And why did I forget all this? Are yes, life got in the way

So I had all these great ideas for putting together a blog detailing my reinvention as an independent single woman in her 40s rebuilding a life destroyed through divorce.  And when I wrote the last blog I was in a good space, moving forwards, even if the dirt was somewhat overwhelming.  What happened?  Why did I forget to write that second blog.  Well, I had started it and life got in the way.  What life I cannot honestly remember, but clearly my resolve to be witty, articulate and positive was knocked by something.  But isn't that just a truth, you don't think something through, a good big plan forms in your mind, and then 'bang' something happens and it's  batten down the hatches and just keep going until calm waters are found again.

I was going to try the writing a novel in November thing.  Being creative, so I am told, is so important to my welfare, I am a 'creative' person.  Oh goodness, more guilt to carry with me, I am creative, but don't use my creativity - marvellous, another stick to beat myself with.  What happened?  Well, inspection at work is what happened, and I put all my reserves into doing my paid employment to the best of my ability.  Got life a little out of perspective, made myself ill and am now picking up the pieces trying to get myself rather more together.

So the first thing that went was the writing a novel.  I had always been frightened I have little more than a couple of paragraphs in me at the best of times, and the whole idea of plotting a novel, well just terrifies me.  But it must be a bit like running a marathon.  I remember my father telling me that when he was younger it was considered an extraordinary feat to run 26 miles or so, something only a rare, rare human being could achieve, and yet now, all our roads and lanes have someone on a sunday morning pounding the miles, preparing for the big event.  Running a marathon is still quite an achievement, but I bet we all know someone, or someone who knows someone who has done it.  It would appear writing a novel has been equally dismystified.  I met a woman at a bonfire party a couple of weeks ago, who not only was writing the required 50,000 words in November, but doing by hand.  She seemed to think it was not much of an achievement and proceeded to chat to our hostess about the merits of her various novels to date.  The woman was a primary school teacher, and how she channelled her creativity, and frankly made the time for it, astounded me.

So, I was writing a poem last night, thinking how good it would be to post some of them, since I've managed to lose a load recently.  Then I remembered, I had this blog.  So, dear readers and chums, you are going to be party to my creativity.  I shall add the poems I think fit, and some prose as well.  It was good to find this again, and I do need to be creative, but on my own terms and in my own way - not pushing myself to another's goals.  If I am ever to recover from the destruction of my soul wreaked on me through my pointless divorce (no issues there then) I have to fight on.  With the light fading, the winter sadness creeps out from corners, cold and black, pushing forward enveloping and suffocating optimism and resolve.  Daughter Number 1 had a really good suggestion this morning, and I think I shall copy her idea.  Every day she is going to write 3 things that were positive in that day.  Now I can't promise to return to the blog more than once a week, but I have my notebooks, and perhaps I shall try and dwell on the fun, the positive, the good and the hopeful, in an attempt to get myself out of the hole I find myself falling in.

But my problem is this: supposing this is it?  No, I don't mean in an 'existential is this the only life philosophical debate' issue, no, I mean, supposing no man ever loves me.  I can't be certain I have ever been loved. Is loving yourself enough?  I know plenty of you who would want to reassure me that the moment I love myself the 'right man will just appear', and that seems to defeat the whole object of self love.  I would be helped if the world weren't so biased against single life.  The Noah's Ark social life is massively prevalent, especially for my age group.  But we middle-aged women are ditched in vast great numbers by men seeking younger mates to shore themselves up against the ravages of time, and statistically it just doesn't seem possible that there is a reasonable reallocation of the spare men equally abandoned.  I know it is more complex than this, but sitting here in my kitchen on a chilly November Sunday afternoon it is difficult to clutch at positive straws.

So, there we are, bit of a misery being single, but are there positives?  It is hard to see why being single is in anyway preferable to a partnership of easy companionship and mutual satisfaction, but I am assured by all my girlfriends still married to their first husbands of long standing, that it isn't easy, and they do feel disregarded and undervalued.  It is sweet of them to be so supportive when clearly my life is about not panicing at 3 in the morning when you worry if that scratching is a rat in the attic and you have no-one to hug you sleepily and tell you it's just a branch and you are reassured by their warmth.

Coming to the round table is a name I dreamt up thinking about how I want my life to be.  I have an oval dining table now, left over from my marital home, and it's the piece of furniture I really dislike.  It isn't ugly, a reproduction double pedestal dining table that can seat up to 10 people at a push with the extension piece in.  But it is a table that has priority seating, at both ends.  It was easy when I was married, Now Absent Father and I sat either end of the table and our guests, or family, or both, ranged down the sides.  But now there is just me, and I don't want to be head of that table and look at the space where he once was.  However much I don't want this life, I do not want to be haunted by his ghost, I want a round table where family and friends can meet as equals.  It is in working on what it means to be equal, who I am and what my value is at my round table is what I wanted this blog to be.  That I forgot that so quickly is a mark of how hard it is to have values that are your own, when 22 years of marriage was abandoned in a whim.

I will not forget again.  Not for so long anyway.