Every day is a new day. Wake up and start again. Whatever has gone before is in the past. Remember the good things, but don’t try to hold on to them, be glad for them and let them go.
I’m drifting through these limbo days with no real plan of what is going to happen, what I’m going to say, what I’m going to do. This situation is so bizarre. Just a few more days. Not before Tuesday, because my sister, brother in law, brother, sister in law and possibly niece, husband and children will be here, we talked yesterday about the cooking arrangements. Not before Tuesday. And Wednesday? New Year’s Eve? Bring the curtain down? Tell him and then go out, leave him here alone? What about Thursday, New Year’s Day? I am holding on to it all, but what am I holding? Am I procrastinating still? Sometimes I think I’ve been procrastinating for three years, longer, even.
I pull off my rings. They are irritating me, there’s an itch just below the knuckle.
How will he react? Will he understand, acknowledge, give me his blessing? Will he retreat, hide himself away again? Or will he explode? That seems unlikely, it has never happened before. But if he does, I have nowhere to escape to, so I will have to stay and face the consequences.
Yesterday I was thinking of Paris, of how good that felt, good and real and strong. Life cannot always be about sitting on the Left Bank sipping coffee and listening to the bells. I’m not so naïve. I know there will be hard times, black times. I need to keep a point of light burning.
We cannot always be ruled by circumstances. We cannot always wait for them to fall into place. Sometimes the universe is telling us what to do but without showing us how. We have to make the decision before we have the means to implement it.
Take it gently, was Mary’s advice. Start by making a room for yourself. I have my own rooms, my study, my sitting room, he has his. The spaces we share are the kitchen and bedroom. It is the bedroom which is crucial, symbolic. Last time, I sent him elsewhere. Perhaps he will offer to go this time, but I must be firm, I have to be the one to go. What will I say to make him realise, understand, that this is not a test, a trial, a game, a bluff, I am serious this time? Or should I not even try, just let it happen gradually?
I must stop speculating like this. The only thing to do is to do it. Let it happen, whatever might happen. Whatever happens, I will still get up every day and find the world there, in its usual place, waiting for me, the cats waiting to be fed, work waiting to be done, correspondence waiting to be dealt with, dust sneaking in and settling while I’m not looking, waiting for me to come and chase it out again. Day after day.