flight

Tags: life

Date: 30 November 2010 23:10:40

I'm writing this from the deck of a domestic flight. I have just spent 4 days in the company of BurntSienna and her dear family. It was exactly what I needed. Walking around old Victorian parks filled with frosty palms and fantastical gnarled trees, playing with their adorable daughter and even cuddling their grumpy cats were all pure therapy for me and I am deeply grateful for their hospitality.

I was, in fact, in need of a space in which I could convincingly calm myself and think. Though the visit to BurntSienna had been planned months ago, it proved exceptionally timely in the end. Just a week or so before, I left my wife.

I don't know what more there is to say. If anything should be recorded in my blog it's surely this, but as you'll understand I'm pretty confused as to what's next. The main thing at first was simply to survive the next fortnight or so. That's nearly over now and though things feel a tiny bit more like a normal life might be one day possible, a great storm of trouble still hangs over us all.

Money. Time with the children. Trying to avoid bitterness, if only for the kids' sake. Work. Guilt. Fear. Loneliness. Loyalty. Doubt.

Every one of our mutual friends has taken my wife's side, and it's not hard to see why. She is a genuinely good person. It's hard for anyone on the outside to detect much trouble. In point of fact she has battled with anger problems for a long time, and these have put me in hospital before now. It's not something many men talk openly about and it's hard to find a way to let any of our friends know at this stage. She needs the help and it seems churlish and hopelessly self-sabotaging to try to defend myself - the best of them will certainly withhold judgment and the rest... well, them I don't need in my life anyway. And yet it's hard not to feel hard done by. I am the abused party - the failures which have brought us here are at least mutual. God knows I'm not easy to live with but it's I who have had to leave and I'd hardly rate my chances of securing custody of the kids even if I was prepared to put them through such a tug-of-war, which I am not. I know for sure that my wife and I both have the kids' best interests entirely at heart and I hope, in my better moments, that that'll lead us to a place where we can find some kind of positive relationship in the end.

That's a long way off. I take the kids to school every day, I collect them, I spend as much time with them as I physically can, and every contact with my wife is hard, cold and brutal. I haven't even started to think about legalities. It seems an impossible prospect. I should at least contact the Citizens Advice Bureau but finding time for such things was hard enough while we were together. It's far more difficult now that it must be fitted around the separation.

I don't know how far into the flight we are now. Writing this has been hard. It's difficult to think clearly. I can see cities sprawled orange and gold beneath the plane, but which ones they are is anyone's guess. I'm glad to be aboard at all. Flights to Newcastle and Edinburgh were cancelled as I waited. There's snow falling in Glasgow as I write, but it doesn't seem to have worried the flight crew. It should be a quick flight.

I am so glad I visited BurntSienna this week. Her kindness and advice have been wonderful and I am eager to press into a proper study of the existentialism she takes as her own creed. "The thing is to make a decision," she said, "Even a bad decision is better than no decision. It's okay to make mistakes. You'll find a way through mistakes. You can't find a way through anything if you won't make a choice, though."

Well, I have made my choice. Like most really big changes it has for now increased the levels of pain rather than lower them. Stress and self-doubt have spiked the same way. One of my greatest enemies has been kept somewhat at bay, though: it's hard for loneliness to get a proper grip on me when I'm surrounded by love.

Onward. Upward. Tomorrow.