Somehow, as I’m sat in my bed, wondering what to do with all the thoughts flying around my head, it feels like everyone in the world knows how to be logical when it comes to trusting. That everyone knows how to trust someone after having that trust ruined by someone else. I know that not trusting, or being clingy or jealous or needy is only more likely to create more problems. But I don’t know how to make it stop.

Some of the time it’s not a problem at all. Most of the time it’s just a bubbling under feeling that something is not quite right. But tonight it’s spilling out. I’m trying to pull on what I’ve learnt from BC & fairy training - just noticing what’s going on, being gentle with myself and so on. But the mistrust springs from fear that he won’t stay, and if the mistrust increases the likelihood that he won’t stay, then it’s like some kind of viscious circle that I don’t know how to step out of.

How do you just trust someone? I mean, how do you just get on and do it when you’re scared?  How do you just let go and take life as it comes when you know how much it can hurt when it doesn’t work out?

And in true all-or-nothing style, I can feel myself pushing him away. If there’s a chance that being with him might hurt me, maybe I should just grab all control and retreat, and be on my own, where it’s safe. I can feel all of the old depressive thoughts coming back - I’m not good enough for him, he can do so much better, he shouldn’t have to put up with my neediness, I just can’t do this without fucking it up.

I need to remember to breathe, don’t I?

:-/

Ben’s daughter was born last night.  She was born in our marital home, and I wasn’t even called to come and fetch the boys so they could be with me like he promised he would. I started the day feeling numb and now I can’t stop crying. There are babies everywhere - in the news, in my emails, on forums, on the radio. I just want to hide under my quilt til it stops hurting. I feel frozen, like I don’t even want to move from the space I am sat in. I have no interest in doing anything, least of all going to work and listening to people moan, scream and shout about not getting their “urgent” packages which turn out to be a repaired games console or a new modem. It’s hard to pretend to care when I feel like this, and my job requires endless amounts of patience - especially at the moment when we have so many late packages because of the bad weather.

I don’t know how I feel, or how I am supposed to feel. I feel sad, absolutely devastated, and angry and irritated and furious, and stupid, foolish, and like the whole world is so unfair, and then sad again, like my heart is being ripped from my chest.

I was talking to my mum yesterday about sorting out my housing problem, and she said “You left your husband, how was it ever going to be easy?” and I realised how naive we had been. We sat, before we broke up, and talked about how we imagined it would work if we called it a day. The idea was that we would be on our own, and that we would carry on being best friends and coming over to see eachother and spending time together, and we discussed the option of dating again and so on. And then he met Kat, and everything changed. He must have fallen for her that very first night he met her, while I was there. He danced all night with her, got stupidly drunk, I drove us back to my mums and he was sick all down the side of my car. And I wasn’t cross. I didn’t care because I loved him. And he didn’t care about me at all then. All he could think about was  her. He took her number, probably even asked for it, and was texting her all the time after that. “Just friends” he told me. He promised me. We’re just going for a drink as friends, you’ve got nothing to worry about, he promised that. I probably still even have the text on my old phone.

And yet here we are, less than a year later and he’s fathered her baby. His daughter. The daughter I was so desperate for. I haven’t just lost my husband, I’ve lost my family, my faith in my ability to be an acceptable person in a relationship because I know he thinks and tells other people that I was unbearable. I’ve lost my home, and so many friends. Or people who I thought were friends but have pretty much ignored me since we split up. A year later and it still hurts the way it did. Still. I’m sure everyone thinks I should be over it by now. He clearly is. He’s moved on, I should have too.

I have, I guess. I don’t want to be with him anymore. Being with Gavin, someone who treats me like I am precious to him, highlights so many ways in which I felt abandoned when I was with Ben. I couldn’t go back to that, it is heart breaking and soul destroying. But I miss having him as a friend. I miss our family unit, I miss his eternal optimism.

I gave myself today as a deadline for letting go. Once that baby comes, you have to let go. You can’t hold on or pretend anymore. There is no going back, not in any tiny corner of your mind. This is it now, it’s done.

I am absolutely LOVING the snow. It’s so beautiful and peaceful. Crazy to drive on - I got stuck in the snow twice this morning. Thankfully there was a nice man with a shovel who came to my rescue. School is cancelled, but work isn’t, so I’ll be at work later taking lots of calls from people who haven’t received their packages due to the snow.

