I've commented before that every now and then I feel an incredible urge to write - to verbalise the anxiety and trouble within my mind and perhaps somehow purge it in the same instance. Right now I am having one of these episodes. There may come a time, in the future, when we understand this as some dreadful mental condition, but for now I choose to believe it is a singularly creative impulse and fantasise that the same was shared by such greats as Tolstoy, Hardy and Joan Collins' Sister (I forget her name).
Today has been a markedly terrible day. Shamefully I cannot attribute this to the onset of an apocalyptic event, World War III or the discovery that Bradley Cooper is gay and thus my chances with him have sunk from -21 to -36. No, today simply marked the annual Ford Family holiday, which for the first time, this particular Ford was not party to. I say this with no malice nor expectation - of course I was not a part of the event. Chris and I have gone our separate ways....he is now with a new love and she is naturally the person attending in my place. Well perhaps not in my place but in her own new, Carly-esq place all of its very own.
What I am struggling with, beyond my own understanding is how painful it is to have these two separate existences in relation to the children. I feel like they are my life's work.....my every day thought and action goes in to attempting to provide something further for them, be it a dinner, entertainment, lift, words of wisdom (rare but occasional), cuddles, commiserations, reassurance etc (caviat - the etc includes berating, bawling out, chastising and generally losing temper with). The list of requisites as a mother is unending. Yet now I find myself childless for ten whole days......and it is excruciating. In reality they will be having a fabulous time but I feel like the heart and soul of my life is missing - melodrama? Admittedly yes, but indulge me please.
So have I not left them before? Again yes. This is the silly part. I have left them for an entire week before - although I must confess that by day five I was chewing my finger nails and counting down the hours. Somehow though this feels different. Perhaps because they are away from me rather than vice verse and also because it re-enforces how far and significantly our lives have changed. The family unit we once were is no more. And it hurts. More than I can explain.
This is not a request for sympathy. Indeed I am not convinced that any person actually reads this blog much nowadays. I just like to say it out loud. To no one inparticular and yet to the entire world. To get it off my chest and then hopefully find some peace and movement in a positive direction.
On a completely aside note, I am currently sitting in a foreign bed - not foreign as in exotic, international and thus holiday destination bed, but rather foreign as in not my own. Whilst I would love to say it is the bed of a 6'1 hunk of a man, devoted, handsome, kind, intelligent, humorous and willing to take me on in all my irrational glory, not so. This is my friends' bed and I am house sitting, or rather dog sitting for the night. Unfortunately I have a further visitor - a big fat nasty green (also covered in dust?) mammoth frog, which I discovered in the hall earlier today and which I unsuccessfully attempted to remove but rather drove in to hiding beneath the stairs. I remember as a little girl reading the fairytale 'Princess and the Frog' and wondering what her issue was - why not just kiss the darn creature or play with him (was that what he wanted? I can't recall) - how difficult could it be. Well, now I have empathy for her plight (Karma surely does exist). I tried to help Mr Frog but actually as soon as he began to jump - hearing the noise of his long floppy yellow-green legs slapping against the quarry tiles, I began to feel physically sick. No wonder she didn't snog the nasty thing.
Anyhow. It's been a day. But that, fundamentally, is the point of my post. It has JUST been a day. Just one of many. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. "For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" - Hamlet. I believe he may have a point.
