Month: September 2015

I miss him, I need a hug.

Posted on by KMS234

Human touch.  This is one of the things I miss the most now that I am single.  A simple hug can go a very long way to helping me feel less alone.  Happier perhaps.

It’s been three months since my last proper hug (with my ex as he left the house for the final time).  I need desperately to just fall into a warm, loving embrace and bawl my eyes out (preferably in his arms).  But my family all live clear on the other side of the country and my best friend does too.  I have some good friends here where I live, but none close enough that I feel comfortable really letting go in front of.

The first month after he left, I spent everyday fighting back tears at work, on the bus, in the shops, while I was running.  Everywhere.  I cried myself to sleep every night and even woke myself up crying some nights.

The second month was slightly easier.  I managed most days to put on my professional face and I was fine at work.  I got really good at lying when anyone asked how I was.  I cried on the bus home and once I closed the garden gate behind me of an afternoon the flood gates really opened.

The third month has been hit and miss.  I have even managed a couple of days with no tears at all.  But mostly there are tears at some point during the day – a song on the radio might trigger a memory, a nice person asking how I am going, sometimes nothing in particular will set me off.

Each waking moment (and even in my dreams) I am constantly nagged by his memory.  I carry out tasks at work but always with him in the back of my mind.  There is a feeling I have of a gaping hole in my life, it’s always there.  Wherever I go, whatever I’m doing.  Activities that he would have enjoyed (and I would have very much enjoyed doing with him) are the hardest.  He is a personal trainer and we trained together.  Fitness activities are sometimes too hard to face for me now.  I freak out when I sign up for a race, what if he’s there too?  What if I see him?  I just know I’d dissolve in a puddle of tears.

The biggest reason for my tears and sadness is this, I don’t know why he left me.  I thought we were good together.  Sure we had our moments, no couple is perfect, but I thought we were pretty perfect.  He was gentle, kind, funny (oh so funny), sensible with money, house-trained (cooked well, did the washing, cleaned, fixed stuff…etc), grown-up but not old, affectionate and gave some of the best hugs I’ve ever had.

Now I get to go home to an old, cranky cat (perhaps I should say a cat with attitude – cattitude!) who doesn’t like being patted much, certainly won’t sit on my lap and a cuddle, well let’s not even mention the thought!  So I have no one to hug and no one to talk to outside of work.  Work is not a “chatty” place either.  Socialising in work hours is definitely discouraged.  I also work with mostly men, over 55 and all have been married for decades.

I feel so very alone.  Abandoned.  Directionless.  Lost.  Unloved.

Now I know none of that is really true.  My family and friends have stayed in touch with me more often than they did before he left.  I know they love me.  The problem is, HE doesn’t love me anymore.  Or perhaps he never did.  “I knew it wouldn’t work out between us from the start”  he said.  Right.  Well.  Thanks for ……..pretending for two years?  Was this just a parting shot to get me to hate him?  To make him feel better about leaving?  Does he really just hate me?

Devastated.  Shattered.  Broken.

Why?  Why won’t he tell me why he left me?  Why didn’t he tell me he was unhappy?  Why, why, why???

Yet I still crave another hug from him.  No you should never rely on other people for your happiness, but when you love someone they become that happiness.  The things we did for each other.  The little things you tell each other about your day.  The cuddles in the morning and hugs after a long day at work.  The future plans you have together that you’ve schemed up and saved for.  When they are suddenly taken away from you then yes, your happiness is taken away too.

I’m sorry this is such a ramble.  It makes no more sense as a mass of written words than it does in my head.  These are the conversations I have in my head everyday.

This is why I don’t hug my good friends and fall apart.  They’d think I was a complete fruitloop and run away screaming (if they had any sense what so ever).  So in the interest of keeping some friends in my life I’m dumping my minds wanderings here.  Maybe someone will read it, maybe not.  It doesn’t matter.

But if you see me, I need a hug.

Where to from here?

Posted on by KMS234

So I’ve been reading a friends blogs on here recently and even though I don’t know her very well, everything she has written about her experiences of late, resonates with me quite deeply.

We’re about the same age and working in the same industry.  Well, we were up until she quit her job last month.

