Sunday 15 November 2015

Ten Years

Ten years ago today my husband, and if I might give in to sentimentality for a moment, my soul mate, died.

This timeline is a lot harder than it ought to be.  Surely after ten years I ought to in some way be "over" this.  By this, we're talking the grieving, the mourning, the sadness, the gaping holeness, the overwhelming sense of loss.  Surely by now, I ought to simply be slightly nostalgic, perhaps with a bit of a nod at the past, maybe I should be at the lighting a candle stage.  But actually I'm not, I'm still feeling, right somewhere inside, somewhat mortally wounded, or like a bird whose wing has been irreversibly damaged and will never fly again, and only has the option of hopping, never to be able to have the freedom to simply go away, to settle on sunflower seed heads of choice.

I'm beating myself up about this. Surely, surely, I should be over this.  Should not be in the processing and moving on stage, but should have damn well moved on.  All the indicators would suggest I have, in some way.  I've left the marital home.  I've moved in with a new life partner.  I've changed, I've learned about me since I was left alone.  I'm not the Alison I was, I understand the changed Alison better, and made my own decisions, choices, let myself flower indeed.

I feel guilty sometimes about the change, although at the same time, there's a quiet pride in how I've let myself become a Me of the present, I've not clung onto things which were forged in a past by a couple.  I've let the things which were perhaps more Dave than me, go.  I've allowed myself to experiment, without a jot of peer pressure.

But it's still hard.  The guilt is threefold.  I am guilty of not having got over it.  I am guilty of forgetting some of the past, and I am guilty for having feelings for the past when I have a present, and a partner who somehow deserves to have all of me, not just part.

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