But I don't want to

So I’ve just endured a pretty average weekend. On the surface it probably didn't look too bad. No one was sick, there were no major disasters, no hellishly long nights. We even went out for dinner on Saturday night which is usually enough to make me pretty happy. Not this time.

Even thinking the things I am about to write I’m really conscious that there are other people doing it tougher than I am. That other people are dealing with actual problems. Like illness and grief and abusive partners. Thankfully I am not burdened by any of those things at the moment but even being thankful for that doesn’t insulate me from feeling like I’m doing it tough. And that’s one of the strange things about life; whether it’s justified or not, when you feel something, you feel it. And right now I feel like I’m not coping.

Except, cruelly, ‘not coping’ is not an available option. The only option on the only menu available to me is ‘keep going’. So I am putting one foot in front of the other and I’m going through the motions but it’s taking every bit of energy I have. At every turn my inner voice is on repeat; ‘But I don’t want to.’

What I am feeling right now is exactly what I feared I might back when Mr G started his new job. For five months I have held it together and staved this off. I have coped and while it hasn’t always been easy, it certainly hasn’t always been hard. Right now, though, it’s hard. And so I will share with you my sob story.

(Please resist the urge to point out that others have better sob stories; I know they do. But here I can share mine no matter how trivial they are. And, to be perfectly honest, this one didn’t even feel particularly trivial.)  

It was my birthday on Friday and I knew well in advance that Mr G would be on call. His colleague was attending a not-negotiable course but he managed to get Saturday night covered so we could go out for dinner. When it comes to on call I have learned to keep my expectations low. I know that hoping the phone won’t ring or hoping that Mr G will get out at a reasonable hour is the most likely way to ensure those things don’t happen. So I try not to think about. But on Friday, it seems, I had let some hope in. Not that he would necessarily be around for feeding and bathing and bedding the girls, but that he’d be home at a decent hour, in time for us to have a glass of wine and cook dinner together. He’d actually talked all week about me going out to get a massage at 7pm so he could make a birthday cake and cook dinner. I let hope in.

It meant that at 5.30pm when he rang to say he had to wait around for an emergency case and was unlikely to get out before 8.30pm, the weight of my hope crushed me. I think it was more than the hope from that day. It was the cumulative effect of all the hope I have suppressed for five months. The truth is, every night and every weekend, I secretly hope I will have my friend around. I might have become adept at mostly hiding that hope even from myself, but on Friday I could hide no more. I lost it.

I was feeding the girls their dinner and I couldn’t stop crying. I am no stranger to crying; I find it quite therapeutic but it doesn’t usually happen in front of the girls. Miss I immediately asked “Mummy what wrong with you?” The best I could do was return a line I’ve heard from her many times. “I miss Daddy and want him to come home.” She replied with a line I’ve used many times. “But Daddy say he will be really, really late tonight.”

He was and even though he arrived bearing gifts; Thai, wine and the most thoughtful present* I’ve ever received, the floodgates had opened. Once you realise you aren’t coping – or that you don’t want to cope anymore – it’s hard to unrealise that. Particularly when it then pours with rain and your husband has to work all weekend**. Happy days!!!! Not.

The good news is I’m flying to my parents’ home tomorrow where I will be doing a stellar impression of an adolescent with two much younger siblings until the weekend. On the weekend I will resume my existence as an adult and we’ll reunite with Mr G for a week together in Yamba. Not a minute too soon.    

 

* Mr G published the first two years of this blog into a beautiful book complete with the funniest foreword ever written by Joyce. If I obtain her permission I may even publish it here.

**With the exception of Saturday night when we went out for dinner. It was probably the worst meal we’ve ever had out in nine years. It really wasn’t our weekend.