**I didn’t finish this yesterday so -

Work was HORRIBLE yesterday. Some people just can’t seem to grasp that heavy snowfall can affect deliveries over the whole centre. If the roads aren’t clear at Tamworth, one of the main sorting hubs, then you’re not gonna get your package in Dartford, cos it won’t be there. And if the drivers can’t get in to the delivery centre at Luton, you’re not gonna get your package if you’re covered by that centre and you live 2 hours away! Quit moaning. If it was THAT urgent, you’d come and fetch it. Gah. Thank heavens for some lovely customers who are understanding and keep me sane! I love my job really but gah!!!

Things with Gavin feel better than ever and I’m hardly wibbling at all. Yesterday marked the 3 month anniversary of our first date <3  Reading Men are from Mars has really helped. I’ve read it before, but it’s really making sense this time. I can see how I was interpreting his need for time alone as a rejection of me, and while I knew that that wasn’t really the case, I think I just needed more reassurance, or to view it from a different perspective. And of course it validated my feelings about abandonment, so I was able to stop yelling at myself as I realised it was a normal reaction.

So it’s less than two weeks til her baby is due. Whenever I mention it to someone, they’re like “Wow, that must be hard for you”. No kidding. I am still avoiding it. I sat on the train back from London, and let myself think about it for a little bit and the tears came almost instantly. This baby changes everything. We won’t just be a split family anymore - my sons will have a sister that I have nothing to do with. Toby doesn’t understand this of course - he thinks the baby will come and stay here too. I don’t know how he’s going to deal with it all, and just to make matters worse I will also be moving house that week or the week after, so a lot of instability, and his behaviour is terrible at the moment as it is, without any more chaos.

I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to handle the next few weeks. I am incredibly scared. I know I’m still not dealing with the whole thing as I should. It’s like there’s a big part of my mind still completely in denial about everything, and this will force me to change that. And it all adds to the feeling that I was just some mistake, a blip. That everything we had together counted for nothing, or very little. I don’t know how to feel ok about it, and the divorce is still on hold, though I’m getting closer to being able to deal with it.

In other news - I’m fed up with my job at the moment. When we started there we were told that promotions came up often and the implication was that if we didn’t want to be on the phones for long then we didn’t have to be, but a lot has changed and there are few vacancies and I just feel bored. I’m not getting the chance to walk anymore, or to shadow Duty Managers like a did before Christmas. I’m frustrated with that.

I feel better about things with Gavin. He’s just done his usual steady thing - being there when I need him, reassuring me, and I feel a little more able to let go again. I really feel like a girlfriend now, which I obviously didn’t before. I’m excited about the holiday we’re nearly ready to book. And I’m looking forward to seeing how the next year works out as we build a relationship together, and I’m just feeling positive about the whole thing in general.

I’m not coping quite so well at the moment, but I’m hanging on. I’ve been on a bit of a downer recently. I haven’t been getting much sleep which is part of the reason why, and I think a touch of the winter blues, but it’s not all bad. In three weeks or so I should be in a new house in Bingham again, which will be such a relief. I supported Sarah on a Beyond Chocolate Experience on Sunday which was a fabulous experience. I feel confident that I can run workshops myself now, and I’m looking forward to that. We have the training workshop that we’re running on the 19th March which is now fully booked, and then we graduate on the 20th March. I’ll have to figure out how the money from that will affect my tax credits and stuff, but it should be ok.

I hadn’t realised that my trust in people sticking around had almost completely disappeared. I am really struggling to believe that Gavin is going to stick around. I have managed to internalise the idea that I’m just not doing enough or coping well enough on my own, and I can feel that part of me is just waiting for him to leave. I think it’s a protection thing - if I’m expecting it, then when it happens it won’t hurt so much. Or something.

But he’s still here, picking me up, putting me back together, and I love him completely. I find it hard to tell him how I’m feeling, because I’m feeling low a lot of the time at the moment and it’s depressing for me, so it must be for him too. It’s hard work being around someone who is depressed. But I keep trying, and he is always supportive. He does sweet things for me, like scraping the snow off my car this morning, fetching me from the train station at half eleven last night, sending me downstairs to chill out while he fixes the bed I just broke (oops!), that make me feel so special, so loved. I’m trying to focus on those, cos I know my perception of the situation is skewed. Why would he do stuff like that to look after me if he didn’t love me?

He keeps telling me that it’ll come in time, that I’ll be able to believe that he’s sticking around, and I know it is only time that can fix it, but I just wish I could relax a bit.