There are no days

I justify it this way; It's not revelling in self pity, I'm writing down the things in my head so they don't have to roll around there, crashing and clanging, with their jumbled time line swinging from sweet to sour and back; colouring everything that was once good with the grime of what came later.

For me it is finding a voice and diminishing the monsters that lurk in the silence. Now that I have started I cannot stop. there's more and more and more and if people will judge my me for my weakness in this then all I can do is show my hand again. What I kept covered so long has begun to crumble in the light and I couldn't put it back if I tried.
I was ashamed of having Herpes. Ashamed that I didn't take better care of myself and impose boundaries. Before that, I was ashamed of being depressed and taking Citalporam, before that I was ashamed that I had taken out a loan for someone who was never going to pay it back. And even before that I was ashamed of my skin, the psoriasis that welled in ugly plaques all over my body.

But it does you no good, this shame. It makes you scuttle from one disaster to the next in darkness. This is what I am. This is what I have and what I have done.
At the very least I am proud of myself for saying it.

My son told me this morning, sitting up in bed; 'There are no days. Every day is the same day, it's just the name that changes. The name of the week day or the name of the month. There is just darkness and light. Nothing else really changes at all.'

When I recovered from the shock of what came out of my baby's mouth I realised that it's true always. There is no good or bad. There is just the stuff I did in reaction to the stuff that happened. It's me that gives it a name. That decides to judge my actions as good, bad, weak, immature or responsible. And so it's not for me to judge, just to write. I'll leave the naming of what I've done to you.

There are no days.

the light that shone

I've written about it before; what it was like when the anti depressants started to kick in. A light came on finally. Fresh air blew through my stifled mind, stirring up the dust motes as the warm sun came in slantwise; what once was dull and faceless became, if not  beautiful, then a something that did not trouble me so deeply. I was no longer stripped down with the raw terror of it all. It gave me pause. It gave me respite. It was like it might be in another life where another me, the one that got it right this time, had a partner, an equal, a second adult in the house to tag out with when it all got too much.
It often gets too much when there is just you. I'd left my son's Dad with nothing. Less than that. I was paying off a loan I had agreed to take out so that he could get a work van.

Of course I was paying it off. All seven grand of it. If you were watching a soap opera and this plot line unfolded you would know what would happen next. 'No!' you would shout at the telly, 'Why are you doing that you stupid girl?! He's not gonna pay you back...Oh my god...' and you'd slap your forehead leaving your hand there in disbelief and be glad when the dramatic music started and you could switch over to something less emotionally taxing. Like celebrity love island.
Or, if you had a daughter, you would sit her down and explain that no man, no man in the world worth his salt, would ask his girlfriend to take out a loan in her name so that he could spend it on a van and not even put the goddamned vehicle in her name.

There was a long process of gathering evidence, going through bank statements, emails, solicitors letters and threats... applications for a court hearing that I fielded alone. Lots of people said 'take the fucker to court! You should do this!' but no one helped me. No one saw me on the day to day just putting one foot in front of the other. Days with a toddler, who needed every ounce of me, stretched out and away into the distance.
I'll tell you this now, if you meet a girl at soft play, or some kind of library event where the children are told stories and sung to, and she is skittish, desolate and shy... if she seems gawkish or even if she seems like she hates you (she probably hates you, actually, but it's not what you think), persist. Persist. Ask her round for wine... not coffee. No, WINE. You will find that she is funny and strong. She has been sucking it up for a very long time and what she needs is someone who is getting it all wrong too. But I'll leave that up to you. You might find her too closed down.
I know I did.
And for the longest time I would not take those pills. I'd been to the doctor nine months earlier and been written a prescription that I hid (from myself) under my bed before I succumbed to my desperation and actually went to the pharmacy.
And I took a pill, And the next day I took a pill. And I kept on taking those pills because almost immediately they put me in a bubble of 'I do not give a fuck-ness'. And I liked it there.
I remember the moment when I actually laughed. It was like a golden light of relief went rolling through my house. I was sitting on the stairs and my son, who must have been four at the time, was telling me, quite indignantly, that he did not want to wear a queens hat. What he meant was that he did not want to wear a crown (part of a dressing up thing maybe, I don't even know now).
But the phrase 'Queens Hat' made me chuckle, and then it made me giggle, and then it was like some uncontrollable tide of mirth swept over me and I was helpless. My son was outraged that I was laughing at him and started to protest, but I was gone, just gone. I could not stop.... 'queens hat!' I gasped weakly and was gone again.
And the relief of it all seeped in to everything. I noticed that, unlike before, when I could not give my son all the play doh colours to play with at the same time, because they would just get mixed up together and become that strange shade of, what? Brown? in no time, I no longer cared. So what if all the colours got mixed? Really? So very fucking what?
I said it jokingly to myself; Citalopram was the other adult in the house. The one that made me laugh and told me not to be so uptight.

