acidic so it counteracts the acidity”. Well pardon me for being stupid, I must remember to pack tomatoes and a knife with the body board in future. The fact that I would have looked even more bizarre covered in tomato pips doesn’t strike me till later. Then I can’t stop laughing. Life is mad. My life is officially getting madder by the day.

The time it is a comin'

Less than a month to D Day now; and still I inhabit two parallel universes.  I am reciting affirmations as if they are gospel, la la la la la  la, and the other bit of me is clinging to 25 years of familiarity and saying no. I would like him to say no: to say the things I always wanted him to say; we'll sort it out. But that hasn't happened. I don't know what will happen. I'm sure I'm not thinking straight, not thinking rationally. Maybe there's no way to think rationally about this. It's a nightmare. I'm still reciting mantras, still believing in happy ever after , still believing in ...fairies? psychics? You can be with someone for twenty five years and still not know them, because that is their way of being and in the face of that  you are powerless. Powerless because you have been raised to be nice, to be understanding, to be sensitive, to put others before yourself, always. I wish I had been raised to put myself  first, to stand up for myself, to be as sensitive to my own needs as I have been to others. But I wasn't. Now I need to find  myself. And I am so lost and full of fear that I have no idea who "I" am. I am getting closer to the brink, and wondering how I will get through D Day.

Flash floods and hugs

Flash Floods and Hugs

A different weekend, altogether. This one involved religion, hot penning and no drink.   The type of thing the counsellor recommended, in fact, when I mentioned to her that I had seen an advertisement in the newspaper for Healing Weekends, so to speak, for the divorced, the separated and the widowed. I rang the organization and it sounded good. So off I went.

Check in time at the Retreat Centre was 5 pm Friday.  Bed at eleven pm, up for 8 am breakfast each day.  I slung my case into my single ensuite bedroom, unpacked the travel kettle, the herbal tea, chocolate and fruit, bottled mineral water. So far so good.

First event; the organizers introduced themselves individually. Then half an hour of “getting to know you” games. We were broken up into small groups of three and assigned a mentor. Given notebooks and pens. In our small group, three of us, all women and a male mentor. We began the first session of discussion, and then it was off to our rooms to write whatever came into our minds.  This was to be the pattern for the weekend.  Talks given to the larger group, then breaking into our foursomes for further talk, then race to the rooms to pour out tears and words. There were group ceremonies, a religious service on Sunday morning. After that, a healing service. So many tears flowed over the weekend, I thought we would all be washed out of the Centre, down the grounds to the river and out to sea...  Over the weekend I wrote and wrote and wrote, cried and cried and cried.  In the small chapel where the closing ceremony was held, the air was so heavy with sorrow and anguish that I felt it lying across my shoulders and bowing down my head  like a blanket. When the hugging took place, I was enfolded in the arms of lovely men and nearly came unhinged altogether.

I don’t feel much different, if at all. I don’t feel any major shift, any major Zen.  I’ve learned that there are many people going through changes they hoped would never happen to them, never envisaged happening to them. But that’s life, isn’t it.   I didn’t experience any eureka moments. I met good people, very good people. I learned a lot. Hell, we even had some fun, what with the jokes and poems and dancing on the last night.

Goodbyes and hugs on Sunday afternoon. Back to reality. I can’t say that much has changed.  Back at home in my own bedroom, I re-read my scribblings. Then shredded the anger, the hurt, and the fear. Hoped that this intense weekend will somehow start something in me that has not yet been apparent; a feeling that I am doing the right thing, and that the future holds the promise of a new beginning.

Stand up - and be counted...

Stand up and be counted…

Probably because I find it difficult to say no, I agreed to do something for a literary event to celebrate a bike show coming to Dublin. Which is how I came to be standing in front of a lunch time  audience yesterday, with a 4-Solpadeine hangover,  dressed in cycling gear, wondering what the hell I was doing there and hoping I would remember my lines. Miraculously, I did (well most of them) and it went very well. Very well indeed. In other words, the audience laughed.  Afterwards as I was running out the door to the day job, the Director of the event ran after me – to congratulate me. Said  I was brilliant…Then a woman I know approached me- to tell me how well I did, how low she was, how she was on medication, how she appeared all jolly on the outside but inside was a different matter. I know that mask. I wear it too, at times. I knew her to be widowed 2 ½ years, have children and grandchildren, her situation completely different to mine. She needed to make changes in her life, she said, has yearned to move back to Dublin from the crystal chandeliered mini palace down the country. But she won’t settle for what I know I will have to; a small terraced house somewhere, I don’t yet know where… I know her to be a tough cookie, a very tough cookie who upset a lot of people, including me.  Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. Regardless of previous behaviour, my heart went out to her.  She said she’d be up in Dublin again in a week and would like to come to the writing circle...

I went  to work. Realized I’d forgotten to bring office clothes. Explained the situation to the powers that be, and spent the rest of the day in fluorescent orange and pink cycling shorts and pink sneakers…Luckily I remembered to take the bicycle lamp off my head.

Supper was non-alcoholic cocoa and toast. I think I finally fell asleep in a cocoa-induced haze at 4 a.m. That’s ok. Today put another brick in the self-esteem wall. What could be better than making people smile, laugh, feel better, even for a moment? Don’t we all love that, need that sometimes?  I’m giving myself an A for today and not dwelling on the mistakes I’ve made in life. J