Day 256
I seem to coming out the other side of my identity crisis, which is always a nice thing to be able to say. Steve's six week contract finished yesterday, and what an emotional six weeks they turned out to be. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
I have learned that without someone to relate to, or something that duty demanded I do, I felt rudderless, adrift, confused, guilty, and panicky. In retrospect I realise that I have never lived entirely on my own. I have always been a girlfriend, or flatmate, or parent, or wife. Although being a single parent felt like being on one's own, I realise now how much it wasn't.
I don't have a problem with solitude, ifn fact I really like it - I'm not scared of the dark or panicky about burglars or anything like that. It's more that I have never had a space, since I was four years old, where I free to find out who I was, what I wanted, or how I like to live that was not dictated by somebody else's needs or demands.
After my sister was born and my mother became ill, she ruled our house like a concentration camp. I lived in dread and terror, and self-expression was the quickest way to incur her wrath and make my life miserable. I hid a lot and was silent about my thoughts as often as I could get away with.
When I left home I went straight to trying to please a boyfriend, then a child, and so on. Where was the space to discover myself? In my illness, that's where.
Twenty years is a long time to be ill. I have spent months of my life bed-bound, with only my thoughts and feelings to negotiate, or for company. Many times my hormone levels or bouts of post-natal depression have altered my mind, and my behaviour patterns to extreme levels, and I have had to learn how to cope with myself as an unlikeable or even scary and dangerous person.
I had to learn how to know myself, to forgive myself, and to rehabilitate myself. I thought I knew who I was, the hard way.
Turns out I missed a trick along the way.
With nobody else to relate to or even to consider, I am finally starting that process of perfect selfishness that should have been my right as a child. Six weeks is not long enough to have got more than a flavour of it, but that is a good start, and - if nothing else - I am practised at finding my way though difficult things.
I missed my husband while he was away, but I have been missing myself for a lot longer. I know I am strong-willed, creative, funny, forthright, soppy, maternal, honest and easy-going, and a whole host of other things - I have not lost sight of everything - but I am only now discovering what I really like or dislike.
Without reference to someone else, what time do I like to go to bed, and how long do I prefer to sleep? What eating habits suit me best, that does not include cooking for the family all the time? What do I like to drink, and when? What chores am I happy to do and which are just, well, chores?
Such simple questions - you would think anyone would know the answer, wouldn't you? Well, not me apparently.
So now Steve's back in what I have recently begun to feel is my space and I am bumping into all my old habits of fitting around others. This time, however, I am awake to this and can catch myself when it occurs. There is a freedom awaiting me when I get past this that will far ouweigh all the discomfort it has cost me.
Onwards and upwards. That, at least I know, is how I want to live.
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