I've watched films where the woman will leave an abusive relationship and everything will be great. Amazing. Just stay single lady and everything will be ok, I'll think. But she doesn't, she walks right back in to something just as bad if not worse. Why would you do that? I mean really... hand goes to forehead again and I'll watch the rest though my fingers.
I met Lee on Tinder. In one of our early conversations he was telling me about a date he'd been on with a woman who seemed nice but after a while had said something along the lines of 'I have to take my anti psychotic medicine now'... He'd meant it as a joke of course, to laugh at her and point fun. But I said, lighthearted in a way... 'equal opportunities dating?'
I left it there for months. and didn't reply to him when he asked if I'd like to meet. Because I actually wondered what sort of person laughs at someone who needs help like that? How was she any less human than him... or even me?
But I didn't delete him for it. Instead, when he posted a photo on tinder of him looking sexy in a hat I accidentally 'liked' it or whatever it is you could do back then. It re-ignited a conversation and when he asked me out again I said yes.

One night, fairly early on, I was lying next to him in my bed and felt the urge to be honest about taking anti depressants. Back then I must have thought it was a big deal, as if you could judge someones character on their ability to chemically produce enough serotonin to keep them from wanting to harm themselves. Or not.
In any case, I was feeling earnest and told him. He listened to my reasoning and nodded quietly, eventually saying that he too had been offered anti depressants when he'd left an abusive relationship but decided it wasn't for him. He asked me if his comment about the girl he'd been on a date with had made me think he was really down on people with mental health issues. I had to admit that I did. But we laughed about the misunderstanding after that and I felt reassured that he got it. I mentioned that it was like having that extra adult in the house, one that stopped me from going from 0 to 100 in the space of seconds. Who doesn't need that when you are a parent?

It started very subtly of course. But I remember clearly, my birthday late February. I was joking about something he'd been complaining about. 'There's pills for that' I said, grinning provocatively.
He came close and kissed me as I laughed... 'You don't need anti depressants' he said, suddenly earnest but as easy as anything.
I laughed again 'How do you know?' I said, and shrugged it off.
But it made me uneasy that he would even say it.
Drip by drip he wore away at the edges of my self doubt, from that first passing comment to stonewalling me when I talked about having to go to the Dr to renew my prescription, to outright saying 'what kind of parent are you? Who do you think you are, wanting another child, when you have told me you can't even cope with one without needing prescription medicine?!'

We were sitting in the departures lounge on our way back from a weekend Amsterdam when his face twisted into an ugly mask. He was telling me I didn't need anti depressants again, but this time there was a sharpness running razor-like in the way he spoke. The edges of his words twisting with condescension and what? Disgust I think.

The chasm grew between the light in my head and I. Those little white pills, maybe I should try and come off them, give them a break, see how I'd be without them. I started telling my friends, I'm going to come off my anti depressants, it's been over a year now...
April I stopped taking them for a week, just to see how I went. Just like that. And no, I wasn't ok. It was the weekend we went to west wales together, to stay at his parents house while they were off somewhere.
I don't know if suddenly the truth of who he really was hit me full force once the light had gone out in my head, but all I remember of that weekend is feeling like there was nothing left but emptiness in the world from all sides. Just an empty landscape and no one else but us.
We went walking up a hill in bright sunlight. As I walked that Easter Sunday I thought about my son and about how badly I wanted to be with him, eating Easter eggs and a Sunday roast, with friends there, making noise and laughter, not there in the weak spring light that was too direct and bright but also too cold.
Maybe I saw the truth of what was happening around me, as he pulled me away from everyone I loved, maybe I felt the echoes of what he really was at heart, but whatever I felt I could not listen. I would not listen. It was far too frightening and it made me sad.
I started to take them again after that weekend but the hollow feeling that had opened up that day persisted. The crack that opened up between what I thought he was and how he actually treated me became tangible.
Perhaps you might say that actually what I needed was to come off those pills that put me in my bubble of 'I do not give a fuckness' and really LOOK at the reality around me. But it had already begun. This flawless man was flawed.

