Tuesday19th June 2007

Hello Darling.

I thought that rather than write in my journal today I would write to you. (I hope that the writing is big enough!)

Yesterday I wrote in my journal that I realised that you cannot live without me, that you are so sorry, that you were so manipulated and caught up in something. That I must move on and leave it in the past and concentrate on now; I realised that only I could really help you, by doing this.

And yesterday I really was ok. If you think about it, although some things came up we talked about them and they were done, we didn’t go on. It was good.

But when we went to bed and you were kissing me, you closed your eyes in a way that said you could not look at me. You said it was because of the guilt, and I know, and understand that. But it makes me feel as if you don’t want to be with me. Or that you are thinking of what you have done with ‘Her’(I know in a way you regret it, wish it wasn’t in your head. And whilst I know that you cannot help it, a chain reaction is set off in my head and I think of something that I really don’t want to, and it made me cry.)

I know that you want to make love (we can just have sex anytime) to me. I want you to. I can help with your guilt, if you make me happy you will feel less guilty.

I do have a handle on most of it now, meaning I can keep it under control. I am happy that you are back with me, happy that you love me so much, happy that you want to make it up to me in any way you can.

But you must overcome and get control of your guilt – or that can actually destroy us because it stops you from doing the things that will make me happy.

You want that great ‘love affair’ back – then we need to make love, you need to be able to look at me and not shut your eyes. We need to stop letting it interfere and affect our lives anymore.

We need to work together – I am, by getting control of it in my head. Now you have to. I will help you but you must talk to me about what goes on in your head; like I am now, I am writing you a letter in my journal. Please darling, if you want us to work, talk to me.

In the words of Diana and Marvin

“All I want to do is make it up to you, because I need you more than life itself.”

“All I want to know, is you still care that nothing’s changed, and it’s the same as it used to be.”

I love you.

Rosie

 

Reflections

I wrote this open letter to Danny in my journal, and left my journal open on the side for him to read when I wasn’t there.

I wrote it because whenever we were in bed together I could see the pain on Danny’s face, even only recently he told me that if I shut my eyes he thinks that I am thinking of someone else because he does not deserve me; even now, even eleven years later!

I will say it often in this book,  the damage that we do! I hadn’t put it behind me when I wrote this, it was way too soon, and I was just hanging on to hope.

For me to have given Danny access to my journal was a big thing for Danny, because he knew that ‘My’ journal was mine, and not to be shared with him. It  had become my sanctuary and Danny understood the importance of the symbolic gesture of allowing him to read it, including him in the power it had to heal us.

I knew that Danny would not read anything more, he was terrified of what I wrote because he knew it was all about us, a way for me to try and stop myself from running away from our relationship, and he knew that depending on what I had written on any particular day, determined if I would be there with him that evening.

In addition he did not want to read it because he was afraid of what it showed, which was the damage that he had inflicted on us as a couple. That is how Danny saw it, and still sees it now. I don’t! I know now that it took two of us to cause what had happened. We had stopped communicating, and I had become so caught up in my ‘happy life’ that I could not see the fear  that Danny felt every day – that he would lose me some day. I was so caught up at the time in believing that Danny loved me so much, was so confident in our relationship, so happy, that I did not consider for one moment if Danny felt the same; and because of that it allowed another manipulative and evil person to come into our lives and use what I could not see against us.

Now I know that some people reading this will say that it was Danny’s fault because he cheated on me, had sex with someone else, even moved into a fucking house with her! But here is my take on it:

If during the first seven years we were together (yes how cliché it was the seven year itch!) I had understood that Danny never thought that he was good enough for me, noticed that he had asked me if I would turn up to our wedding; noticed that he had felt that one day he would come home and I would not be there all through our marriage; if I had picked up on that insecurity, would ‘She’ have been able to get between us?

If I had listened to my friend Lucy all those years when she told me to stop talking about James, my boss, because it was really getting to Danny, would ‘She’ have found it so easy to tell him that I had an affair with James when I didn’t?

If I had not sent Rich to Coventry so many times when I was upset about something, sometimes not speaking to him for days on end, feeding in to his insecurity that he was not good enough, would not keep me, would ‘She’ have been able to get between us?

No the answer is No! ‘She’ would not have been able to do the damage that ‘She’  did.

Yes, Danny broke my heart, he made a fool of me (although I am not now ego driven so what exactly does that mean?) he left me for someone else and acted as if he did not care, he told me that he did not  love me, he told me that he loved someone else, he held court with the barmaids in the pub when we first got back together, and yes for all of that he was an arsehole!

But I would also be an arsehole if I could not see the arrogance of my actions that helped ‘Her’ do what ‘She’ did to get into Danny’s brain and tell him that I would leave him one day.

So Danny’s biggest problem was his own fear, fed by his own insecurity and that is what he had to face every day when he came back. That is what any person who is the adulterer has to face every day; that is not easy. That was Danny’s Karma – not me doing back to him but what he had done to me; me becoming stronger, independent of him fed into his insecurities every day – still does sometimes even today. especially with the topic of my book!

Only this year, as I am writing this book, has Danny picked up my journal when he was on his own and read some of it, eleven years later. Because I am writing this book I know that Danny needs to have an understanding of what will be in it, but it terrifies him even now; and makes me think again about the damage we inflict on others and ourselves.

Someone asked Danny the other day why he did it when it is clear that he adores me. He said simply that he never thought he would keep me, that I was ‘too good’ for him and he could not understand why I loved him.

I am always conscious of that now, and I do remind Danny constantly of how much I love him, and to not listen to his demon in his head – his insecurity; because I know that he still sometimes thinks I will leave,even now, even though we have gone on a massive adventure to France together  he still cannot understand why am here with him after everything we have been through; still does not believe it when I say that  “I love him more than I can ever say.”

I have said in the journal entry how when Danny closed his eyes it set of a chain reaction in me, and I thought he was thinking of ‘her, which made me cry. Now I know he wasn’t; I know he closed his eyes through guilt. When those things happened as we tried to stay together it was one of the hardest things to get my head around, especially whilst in bed. But I did get round it, by writing things like this in my journal, which helped me see that in fact there was probably another reason altogether.

I believe that everything that life sends our way is a lesson, and we can choose to listen to it or not! If your heart has been broken by someone that you trusted and believed in, a person who you thought would never let you down, you know that I know how hard that is.

Remember the hardest lessons are always the ones that teach us the most.

But I do believe that if you are going to move forward, with or without them, there will come a time when you need to stop and reflect, and be honest with yourself: Were there little things that you could have seen? Were there things that you could have done differently?

If your still in the blame game, and more than a few months into recovery I would urge you to consider getting out of it at some point, because that’s just one of the whirlpools you can get sucked into on the ocean of despair.

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Rosie