Contemplation

It has been a beautiful sunny weekend. The little dark place in my heart has been replenished with sunbeams and, although it aches a little from having to say goodbye for a few days, it will settle down today, and carry on with the mundane that is life here in suburbia.

Perhaps I should explain a little. 

For a long time now, too many years, life with Husband has been fairly emotionless. The children have made up for it of course, their ups and downs, happy times and worries have all oiled the emotional cogs. Too much sometimes! But high emotion was never the order of the day here.

There are benefits of living life on an even keel. It feels safe, and predictable, though colourless and often empty.

This time last year we were on a family holiday. I can remember being out in the sun, much like the weather has been this weekend, looking at the most beautiful azure sea, and feeling that there was so much missing in my life. I was watching a man and a woman sitting on a low wall, waiting for a boat to collect them and return them to the mainland. He placed his hand on her leg, just a little further up her thigh than was 'decent', they touched and held each other. It looked intensity delicious. I was mesmerised and remembered, from somewhere a long time ago, how it felt to be touched like that, the excitement of it, how it felt to be held by someone you cared for. I could almost feel the emotion radiating from them, their happiness, their private world that I had glimpsed for a second in the sun. And I felt empty. Tears welled in my eyes. How could I go on living my life without ever feeling that intensity of emotion again?That was a year ago, almost to the day.

I thought it would never end, this emotional vacuum, and the more I contemplated it the more I knew I couldn't go on like it forever and that only I could do something about it. Today Husband will receive the first solicitors letter to initiate our divorce. It has taken a long time to reach this point, three weeks just for the letter to come, 6 months since I said I wanted to leave him, it could take forever to sort out, but the process has started and the children have been told. They seem to be relieved that there is a solution to the constant tension they can feel between us.

That is one side of the emotional roller coaster, but is that all there is? No, very far from it. As well as Mother, Daughter, and almost Ex-Wife, I am now the woman waiting for the boat. I have felt the intensity of emotion again, the emotion that, just a year a go, I craved for, but it is far sweeter than I imagined it would be. I have felt the sweet touch of anothers hand. I have felt the elated highs as well as the plunge of despair. I feel alive again.

Would I rather be living in an emotional vacuum? I don't think so.