I stayed on my antidepressants till October of that year and then stopped taking them again. This time for good. I was unequivocally bat-shit crazy for at least three months after. All the way till after Christmas. I obsessively checked I'd locked doors, I was up four, maybe five times a night checking that Charlie, by now six years old, was still alive, and I could not stop the thought that I might have HIV.
Its almost laughable actually. Except that it wasn't for me at all. By some miracle, because Lee certainly hadn't done it, I had caught Herpes in February. Full blown, primary outbreak with all the cherry-like symptoms on the top.
I say it wasn't Lee because to suggest that it had been him would have been impossible, defamatory even, but what I experienced then was unlike anything I'd ever encountered. Six weeks of exhaustion, blistering, muscle aches, fever, swollen glands, shooting nerve pain, crawling skin on my legs and needing just to sleep and sleep.
When I was still not right in late April I said to him one night on my sofa, very quietly after he'd made a joke about me having 'monkey bum aids',

'I think you might have given me Herpes, I think I might have caught it from you'.

It was like time stopped for a second. The hell that broke loose after that made me wish I had held my tongue. 'I thought we would never blame each other, I thought we said we would never hold it against one another or let it come between us...I can't BELIEVE you are accusing me of this...' It went on.

He went outside seething, to smoke a cigarette, by which time I had already apologised three or four times, "my sister called me and I'm going to go and catch up with her in town" he said breezily as he came in.
I knew he wasn't and said as much, apologising again. By now the story was I had aggressively accused him of infecting me... I was at a loss. No. No I didn't say it like that and I was crying, trying to tell him how I felt, how awful and ill I felt and that I was just trying to figure out why and how this had happened.
The weekend came and we'd reached an uneasy truce. But I was with girlfriends Friday to Sunday and when I called him Sunday afternoon the whole thing started again. Him telling me how awful I was for accusing him, for pointing the blame at him who had done nothing, nothing wrong.

I scrabbled around for a reason I now had Herpes and couldn't find anything. But that evening at mine... We'd had sex. Unprotected sex yes. He'd recently shown me a text with the all clear from the sexual health clinic. I knew I was all good. And so it happened. Lots of things happened.

Two days later, around mid morning, I suddenly felt very wrong. Everything was painful and going to the toilet was agonising. I thought maybe I'd cut myself, I texted him: I was in pain, I felt rough. He texted back a 'LOL' and asked me if I wanted a donut cushion to sit on.

I didn't answer his calls for the rest of the day. By the time he text me, livid at 4pm, he was saying that I was ignoring his calls on purpose, that I was cruel and manipulative and that he was having second thoughts about wanting to see me at all.

Panicked and devastated I called and apologised, but at the back of my head I thought he was right, I was ignoring his calls because of his insensitive text. What kind of an adult was I?

Later on, when he'd acknowledged his 'LOL' may have been insensitive he was trying to shrug off my symptoms. He told me that after that night he'd found a tiny cut down below, but it had gone away the next day... reading through all the stuff online in the weeks that followed my diagnosis I went cold remembering that sentence. Because there, in black and white, and almost to the letter, was a description of how the virus might appear, just like a tiny cut, or break in the skin. He could have been quoting it, and then I knew.

But there was no question once the storm abated of me ever bringing it up again. Never could I tell him I was having an outbreak. The fact that we continued to have unprotected sex did not bother him. Did not deter him. But it bothered me that he didn't want to protect himself.

Locked in my own shame about having this virus I began to think; did I get it years ago? What else did I get that I didn't know about? Could I have HIV? And the obsession cycle began to spin and spin out of hand. What if I had HIV and I'd given it to Lee? Guilt on crazy guilt on anxiety wracked me. What had I done?
From that place of light I had found; like stumbling into Narnia, not through a wardrobe, but from an equally unlikely blister pack of little white pills, to this utter darkness and despair.
But it was ok, because he was proud of me for coming off them.
I locked myself down harder and said nothing, the darkness echoed back my silence and the dust lay still.

The crack

We had been together just four weeks when he told me he loved me. And I'd said it back right away. The drug like feeling of falling and surrender. Of being seen and appreciated and held. He had started out by putting me in taxis, hugging me hard and pressing money into my hand for the fare. So courteous, so respectful. Not even leaning in for a kiss just leaving me breathless with his charm.

I think we went on two dates like that. Our first date of far too much wine, of personal connections, laughter and recognition.
Our second date was at a gig I'd done locally. I surprised myself by inviting him along. I think very early on it didn't matter much, what he thought of me... I was doing a gig,  I mentally shrugged and invited him, no big deal...
I was wearing my big honey monster boots and turned up early to soundcheck and chat to the other musicians at the bar. I remember the freedom of it, turning up to a place under my own steam, the autonomy of making friends easily, chatting happily and sipping my brandy (for my vocal cords you know). I looked up and there he was, gazing at me from the bar warmly and I felt a surge of happiness at seeing him. He'd come over and sat so close, making me laugh, appreciating the music, buying me drinks.
Afterwards, when he'd told me how he was amazed by my set and that I clearly didn't know how good I was, he walked me up the road to the taxi rank and again, gave me a big hug, a kiss on the cheek and pressed a tenner into my hand. I protested, he insisted, and I went home filled to the brim with a warm glow. No one has ever done that, before or since. But if they did it now I would run and run and run...

