Constant Cravings

It’s been a battle to get to the laptop and start to write again.  This ‘battle’ has been a symptom of my way of life in recent months: a struggle to justify why I do what I do, and why I need to go on.

It is dangerous to go on about the appeal of suicide, partly because, in my case, it seems like crying wolf; if I was really serious, surely I would have done something by now? 

To those whose knowledge of suicide is just at third hand, the desire to end life must seem insane and selfish.  The thought of causing such harm to those who care for you, to take away something that many fight, and lose the battle with, must at best perplex, at worst, anger the ‘normal’ public.  Despair and worthlessness, however, are poisons in the system, powerful and dangerous poisons that seep and rot where they rest.  Low self-esteem is endemic in our society and I would tender that to my gender, generation and background, being proud of yourself was a great sin, which feeds and encourages the worst in people.  It was different for men, especially the public school educated, for whom self-possession and worth was inculcated as a birth right.  How successful that process was for all those subject to the rugger, hockey and cricket sports regime, with Matron to wipe away the tears and Housemasters to walk you round the rose garden to give you five minutes to get over the news of the death of a relative, I’m not quite sure, and unless I ever get down to writing ‘that novel’ I doubt I shall ever explore it, but my point is self-worth is an issue especially for females, including for the moment, me.

The break-up of my last relationship has been devastating and has caused me more pain than the break-up of my marriage.  Now, as I wrote pages of poetry and prose trying to come to terms with the pain and loss that time, why, you might reasonably ask, have I been so silent this time?  True, my Facebook postings have been frequent, but I have not given myself a chance to find that release that writing gives me, especially the poetry. I have been frozen in pain.  Not that you’d really know it from the outside, well, I hope not.  Yes, I have talked and talked, I have even been out with someone else, albeit short lived, and I have stopped loving the Last Man.  He has long moved onto another and from being with them and a large group on holiday last month, I can know and accept that my Happy Ever After was just a dream.  Sadly, in one of the last conversations I had with him last summer, he confirmed that he thought it was Happy Ever After too, until it started going wrong and he walked away.  I know that sounds like I am blaming him, and that would be foolish.  Despite what the injured party may think, it is very rarely one person’s fault for a relationship failing.  People grow apart, and decide they want a different path from the one they seem to be treading.  I have heard tell that he has been unkind about me, and that is sad, but I presume that is his way of moving on, which he has done, as he has done many times before.  Whether he is at peace with himself is no longer any concern of mine, but the fact that he could leave me when I had moved to be with him and found myself alone in a new place, is painful, even now, to contemplate.  I know he justified the move by saying I had got a much better job in the new city, but even that has been much, much harder without his support at my side.  My success in those early days was due in no small part to his partnership, and the battles that have so dogged my life in the last six months or so, have partly been due to the fact that I have been combatting the urge the ‘end it all’, because I thought I had my future mapped out, and there it was, gone.

Why, you might ask, is this more painful that the end of a 22 year old marriage which had years of happiness and two beautiful children? An ending that coincided with the death of my father and loss of my home.  Naively, I thought I’d done my share of heartache, I thought I had been accepted and loved, I believed I had ‘done the work’ to enable me to move forward and do what others seems to do, move on.

So rather than wail and gnash, although I did cry every day for sixth months, the poison has re-entered my system, something I label as ‘The Blackness’.  My way of dealing with it this time has been different.  My school is a faith school, and therefore it is a requirement that we have worship of some form every day, both in staff meetings and form time.  Rather than viewing this as a duty I have used these moments to consider and whereas last time I couldn’t walk into a church, now I find peace.  But that hasn’t been enough for The Blackness as it steals its rotting path through my soul.  You could argue I haven’t enough faith, but that would be unkind, and trying to impose your solutions on my situation.  Isn’t that always the problem with organised religion, everyone thinks they have the answer for your life?

I have found great release in physical exercise and without doubt my Personal Trainer has been a treasure.  I began to find that part of me that has lain dormant for years, the rowing brain.  That guts to push and fight, but, as ever, it isn’t omnipresent: The Blackness, sadly, is.  Still, it was heartening to realise I hadn’t lost the will to struggle, and yet, I’d be lying to say the worst was over.

I joined a choir, and yes, this is sounding a bit like an article in a cheap woman’s magazine on self-help and managing difficult times, losing myself in the music was lifting. The acceptance from this new choir, and the familiarity with the processes of singing have helped me focus on being me, rather than being ‘us’.  Perhaps that was part of the problem, the Last Man fell in love with ‘me’ and out of love with ‘us’?

The Blackness didn’t go though, always there coursing through, and so I made deals with it.  The best way to manage was to take it on, acknowledging that yes this was awful, and yes there didn’t seem any point in carrying on, but actually it would be unfair to do anything before the marriage of my older daughter/Christmas/the skiing holiday/Easter.  The deal was to agree that if things didn’t improve after whatever event had been agreed, then The Blackness and I would discuss things again,  with me accepting that The Blackness may yet have its way.   And so The Blackness has settled down, not dried up as it had before, when contentment was my deepest feeling, the emotion that most characterised by my time with the Last Man.  Not happiness, no, nothing as ephemeral as happiness, rather a solid security that life was ok.  I’m not sure I shall ever trust or feel contentment again.  And thus The Blackness pools in corners, corners that need to have the light of love shone upon it, to rather overwork the metaphor, the love of another.  However, that would not rid me of the poison, to depend on another is not to defeat, I have to believe in my own worth. Ah yes, therein lies the rub.

In writing this I do understand that should others read this they might leap to point out what they see in me that I cannot.  That process would lead to a kind of passive aggressive narcissism, so prevalent in social media and yet I know, if I keep to myself the urge for suicide, then it stands a terrible chance of getting hold of me again.

I want to love again, not the Last Man, that it seems was just a phase, a phase that brought me to a new city and lots of new, kind and lovely people.  I want to defeat The Blackness and not dull its presence with diversions, or to rely on others to assure me I am worth the battle.

In writing this I have found something I thought had gone: the will to fight on.