Take a break, driver 8

I have not written anything for a long time. I don't have the internet at home. For a while I wrote a journal in an old excercise book. 

My mum died at the beginning of March.

I am still in the little house I moved to last year. 

The girls are OK.

The Mister has a bad back. He isn't working much at the moment. A few weeks ago he wrote off his car. I emptied my savings account so that he could buy a new one. I don't suppose the girls and me will be going on holiday this year, now. On the money front, we have approximately 100 € to last till the end of the month. Of that, at least 70 € will have to go on petrol for getting to work.

I got a promotion at work. This is good. Maybe I'll get somewhere, some day.

Sometimes I go to the cemetery and tidy the flowers on my Mum's grave. This time three months ago, I thought that her cancer was in remission. That's what she told everyone, even though she knew the truth. I don't know why she kept the truth for herself. Sometimes I don't sleep for thinking about that.

I like to think that I am making a good job of putting a brave face on for the world. 

The river flows to the sea, to the sea

I don't feel like a single Mom yet, mainly because I see the Mister every day. It is the school holidays, and he is not working, so the girls stay with him a lot. He wants them to stay with him half the time, which is good. He is more patient now. His mood is far nicer; I think that he is happy to have time on his own. Or perhaps he appreciates the girls more now that he doesn't see them all the time. Either way, I don't regret moving out.

The girls like staying with the Mister, though they want me there if they stay overnight. They have never stayed anywhere overnight without me, except once when I went on a 2 day work trip. Not sure how to get them used to the idea of staying without me. We are close, the three of us. They know that they can always rely on me.

What are you supposed to do of a weekend when you're single, and the children are with their Dad? Last time I had whole days free to do with whatever I wanted, I was 22 and at university. Now I am 30, mum of two, fell in love and been married...it feels like a whole lifetime has gone by, not just eight years.

It's a bit scary, this freedom lark.

You could get anywhere from here

I finally left the Mister.

I found a little house, convinced the owner to rent it to me, borrowed a van, went to Ikea and bought new furniture (emptied my bank account good and proper!) and am now officially single.

I do stay at our old flat with the Mister sometimes because the girls won't stay anywhere overnight without me. I am hoping that this will evolve and  I won't ever stay with him again. The girls need a relationship with him - I hope that he will carry on wanting to see them often, and that the four of us will figure out a way to share our time in a way that makes us all happy.

It was scary, but now it's done all I feel is relief.

He smashed my laptop, that is what made me sign the dotted line on my rental agreement. He picked it up and threw it hard on the floor so that the screen is shattered, the hinge broken and the keyboard casing cracked and loose. This computer can never be mended but I am keeping it for now, to look at in case I ever want to

I click my heels together three times, it rocks a little but nothing happens

I don't understand the Mister. Today he took a large pile of folded, ironed clothes and very deliberately threw it across the room. "That's a shame, for once you did some ironing and now you'll have to do it all again you lazy fucking stupid bitch!" I did not do all the ironing again, I took the girls and we went out for the afternoon. It was a bit cold with fine rain but we went for a walk and then sat in the playground for a bit, and then went to see my parents for a bit to warm up.

 

He often calls me lazy, but I don't agree. I work full time and have the children with me all the time I'm not working - I don't think it's accurate to say that I do fuck all. It is true that housework isn't high on my list of priorities, but I honestly don't think I'm all that bad - dishes are washed and kitchen wiped down after every meal, kitchen and bathroom thoroughly cleaned every Saturday morning, I keep sweeping the floor and putting toys away.

 

I asked in a calm voice (though I had the rage boiling up inside I kept my voice level) him why he'd thrown the clothes on the floor and he told me to fucking stop talking to him like that because I had it coming. He's getting more aggressive - he cannot speak to me without swearing and shoves me to get past if I don't get out of the way quickly enough. The girls are scared of him at the moment - they never used to be.

Happy New Year

2013 is still all new and fresh.

 

You can't stop bad things from happening, all you can do is change how you react to them. What can you do when you hear about bombs in Iraq or Syria, or that terrible crush in Ivory Coast? Your own life carries on, do you just go ahead as usual and hope that you and yours stay safe? Do you do your best to be kind and helpful and generous however you can, because that is all you can do? That last tactic is the one I've opted for, but it doesn't seem anything like enough anymore. I keep thinking about all the other mothers in the world who, through no fault of their own, can't keep their children safe and I feel like I should help them but I don't know how.

 

Somebody once told me that writing in green is a sign of madness. I was quite put out to learn this as at the time I had a fountain pen and bottles of real ink in red, blue and yellow which I mixed according to how I was feeling.I had deep blues, indigo, purple, orange, pure red, and the greens - conifer green, turquoise. I used to do my schoolwork with this pen. I remembered this today when someone at work lent me their fountain pen. Funny how memories come and go.

 

There are two sides to every story, and I wish I knew the Misters'. I live with him, but he does not speak to me in any meaningful sense. I wish I knew why he is so angry. I know that he is angry with me but hand on heart, I don't think it's just me. I know I can be a pain in the ass but I mean well. There's something else, and I don't know what it is. The problem is that he takes his anger out on me always. He was quite awful over Christmas and the New Year.

 

 

Like a fly on the wall with my secret eyes

I am tired. I messed up at work, and Youngest Daughter has a pain in her leg and needs a scan to check it out. It's December, the fields on either side of the main road are flooded and the trees on the boundaries stick out of the still grey water, leafless and forlorn. I wonder what it would feel like to stop the car and walk across those fields instead of going to work. You'd have water at least to the knees, and it would be cold.

I put multicoloured fairy lights on the balcony rail. The Mister did not like, and launched into a particularly venomous tirade.

Tired of it all.

Où seras-tu le jour après la fin du monde?

It might be the day before the end of the world, and I'm sitting in bed drinking tea and listening to No Doubt on Youtube. Reading an email from an old friend from uni, a guy who used to like me way back when. He is now a suit in a big company in North America and sometimes when I have a bad case of the "what ifs" I see myself with him. Sometimes you see the door open a wee bit to let you pass between what is and what could yet be. That is not the case here - I am not one for star signs and future telling crap but I always knew we would never be together, it just isn't our destiny.

I feel like I'm in one of those apocalypse movies where they follow the characters before the disaster, and you see what they're doing.