Our first kiss came late late in December after coffee when he'd dropped a bombshell that should have set alarm bells ringing for miles. But it's what they do, I've come to understand, to tell you something so groundshakingly awful that they are so remorseful of and have turned their lives around from.
It added a depth to his character that on reflection was clearly lacking.
We met again round the corner at the Portuguese bakery for coffee and natas. I now remember him making a big production of how amazing this little hidden gem was and taking cake back for his co workers. How thoughtful, I thought at the time. How very calculated.

He asked me about my ex, my son's Dad, why I left, what had happened at the end and I told him about the difficulty of living with his alcoholism. I said that I only suspected it, that I didn't actually know for sure but at the end, when I had no money for shoes for our son, his dad was buying crates of beer and wine on a credit card.
His face took on a grave, concerned look, that I took for compassion at how difficult it must have been to live with someone like that.
But it wasn't that at all... and he began to tell me a story...

Lee had been living in Devon before he had to move away, very quickly, about ten years previously. He had, it turned out, been importing cocaine and turning it into crack cocaine and selling it on the Grenville road. His nickname at the time had been Grenville Slim and he had made an absolute ton of money... he had so many friends always hanging out, making music in the basement of his enormous house where his partner, the mother of his small daughter, turned a blind eye.
He was able, he told me, to take his daughter on lavish holidays, helicopter rides, host parties where those west country based bands of the day hung out.

He wasn't an addict though, was he? I asked. Of course, yes. He had even smoked a pipe in the toilets of the national express bus to euro Disney while his wife and daughter were upstairs. But he functioned. Very very well it seemed.

And then it all came crashing down, the police began to circle and suspect, they pinpointed the source of supply and it seems gave him an ultimatum: a massive fine, the names of contacts and get out of Devon for good or go to jail.
They left everything and moved to West Wales within the week.

Obviously things were left out of his story. The lives he ruined by selling people crack. His ruthlessness in keeping that patch to himself, how he enjoyed the respect and social standing of what he did and who he was. That he never went to an NA meeting. Instead he told me that he just went cold turkey, became a labourer and then took his probation officer and social work training. "two degrees in two years". Impressive.

And what did I glean from his character in all this? That he was brutal, addictive, ruthless and adept at lying? That he could manipulate people to bend to his way of thinking just by clicking his fingers?
He somehow managed to pass the DBS checks, in spite of his history and gain a job working with some of the most twisted people this world had to offer. Wife murderers, paedophiles, abusers, drug sellers... like him. And his job was to control those people. Did I see it?

No. I didn't see any of it. I saw someone who was honest enough to tell me everything he had done and lay it out, making himself vulnerable and open to rejection.
Nothing in my arsenal told me to get up and walk out of that bakery as his story unfolded. I was hooked in and amazed, but that was his past. It was done and here he was using his powers for good. It was a very well crafted story.
He told me how he used to put on raves in Devon and Cornwall and acoustic nights everywhere... mentioning that I was one of the best he'd heard, like he was some kind of authority...
To get his job as probation officer he had to do a presentation. He gave a ten minute talk on how to put on an illegal rave. The problems you would encounter, the issues with drug use, police presence, sound, lighting... everything... he got the job. And his hilarious retelling of it got me hooked into this creative problem solver who it seemed could do just about anything.

He gave me a lift home in his tiny red car... I liked that the didn't give a shit about what he drove around in. Too many times in the past my sons Dad had spent everything we had on a car, or a car part, a radio, an hands free bullshit something, for him. Never for us.
And though he apologised for the mess I was happy to sit with tools at my feet as he drove me home and parked outside my house.
I didn't actually want to kiss him there. I'd wanted to save it for a slightly more salubrious surrounding. But as I leaned in to say goodbye and our lips were locking. He whimpered as we kissed. As if the emotion or feeling of it were too much for him. But he sounded like a child and it was unsettling.
I have to say it was a bit of a disappointment, that kiss.

breathless

My own part in all of this makes me ashamed. Ashamed. Ashamed. But here it is... it had been so sweet at first. We had had some of the best times drinking prosecco on my sofa, laughing and laughing and just talking to each other. He was generous to a fault, funny and attentive and respectful.

