Frustration

In counselling. As far as I am concerned it is divorce counselling, but he thinks it is marriage guidance. This is a bit of a problem, to say the least. He doesn't think it matters that I don't love him anymore - he loves me enough for both of us, or so he believes.

And if I don't want to chat, if I don't want to make nice, he accuses me of having no respect. I am caught between a rock and a hard place.

I don't want to share my life with him anymore, and yet I can't get away.

Bursting the balloon

On holiday for ten days with the husband and kids. I feel like I am drowning, suffocating. I have to put on a brave face for their sakes - when we get home all hell can break loose, but the children deserve their holiday to be perfect. It might be the last one together.

The past year has set wheels in motion. Wheels that were rusted tight with denial. Now there is no getting away from the unstoppable train. It's just a matter of time.

And then I see the children with their father and it breaks my heart. To tear apart the family for my own sake - it is almost more than I can bear.

But if I don't start listening to my own feelings, my own needs, I will end up like my mother. A lifetime of antidepressants and affairs - neither of us deserve that. He deserves someone who loves him, and that just isn't me. It's been half my life - 17 years. I want the next half to be on my terms, with love and hope and joy in my heart.

What I want

I want to be swept away. I want to feel again. I want there to be a point to the rest of my life. A point for me, not just for other people. I want fire and passion.

And I want happiness.

Is that so much to ask?

No harm, no foul

Lying awake, unable to sleep, mind wandering. Wandering to places better avoided. Places that include people I shouldn't be thinking about; scenarios I shouldn't be thinking about.

But CBT has taught me not to use the word "should" anymore. There is no "should". Those are unrealistic expectations.

These things are only in my head, right?

Anachronism

I am off to CBT tomorrow after a month where my therapist was swanning around the world on various trips. It was good to have a break in some respects, but it meant that I left my homework until the last possible moment (i.e. now) - just like being back in school. Sorry sir - the dog ate it.

What arised from our last session was that a major issue for me is that I am struggling against a (largely self imposed, although being married to a somewhat unreconstructed man doesn't exactly help) view of what a wife and mother should be. I have forced myself to behave like I am living in the 1950s while feeling unutterably frustrated by the position that puts me in. So, my homework has been to think about my old-fashioned codes of behaviour, and reinterpret them for the 21st century.

I've spent our entire relationship being submissive, and I'm slightly worried about what will happen when he realises that it wasn't really me. Who knows, maybe he'll like it. Maybe he always knew. Maybe I am being overoptimistic. Watch this space.

In other news: my hair has stopped falling out. Seems I've reached some kind of equilibrium, follicularly speaking.

Giant invisible elephants

Lunch with the family ("which one?" I hear you cry) at the weekend. To clear up any possible misunderstandings, it was the family I was raised with; so two (half) sisters and their kids, as well as mum and (non) dad. I was expecting the whole thing to be utterly ridiculous, but somehow the presence of an enormous unmentionable secret that all the adults (except non dad) were well aware of didn't impinge on events at all. Perhaps now we all know about it we can begin to move on, even if it never gets discussed. Then again.

Oh, and I ate a proper meal (although I hated myself for it afterwards).

On why I am not eating

Let me just get this straight - I have never had an eating disorder before, and I would hesitate to define my current issue so strictly, but there is something deeply wrong with my relationship with food. I lost a lot of weight last year in the worst phase of my depression. I didn't want to eat, and that in turn became the only thing I felt I had any control over. I considered it a bad day if I ate anything at all before 2 pm; a terrible one if I had anything vaguely approaching a normal meal at any time. If you took all the food I consumed in a 24 hour period and put it on a plate it would not have added up to anywhere near one single meal.

I should add that I was pretty thin to start with, so now I was looking pretty damn skeletal. Did that stop me? Don't be daft - I liked the way my clothes fell off me; how my hip bones stuck out; how I couldn't sit on a hard chair. To make matters worse I was lying to people about how much I had eaten - pretending to the husband that I had eaten with the kids.

I know this is all wrong, and unhealthy - both physically and mentally - but there is a part of me that can't stop. I have put back some of the weight but now I find myself continually worried that I will gain it all back. I'm still not eating enough. I never eat before lunchtime, or mid afternoon if I can manage it. I lie about what I have eaten and when; but most tellingly for me I feel guilty if I do eat - as though I have to make up for it the next day.

I don't know how to stop. I don't know how to want to stop.