let it be

it’s OK to live like the swing tree, the breeze or the flow of the river. so i can have my own way, feeling like i can fly wherever like a bird!

_{A holiday weekend is a holiday. Nothing to cry about. Yes, a little smile is in order…that’s the spirit.}

before and after every meeting with my parents, I am running through in my head the potential exchange that is bound to happen some day in which my father finds out that I don’t believe what he does.

I hate that I know exactly what I would say because I have been practising in my head for almost 10 years.

I hate the thought of how much they will be hurt, and how betrayed they will feel.

I hate even more that they will never understand how hurt and betrayed I feel that believing what they want me to is the one big condition on their love for me.

I hope that somehow there’s a way to avoid them ever knowing that I grew up not crediting them with loving me unconditionally.

What I hate most of all is the part where he tells me I am going to hell, my disbelief that any parent can say that to their own flesh and blood.

But it is what it is, and just for these 6 or 8 times a year we all work to preserve the status quo.

I dropped off for a very brief nap after lunch and woke up in a panic thinking “where’s K? where IS he?! Oh he’s not here…”

I think that was my gutting moment of realisation that he’s not here, I’m not there, I’m on my own again. That’s ok, I mean I can’t live the whole of my life with us all caught up in each other like we were for those two weeks; he is working hard at his stuff and I need to get into gear with mine. And besides, the harder we work the sooner we can see each other again.

The other thing that sucks is that my throat just seems to almost close up every time I fall asleep, so even putting time aside to rest is not really having any results. But even if I don’t feel 100%, it’s better to be up and about and doing stuff than moping about in bed. I just want to be back in my stride.

and I finally feel a sort of peace about this trip.

This is not the trip I would have made back in the winter. Back then I would have been sure of how he felt, I would have been reasonably optimistic about our chances of being together for good before too long; a trip back then would have been a 2-week dive into the funnel of affection and peace and security that our relationship was at that point. For a while there we really had it all, and if we’d been able to take advantage of that moment maybe it would have held.

Things are so unbelievably complicated between us now. Since we passed the year-apart mark I have felt things slowly fall apart, so many unfortunate things have happened and it has been so hard, and the bottom line is I think both of us doubt whether we have what it takes to hold on under these circumstances; both of us need reassurance and perhaps neither of us have it in us to give any more than we already have. There is only one way that two weeks can resolve all those issues conclusively and that’s the outcome I least want, even if I am already partly resigned to it.

So I can have no expectations that everything will be sorted out, or of how it’ll be, or of what he feels. But what I do know is that I will enjoy myself, it’s a holiday, it’s a place I love, I will be seeing a load of old friends and I know K and I will hang out, for real, and have fun times, whatever happens. I think, if I can’t get him to talk to me, properly, about everything, then that will be my bottom line really – I can’t keep holding on to silence. At the same time I know that I am whole and vibrant and am just on the verge of trying out a load of new things in my life, and I have exactly the same set of opportunities to come back to whatever happens while I’m away.

It’s been a week now since K started his new job – it’s a night shift which I thought he’d have trouble with but he seems to be settling in OK. He is supposed to work every other night (it’s a long shift so they’re not allowed to work two consecutive nights) but he gets the equivalent of weekends as holiday as well, so it only works out as 10 or 11 nights each month. This is great from the visiting point of view as we’ll have every other day together while I’m there, plus any extra days he has off – and because it’s a hotel and they are open all through the holidays, it doesn’t make any difference when in the year I go, and I don’t have to work around weekends and so on. It’s a bit random but I like random! And he’s allowed to study or e-mail or sleep for part of the night too.

The other thing that (conversely) is great about it is that he’s pretty much guaranteed to be working one day at the weekend. That sounds like a contradiction (due to the time difference, the weekends are the only time we can talk for extended periods) but it does mean that once I get his monthly schedule I know when he will be home to talk to me, and when he’s working I have the whole day to do my own stuff, see my friends, go out for the day or whatever. So after all this time thinking I had to be in all weekend, every weekend, to make sure we have as much time to talk as possible (although I’ve had more planned days out recently) I am really really happy to be able to go out, see my mates, and do stuff, while still working around K to get the most time together we can under this new schedule. I just feel like a great weight has been lifted – it’s not up to me to ask for time for myself any more, and at least if I can go out and have fun half the time, I won’t be so mopey about him not being here.

And of course there’s always hope that the time we do spend together will be more meaningful; either way it’s great that he has a job and the associated self-esteem, it’s great that he has a job that allows him a lot of free time to study, and it’s great that, rather than feeling cheated out of all this extra time we’ve gotten used to having together, I’m glad for us both to be living our own lives a little bit more.

either way I know what I must do. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst (but obviously believing the best will happen is the only way to get any sleep at all!)

_{s head on desk::is it time to go home yet? I would really appreciate that!}

Just had an e-mail from K saying he’s not going to be able to make it in April either, because there are no jobs and his back is still stuffed (not making the job-finding any easier) and he is not going to have the money. This is not exactly a shock but coming less than a month after the not-visiting-in-January bonanza it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Of course, I can go there, and I will, it’s just a matter of time. I will not let the disappointment and the distance and the rubbishness of the circumstances make us give up when we are within months of being closer together. But the thought that keeps going through my mind is I was not expecting to have to deal with this – with this much loneliness, on my own, to go through this much agony alone while trying to support him as he goes through a whole different set of difficulies.

And what I really have to do is stop thinking that thought; this is just the way the cookie crumbles, it’s not any more unfair on me than on anyone else, and I will deal with it, because I have to, because I love him and I know it’ll be worth it in the end. I will start looking at flights and re-doing my sums, I will work out when I can see him again and what I’m going to need to do to get along in the meantime – and soon this’ll pass and it’ll all be behind us…

after a teary lunchtime towards the end of last week. At that point it was mostly about K, and about how missing him is just more than I can take sometimes. Disappointment in that I thought between us we would have been able to make it easier, in that by the next time we meet we will be different people and will have missed seeing so many changes in each other first hand. I am really feeling the strain but it is what it is, it’s worth it, it’s going to get better, and really it is just the two of us so we both have to be strong enough to take it and support each other. Let it develop, let this hard time run its course, let it be.

But it’s more than that too. I am so bloody emotional about everything at the moment – it’s clear from the dreams I’ve been having and the things that have been on my mind that I’m craving affection and longing for backup in a way I haven’t for a long time – and there is no backup, it’s just down to me and whether I can take care of myself. I don’t want to be reaching out in the wrong directions for a temporary fix, I just want to be ok, to feel safe, to feel something that is real and close and makes a difference.

But I think I’m just going to try and do what I’ve done other times I’ve felt this way – focus on my own life, do more, be more, delve down inside and revel in whatever strength I find there. And I need to start by divesting myself of some of this excess emotion, diverting or investing it into something positive and healthy.