35 And Suddenly Single: A Difficult Day

35 And Suddenly Single: A Difficult Day

My life is not like a literary novel. I know this because ever since IT happened the weather has singularly failed to match my mood. The day it all blew up I drove to my parents and I remember sobbing into my mother's bosom while half looking out the window into the lush garden and the sun dazzling back at me.

In fact almost every time I've cried or felt sad and I've looked outside, the sun has shone back at me obliviously. I've silently weeped on the train into work with while being blinded by the yellow ball of fire.

For this I am glad. If I could have chosen when the worst time of my life would occur, then during a resiliently sunny spring would have been it. If it had been deep midwinter then I know this would be EVEN worse.

Spring may have sprung late this year but now it's arrived it doesn't look like disappearing in any major way (in Kent at least). Thank god this didn't happen this time last year...

I, at least, also have the summer to look forward to in some way, if not in the way I expected a few months ago. It may not be everyone's thing but I've always loved going to festivals, Glastonbury being the main event.

I didn't even try to get tickets for this summer's event when they went on sale last autumn because I hoped I would be pregnant by now.

It's funny how things turn out. I tried to get one in the recent resale and failed miserably after a frustrating two and a half hours, like everyone else I know who did the same thing. Ah well, it might start raining some time... :)

And another sunny Sunday arrives and I'm invited to the baptism of a school friend's second child. The sun wakes me up through the curtains and I get up, don't know what to wear and put on something probably better suited to an autumn night out, but I've made an effort and that's all that I can do right now.

I'm not a regular churchgoer, but an occasional Anglican who finds the odd service strangely comforting. I've been christened, confirmed and married in my parents' local church... and look where it's got me!

My friends are Catholic; I always find the services strangely familiar and strangely alien all at the same time. I've got to admit I wasn't expecting the service to affect me much in any way at all. It's my close friend and it's what we do - go to each other's baptisms, weddings and funerals and celebrate, commiserate and enjoy feeling part of a community in some kind of small way.

I'm a city-working metropolitan so shouldn't be affected by such superstitious nonsense as the content of the actual service, but it does, and profoundly.

This time, as the lessons, psalms and sermon are read I don't drift off into some kind of reverie in the warm church, like most of those around me, but I stay focused on the priest and his talk on change and how it affects us throughout our lives.

I find it all rather discombobulating and feel really down as memories of my wedding day bombard me relentlessly as I look towards the altar. I'm not suddenly feeling God in my life because, to be honest I never really have, but I do feel a strange absence of something, and the sadness is truly overwhelming.

I wasn't the fussy, career-driven woman who put her job above everything, who didn't realise that in order to have a loving relationship I'd have to make compromises.

i

I did all that and I made sacrifices and yet still here I am, at the christening after-party surrounded by people of my age, with spouses, babies and kids all over the place feeling utterly, utterly alone.

i

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