Dear Alex, Time to talk.

Dear Alex,

The socks are all paired, the washing done, dried and put away, every laundry basket empty, every drawer with pressed clothes sit, till kids get their paws on it when they wake! The floors are hoovered, mopped, the windows cleaned, pictures up on the walls, the kids and I baked apple crumble with apples from a neighbour's garden left on our doorstep this evening, read books, enjoyed each others' company, chatting away through the late afternoon, till the sun went down and baths and stories and bed ensued. The house is polished and my mind is also going through a Spring clean.

Time has slowed, I have had two days a week during school hours to slow. I feel I am recuperating after a long battle. Although the battle still pervades. My body aches, muscles feel like I have run a marathon, or several. My head hurts and I am in bed by 10pm, hardly able to wake to the kids in the night, barely able to prize open my eyes when the alarm goes of at 6.30am.

After over two years I am finally at the point where, with time slowing somewhat as the kids are in school and you are at the Centre most days, I cannot help but focus on me a bit. My thoughts have turned to many issues, things that have affected me for years and the situation with you.

Where you are, the Psychologist asked to meet up with me, she wants to get a picture of the whole family, not just you.

I have aways refused and not wanted to talk with anyone professional, I have not felt ready. Frightened to the core that if I talked, it would become reality. That reality, not just going through on survival instinct and automatic pilot, that it would break me. Scared of having time, that my thoughts would unblock, overwhelm me and I would finally buckle.

It is, I realised, time to try and heal. From inside and out.

Time to talk.

Time to cry tears in a safe place, talk about the time I have had, not the time you have had, or the kids, although that is indubitably linked, but time to be me, no holes barred. Bare, real, and it not mattering.

From all I have endured, been through, I know now i will cope, I won't just fall. I know the true strength of my character now. The tests I have staggered though, but still come through, and I know, for me, talking is a healer.

I got something so wonderful out of it, which bruised me, but has made me that little bit stronger in all I am doing, as I talk about how it feels like I have been married to two different people, how I ache for the kids that you cannot be a daddy to them, nurture them and counsel them in the way I always saw you doing before. As I talk about how I feel I have the old you kept in a locket, treasured away inside, she says that the relationship we had, that we have, the connection we carried and still do, but differently, in that locket, I have you inside me. All I learned from you and how intrinsically I knew you; your essence is in me. That I carry the way I knew you would have parented them and act on who you would have been this day too.

Your essence is in me, thus prevailing through me.

How uplifting it was, I hadn't seen it this way before, that I am, in just being who you married, and our souls connecting in the way they did, parenting these kids of ours in the way you would have done too.

I feel less alone.

I feel you more real-ly.

The disconnection and the absence your accident left, is less of that now.


me xxxxxxxxxxxxxx