Journal Entry: September 2008 

I note that I don’t feel the need to write in this very often; and when I do it is always around the same sort of time – when my hormones kick in and it is harder to keep my ‘demon’ (small d) under control.

I read with interest what I wrote last time. I had forgotten it! I don’t feel that strongly about some of it now. – Time the great healer. – But some of it rang so true.

Before I read my last entry I was going to put in my jounral how I felt like a split personality: Sometimes I feel like two completely different people.

I have had such a lovely time since my last entry. A fantastic time in Cornwall, and Salisbury; we got a kitten, I got a new phone.

I enjoy Danny’s company; have such a laugh with him. He has made me fall in love with him all over again: the person who I have lived with for the past seventeen months. I don’t love the ‘Old Danny’ anymore. I have tried to look back at our old life with fondness; but I hate it! I hate the person Danny encouraged me to become. I really did go down quite a few notches: crawled around people that I really don’t give a fuck about. Danny was not the person that I gave him credit for. It was all a lie.

It makes me sad that I am not interested in my wedding day. The day that I thought was the best day of my life. No, it wasn’t.

But when I am with Danny I enjoy myself; I do relax. But I am on my own.

A few things happened; a few sayings were given to me, which make perfect sense.

“If you keep doing what you are doing, you are always going to get what you’ve got.”

“Happiness is not a destination; it is the journey along the way.”

Both good ideals to live your life by.

Both Tonie and Nel have said how lucky I am to have Danny. I understand exactly what they mean: the man I have adores me, and would do anything to make me happy.

In Salisbury someone called Monica, who we met in the pub, said how lucky I was because of the way that Danny looked at me. That he loved me so much. When I said what had happened she said that she didn’t care, she would give anything for a man to look at her the way that Danny looked at me.

I understand. I understand what I have got.

But when I am on my own, normally in the car, I feel so alone. Even though I know all of the above I feel hardened to Danny. I am happy; but another me has a broken heart. So many awful memories that I suppose I still have to deal with. I know that the ‘real’ me, is the one that I am fighting; and I don’t know if the happiness is enough to stop me going mad.

Time will tell.

“There are no happy endings.”

Old Man in his 80’s in Salisbury .

Rosie  

Reflections Here & Now 

I am often surprised by what I wrote all those years ago:  because I have moved, we have moved, onto the next stage in our lives. I no longer feel that pain, I no longer think back to things that happened day on day. In fact as I have said before: it does exist but is now only a mist in the back of my mind.

That is why when I read my journals now it seems as if I am reading about someone else: A woman who got me to where I am today. So when I read this entry I had not remembered what I had written, I just knew that the sea of despair was in fact a seemingly never ending ocean.

In my last post Danny and I had nearly torn apart our relationship (read here): we were just about to go on the holiday that I have described in this entry; and this is where I started to realise that life really does show you the way.Read here and Here

For me the importance of this entry is that I felt as if I was two different people: I was happy, had a wonderful holiday, was with a man  I loved, but I felt so alone.

I did want to be there; I do love Danny, as I have said I was ‘falling in love with him all over again.’ I was falling in love with a different man: he had changed so much, faced his fears, worked hard to keep me and that is why I fell back in love with him: because he made something new.

Danny adored me and he showed me every day. I was not putting on an act for him: when I was with him I wanted to be there.

But I always felt alone: this was where the realisation that actually the only person any one of us has in life is ourselves finally came home to me. It took me a long while to realise that this was in fact a good place to be.

When I was alone, especially in my car it was hell for me for over two years: it was like being trapped in a parallel universe with the demon! You can read about the importance of understanding the demon in your head here) my ego would tell me to leave. It would tell me that I didn’t need Danny for anything: I earnt as much as him now; I could pay my own way, I was thinner, looked good, could meet someone else: someone who had not fucked someone else! Oh the list goes on and on. Why do you think I wrote all those lists in my journal or in Danny’s cards? To keep me there, to give me something to shut my ego up!

When I was in my car I would get angry: I would think of all the things that had happened and wonder whether the demon was right: I was better off alone. One of my favourite all times songs (even now) was ‘Stronger’ by the Sugababes. The lines made me cry then and still do today: because you see I will always be ‘the one who stands here longer than the rest’. I used those words in that song to make myself stronger, whether I was going to stay or go.

What ‘the demon’ didn’t tell me was that I was alone: you come into life alone and you out of life alone. It was lying by omission: we are all alone. Leaving Danny was not going to make one ounce of difference.

But Danny had a role to play in our story: as I have said he never gave up (I repeat that often for the people who are the betrayer and who read this blog):Every day he would face his fear: knowing that I often thought about leaving it all behind. He would not get defensive, he would just keep going: making me laugh, crying at records, showing he loved me by lighting candles, cooking the dinner, hoovering the house (it wasn’t buying me flowers I didn’t need material things I needed day to day small things). And now, today, although I will still be ‘the one who stands here longer than rest, as my landscape changes, rearranges’ I will take Danny with me.

You see my heart wanted to stay (and the Tao tells you to always listen to your heart) but my ego wanted me to leave (and the Tao tells  you to let your ego go because it is your enemy!) I mention the Tao because I have read it, but it could be any other philosophy. In fact what happened to Danny and I set me on a path of reading psychology and philosphy books: something for which I am always grateful.

I say in this entry that it ‘was the real me’: my strong personality. But I was wrong: my strong personality is what got us here today, it was my ego that I had to learn to conrol.

I fully understand, even now, when you are in that painful, painful place: when no matter how happy you are, at times it never seems enough. That is one of the hardest things about infidelity, affairs, betrayal whatever you want to call it: that you feel that happiness is not enough: you feel blindsided every time you have been happy and then find yourself so sad, angry, and destroyed; (and the words from Stronger by the Sugababes come to mind again: ‘like emotion that’s been captured in a maze’.) That is the work that the betrayed have to put in: only they can learn to manage their emotions. The person who betrayed can do so much, need to do so much, but ultimately I truly believe that the choice to move forward or remain stuck, lies with the person whose heart has been broken by another.

As I have said in this entry: ‘Time will tell’.

It will, but only if you listen. (I will add here whatever the outcome to your story.)

So more of what life showed me in the next post.

Stronger – The song that saved me

Rosie

Making This Better the book is now available including the journal entries for the first 5 years of our recovery & the whole 21 days of ‘The War’. Available internationally in paperback and ebook  at Amazon and Barnes & Noble also available at Xlibris and Apple Books for iPad and Waterstones Bookstores for click & collect

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