I have decided that I should stop using the words ‘former’ and ‘latter’ to refer to my two personae, partly because it would be too confusing without referring back to the previous post all the time, and partly because ‘the former’ sounds too final – in the past, done and dusted, it is no more.
I have been thinking about Melinda and Belinda a lot recently. Because Belinda tends to be the fallback position in unfamiliar situations, people tend to see her first, and then think I have ‘changed’ when (if) Melinda puts in an appearance. I’m thinking about the personnel manager in my first job, who when I left, said, ‘you’re a different girl from when you first came here’. In response to my comment that I would probably go back into my shell, his response was ‘oh no, you mustn’t do that’, as though I had any control over it. Because, the point is, I don’t have any control over it. And, or course, I was right, and Melinda sank without a trace, only starting to re-emerge after about 7 years.
Yes, I would like to keep them both in equal measure. But there are two conditions that encourage Melinda to appear: one is being with people I am comfortable with (but how to achieve that?) and the other, paradoxically, is being away from home, with people who have no expectations of me. When I look back over my life, I can see how the two of them have ebbed and flowed. But on the whole I don’t have a clue how it happens.
Having Melinda around can be very exciting and exhilarating, but is also quite risky, the main risk being, that I get too fond of her ways, but know that she won’t stay. So, I get used to being Belinda and come to terms with that, then a potential Melinda opportunity arises, and I get panicky because 1) she may not turn up and I may just be left there feeling tongue-tied and more lonely than ever, or 2) she turns up, but then I have to come home/go back to normal, and am left dissatisfied with Belinda’s simple pleasures, and have to come back to terms with life as Belinda again. So I think maybe it would be safer just to write Melinda off completely and forget about her. Because I can’t be her all the time, and that’s all there is to it.

(I know, I should be glad I'm not in Maryland... though I bet your house is better insulated.)

Woke up this morning and my feet were freezing. The only patch of warmth was where my body had been in the bed, and I didn’t want to venture outside it. This house is so old, cold and drafty, and we can’t afford to have the heating on particularly high or for very long, so when the weather’s like this it’s cold when I wake up and cold when I get out of bed.
This evening I’ll light the fire in the sitting room, listen to the Friday play and do my cross stitch. Or maybe I’ll listen to some music and read – this week’s New Statesman, and/or the book group choice, the biography of the Victorian naturalist, PH Gosse. Or probably I’ll just fall asleep on the sofa (after a home-cooked lamb curry and a couple of proper dry martinis, ie lots of gin!)
This girl sure knows how to live it up!

Took this passionflower this afternoon (after 2 nights of frost!)

The start of the week was so bad I didn't feel like I could inflict it on you...
But here are my Thursday thoughts:
At risk of sounding like a pop-psych cliché, I have an alter ego. One of me travels alone; she likes to flirt with thirty-somethings; she gives Marilyn Monroe and Anne Robinson impressions at the dinners of international conferences; she sings the Ode to Joy, Seven Drunken Nights and Bohemian Rhapsody in Viennese bierkellers, dances on the tables in Brussels bars; and strolls round the Coliseum at midnight. The other does the minutes for the Parish Council; takes photos of her garden; makes pastry and Christmas puddings from scratch; paints her own Christmas cards and likes to cross-stitch while listening to talking books on the radio; curls up in bed by 10:00PM with a mug of cocoa and a good book. The former doesn’t get out much any more, but when she does, she still knows how to party. Concerned neighbours fret about the latter, telling her she needs to get a little part time job to get her out of the house, broaden her horizons and expand her interests, when what she really wants is the Nobel Prize (for literature, peace or economics, she’s not fussed which.)
Question: which is the ego and which is the alter???

Took this photo last November - the kids weren't impressed, but I was quite proud of it.
Came across a quote from 'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys yesterday:
'There are more ways than one of being happy, better perhaps to be peaceful and contented and protected, as I feel now, peaceful for years and long years...'
That is the sort of happiness I have been trying to cultivate over the last couple of years, and sometimes it seems to work... but there is still this feeling that things could be different. Is that just 'the grass is greener' or something deeper?
From what I know of Jean Rhys' life, (not a lot, and mainly from the play 'After Mrs Rochester', which I saw a couple of years ago), she had precious little of that sort of happiness in her own life.

Going out and taking this made me realise that with all the stress etc I have not done any gardening for ages… the apples and damsons have rotted on the trees or fallen to the ground … wonder if there’s still enough damsons left for some damson gin?
Just an averagely crap day today: overslept, had to take daughter to school, she was in a strop, got back to find a letter turning me down for a job, kitten poohed on the study floor. Have to drive over to Cambridge this afternoon for a tedious meeting about a conference I’m involved with organising (nowhere near as impressive as it sounds, and all voluntary, ie no dosh).
Oh, and I rang Relate and made an appointment for the two of us for Monday week.
Enjoy your weekends out there in blogland.
PS listening to ‘Dust in the wind’ by Kansas for the umpteenth time – mean anything to anybody out there?

