Changing Husbands

I started this blog pretty much in a state of despair, exhausted by all the arguing, all the physical effort of keeping going, carrying the weight of the loved one, heavy and altered with illness, and the children (who need both parents but rarely get the best of one) and the need to pay the bills and keep the roof over our heads and the food in our mouths, and the even-more-strongly-burning need to still be myself, live a good and full life, earn my living doing what I love... dealing with the reality of a husband too sick to work, and too exhausted and angry with life to even be nice to me. Phew.

Now I feel like a fraud. That's how life's been, for so long that I had given up thinking it was going to end. Though we'd had a period of respite around Christmas - where we managed to reconnect, and returned, with huge relief, to the love, respect, support and kindness that had forged us into a couple in the first place - we were back once more in the dark and separate places we'd inhabited for most of the previous year. Again, I found myself crying my eyes out as I drove down the motorways to yet another piece of paid work that I'd relish and enjoy if only I felt I had a secure, happy marriage to go back to. And a secure, happy man. The diary entries, scribbled in staff meetings, in car parks if I arrived somewhere early, on my lap in a dark corner of the house if it was late, so often ending on the same, tear-splodged note:
I've lost him. I've lost the man I love. I want him back.
I miss him so much. So much.

Where is he?

And although sometimes I'd sort myself out with something like armour - I'd decide that I would live with it, I would deal with it, because I had to, what choice did I have - I couldn't really stop crying about the beautiful thing - US - that I had lost. I had a long history of bad relationships before I met him - twenty-two years, in fact, of disasters of the heart. But this one was different. I know that sound like the most terrible romantic cliche, but we knew it, and eventually every we knew, knew it as well. We were the kind of couple to whom friends said: "If you two ever split up, then there's no hope for any of us."

I always felt - we both felt - that something about our love was exceptional. I suppose a lot of lovers feel that - don't you have to? Isn't it something about the beautiful "story of us" that makes you fight for each other during the hard times, when you find yourself a thousand miles apart in the same bed, when silence has warped into neglect, erupted into vicious verbal assaults, and retreated back into silence, each time icier, harder, and less possible to live with and sleep on? It was far, far worse between us, when the illness started nibbling at the relationship, because we both knew, it had been so exceptionally good. We both felt blessed to be with the other. I thought I'd been loved two or three times before but when he loved me, I realised he was the first, and that not one of others I'd imagined had loved me, had loved me. This was love. Experiencing what it really meant was an education, and made me understand all the ways in which I hadn't been loved before.

Illness has wreaked havoc on us. It's a loss that both of us find hard to bear. Our love isn't perfect anymore. It isn't enviable. It isn't a source of pride like it used to be: we are humbled. Our diamond has flaws. Our glorious union is cut down to size.

But it is incredibly solid. That I had begun to suspect it wasn't is one of the worse consequences of living with this illness. We both want - above everything - to be close again, and be able to look back at this, one day, as a terrible (but temporary) diversion, that forced us off the smooth roads onto a potholed track that took us nowhere, except to get us lost in a forest, panicking without a map, frightened and beginning to snap at each other, the rain coming on, fuel running out, the sky darkening, imagining the gleaming eyes of wolves coming out of the forest...

Well, its the next day in the fairy tale, and the sun is out and we're sitting in a layby eating emergency sandwiches that I suddenly remembered I had packed ("just in case") in a tupperware containers, and we find we *do* have a signal on the phone at last, and one way or another we feel a whole lot more confident about finding our way back on the journey we had originally started (and were intending to finish).

It's two weeks since Brian was banished and, despite some creaks on the floorboards, we are still okay in each other's company. Affectionate too, at least a couple of times a day. My original husband is still only there in flashes (the energy for that level of transmission is hard to come by) but the one I'm living with is pretty good, by anybody's standards. He's friendly, reasonable, thoughtful, and as supportive as is possible. I'd still like my old husband back, but I realise I'll have to be patient. There's a way to go yet before we get back on the adopted roads, the ones where you can put your foot down and have some fun. I've got a companion to talk to and at the moment, the mood is fairly light. My original husband was the best of the lot, but compared to Brian, this one will do very nicely indeed.