By her own admission, and my own observations & knowledge of her significant other, her financial and emotional support systems are very solid and well enough to allow her to take this well deserved and needed break from the working masses.  Me?  Not so lucky.  Single – very recently so and the major reason for this blog – and paying off a hefty mortgage.  No dependents, which is a bonus of sorts.  Unless you count my 16 year old cat….?  I hate my job.

I guess I’m writing this blog today as a way of “speaking” to my ex-partner.  I know if I were to write it to him directly I’d get the same old lines we’ve all heard before………..I’m sorry;  time will lessen the pain;  it’s not you, it’s me;  you deserve better……..things I know, things that are probably true, but things that HURT.

Let me back this story up three months:  It’s a normal Monday night, he’s had a phone interview for a very prospective job.  It’s 9:30pm-ish.  We’ve had dinner and he’s prepared for his interview and spoken to them for 45 minutes or so (from the US).  I’m watching telly when he comes back into the lounge to tell me about his interview (or so I thought).  After a couple of minutes telling me about the interview he says “….and now for the difficult bit…”    It flashed through my mind that the job must entail a significant stint in the US and we would have to be apart for a good few months or longer.  Nope.  “I”m moving out on Friday”  is what he said.

Hold the boat!  WTF?!  Where did that come from??

Call me naive, but I didn’t see that coming.  The “reasons”  (I like to call them excuses) range from; I need to sort my head out, I need some space, I hate the cat, your mother is too pushy about marriage, you earn more money than me and I don’t want to be seen as a gold-digger, you deserve better, you’re so positive and I’m too negative………..you name it, I think I’ve heard it.  Everything except any REAL reason.

If the real reason is unknown, and let’s face it, mid-forties we all wonder what it’s all about and where we’re all going.  Why not say;  I need some time and space to sort myself out, discuss the future and find myself/some direction………anything that’s the truth and not just some lame excuse?

The man and his 15 year old daughter had been living with me for a year, we knew each other for a year before that.  We had invested time and energy in discussing our future travels together (a year or more driving around Australia after his daughter had left school and settled at work or uni).  We’d started an account to finance this.  We fit together as a family, we had routines, social lives and fitness goals that linked together really well.  I was in the best relationship of my life.  It made sense.  I saw myself growing old with this man.  He’s funny, loving, romantic (although he’d never admit it!), trustworthy, faithful and so supportive.  But communication is obviously not his strong suit.

Now I’m a smart lady, but I’m not skilled in the art of mind-reading.  If you don’t tell me, I won’t know!  And I also think I’m a decent judge of character.  Just where and when did I get hood-winked??!!  Am I so desperate to make the rest of my life perfect above and beyond this job I hate that I misjudged this man?  Am I so desperate for love I will take the first thing on offer?

No, no, no!!  I am 42.  I have never been married.  I have no children.  I have a couple of significant failed relationships under my belt.  I had been on-line dating for four years.  I’m happy in my own company, or at least I used to be.  I have been in full-time work for about 18 years.  I have a mortgage and no other debts.  I’m not an idiot.  I hate confrontation but  will discuss rationally, anything in question.  I have nothing to hide.  I am also under no illusion that life or people are perfect.

So in one fleeting instant I lost my heart, I lost the love of my life, I lost my future, I lost my little “family” and I lost myself.

And where does this fit in with my friend the original blogger?  She and I have one thing in common at the very least, neither of us know what is next.  Where are we headed?  There has to be more to life than working for years on end with little or no enjoyment until we are retired and likely too old and decrepit to make the most of our time and physical capabilities.

I envy her situation and chance to stop work and sit back and evaluate the life she and her partner are living.  But in her doing so, she started a blog, a blog that rings true for me on a lot of levels.  It’s cathartic to write stuff down.  It gets it out of my head for a while.  There will still be tears.  Lots of them.  Tears of sadness, tears of loss, tears of frustration, tears of anger.  One day I hope there will be tears of happiness.

For now though, even though it’s 99% unlikely to happen, I wish with all my heart (because I’m so positive and optimistic) that my love will see the light, change his mind, come back to me and we will fall in love all over again.  I will always have hope in my heart because that’s what keeps me alive.  My head tells me to “get real” but there always has to be hope.  Even just a little, tiny bit.

So, where to from here?