I wonder?
I have many single/divorced friends who are quite content with their lot - the divorced ones usually say they wish they had gone earlier.
I can see lots of attractions - I enjoy my own my company, I love travelling alone, doing things on my own or with friends as I choose, and meeting new people on my own terms, rather than as 'half of a couple'.
Maybe this is partly 'the grass is greener..' I come from the generation who lived at home until they married (not counting 3 years in university accommodation). At least my daughter will have plenty of positive role models of women living alone, and not assume she has to grab the first man who comes along.
Then again, there's always the possibility of meeting someone who will be more sympatico than the 30-years-older version of the person your 30-years-younger self once fell for.
Or not... who knows? I guess it's that uncertainty that keeps me here.

When he was behaving like an arsehole, I was strong and determined and feisty and ready to go… now he is being kind, thoughtful, conciliatory, and I have just collapsed. How can I leave him if he wants me to stay??? Maybe that’s what we all want – just to know that someone else wants us. I couldn’t walk away if I thought it would break his heart… damn him, why can’t he go back to being a bastard, then I wouldn’t even have to think about it!!!

Here’s an update of what happened this week:
On Tuesday I went to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and picked up some leaflets about divorce, and sat and wrote a bullet-point list of things we need to discuss, which I left for him to read along with the leaflet from CAB.
On Wednesday we had a long talk, he admits he over-reacted, he is willing to go to Relate, he want us to give it a trial, say, 3 months, which will get us past Christmas, then it will be getting easier to find a buyer for the house as well, and we can get some of the jobs done in the mean time, which makes perfect sense. He is trying to find things we can do together, to spend more time together, to go somewhere together which isn’t just the garden centre or Homebase 10% day. On Friday we went to the firework display in town and had fish and chips afterwards (which probably sounds no big deal, I realise, but it is what we used to do in our early days together.). He cooked a 3 course meal for the two of us last night, and he’s cooking dinner again tonight, which is what he used to do. He is even being friendly to the kitten. On Friday he did the shopping on and bought me flowers (and, more to the point, a bag of cat litter).
So now I can have the cat AND the husband - if I want him. But, but, but… I don’t know.
Daughter was not impressed. ‘Mum, what’s the point? You told me you didn’t love him. You know you’d me happier without him..’
Well, would I? Oh, god knows. Someone said to me years ago ‘dump the bugger, he doesn’t make you happy’, to which my answer has always been, it’s not up to anyone else to make me happy, it’s up to me to make me happy, so that is what I’ve tried to do over the last few years, to find a way of living my life that makes sense in the circumstances in which I find myself.
So do I owe him my loyalty? Staying with him would be the easy way, though now I have to put up with the grumpy teenager treatment instead. But I still feel distant from him. I still haven’t invited him back to the bedroom. I still don’t know.
When I am around him it is easy to slip back into the feeling that this has all been a bad dream which is now over, that life could be so much better if I just accepted the inevitable and went back to the old ways. I remember why I have stuck with him all these years, why he is so easy to be around.
Yet I can’t really shake off the feeling that I’m letting myself down in some way, that I am chickening out. But I am tired, and I’m scared, and I don’t want to fight, and I don’t want to end up being alone for the rest of my life…. (Though I have to say I’ve been lonely enough in this marriage, how much worse can it get?)
So, where do I go from here?
I am scared, I don’t want to be lonely, but if I stay…I am thinking about some of the things I have said over the last month, some of the things I have put on the blog. I really believed them, didn’t I? Chris is right, I talk myself round in circles, and I talk myself into corners, then I have to talk my way out of them again, and I still don’t feel any further forward and I still don’t know what the hell to do.
On Thursday I was thinking, oh this is ridiculous, we just need to put it behind us. And I was thinking, well what is the point in sleeping apart, why not just accept it and just go back to the way things were. He says he will let me decide. But maybe he just knows that if he leaves me alone without doing anything, I will just fall back into line. That sounds awful, cynical, but I ask myself, do I trust him? Do I think he’s sincere? And the answer to that is yes. It’s my feelings that are such a mess.
He can be very easy to be with - 95% of the time. But nobody is perfect all the time. No relationship is perfect all the time. Am I looking for perfection? What can I do? Must I make the most of things as they are? Maybe it’s just that I’m a coward, maybe it’s just that I’m still pathetically grateful that anyone wants me at all and is prepared to stick with me/put up with me.
What will keep me with him? Guilt, gratitude, inertia, fear – maybe fear should have been first, maybe fear is the main one. Why have I stuck with him all this time? He can be charming, he can turn it on, but is that just manipulation? When I asked him to cook yesterday’s tea – he said he was already planning it – then he came back and apologised and said he didn’t want me to think he was manipulating me. It was the old thing about him always anticipating what I wanted. Is that good enough? I just don’t know any more. I wish to god I wasn’t so confused. I wish I wasn’t so unhappy.