But I didn't put my son first. I put him in a situation where he felt insecure and unwanted. Because actually he wasn't wanted. Here was a man who saw him as competition, as an inconvenience and annoyance. And for my own part? I was a struggling single mother who needed input and took it from the wrong source. I didn't believe in myself, I could not back myself, and so when the wraith-like spectre that was Lee came calling with his charm and seeming competence, I was only too quick to let him in.

Late in April when my son was recovering from chickenpox; better enough to go out but not enough to go to school, the three of us were in Costa coffee. I'd bought us all a drink and we were enjoying the early morning buzz of the town coming to life. Except that He wasn't enjoying anything at all. Suddenly he started asking me when we were going to have a weekend together, when were we going to have time to ourselves. I'd been talking about a festival I think, and how I'd be there with my friends in May over a weekend.
I see now that he was angry that the one child free weekend I had I was 'choosing' to spend it with my girlfriends. He gave this condescending, laugh as if I was ridiculous to think that it was acceptable to treat him that way.
But of course my son heard it all and took it in deeply. And it was my fault. I didn't guard him. I didn't protect him. I was too busy trying to make Lee OK. I abandoned my son for this man in that moment by not standing up and calling out his abusive bullshit.
The strange thing was we'd just come back from spending Easter weekend in west wales together, a weekend I had sacrificed being with friends because I just knew he wouldn't cope if I'd done that instead.
And on that weekend I'd cried and cried because I'd wanted to be with my son, with my friends, anywhere but that arid, awful place with him where there was only pressure to be different, to not cry, to not take the antidepressants I actually needed.

The only saving grace I have is that I was in survival mode. This man was trying to rip everything that supported me away. Everything. My friends, my son 'the inconvenience',  my faith (I was doing it wrong, 'thats not right...that's not how they do it, I've spoken to my  friends and none of them agree with what you do'), my job 'well that's not really work is it?!' or 'why don't you try and get a job here...' I was being eroded and I couldn't see it. All I could do was roll with the punches.

So much of what I went along with was non verbal. I just knew his limits, his sensitivities, what he could handle, what he wouldn't. I was the perfect codependent by then because he didn't even need to tell me anymore. I was already deeply afraid of him. It wasn't love, it was fear. And he didn't love me either. he hated me. And if that sounds dramatic, it really wasn't. He hated everything I was and did. Starting with the fact that I took citalopram.

It's not linear, this remembering. It stops and starts and breaks the line again and again. From a beginning made in frosty brilliance to a beach in Cornwall, just six months later. Late July, 2015.

I'd had a cold all summer, what started out as a cough had moved to my chest and stayed there, causing me to lose my voice completely at one point. 
From a devastating diagnosis of herpes in February my health had taken a beating. I was run down to the point of almost breaking but I could not voice it. Not once, that would never have done to show such weakness. And so I was croaky that day, but on the mend it seemed. I'd booked and paid for a campsite for three nights not far from my where family were staying so that I could spend time with my sisters, their children and our parents. 
On that day everyone was on the beach together, the sun was shining and the surf was up. He had been marvelling at me in my bikini, telling me I was close to perfection and things seemed to be easing out of something unspoken and rocky that I had put down to him finding being in a parental role difficult after so long.

The relationship with my son's father had degenerated again. He had become unreliable and evasive when pressed for details of his living arrangements, or requests for maintenance. To the point where he stopped contacting me for the six weeks prior to that day. He had told me he couldn't afford to come and see his son and I'd just left it there. It was nothing new: He often did this over the summer as he preferred to be drunk in a field to actual parenting. 
Needless to say this had put a strain on my relationship with Lee who really had little interest in being part of a family unit.
But out of the blue, that day on the beach when everyone was having a good time and the sun was shining, my phone beeped. A message from my son's dad. My anxiety was sky high, to the point where I could not read the message in case it was something aggressive so I passed the phone to Lee and asked him to read it for me.
Could my son go to his dad next weekend was all it read. Immediately Lee said great, we'll go away to west wales... 'of course', I said, 'why not?'

But then I remembered, the following weekend I'd already made arrangements to spend time with friends. Thinking that my son would be with me that weekend I'd organised a trip away and everything was in place. We were in the queue buying Lee something to eat when I remembered and I said it, almost off hand, 'Oh I just remembered I can't that weekend, I'm away with friends...'

It was like dropping an atom bomb. He was so silently angry. He called me selfish, told me that my timing was bullshit. Told me I put my friends before him and that we never spent any time together. I was shocked, made a joke of it... here we are on this beach together, spending time together... aren't we?
But it wasn't enough... he went on, in front of my son again, about how he never got to spend time with just me...
I dared to ask him to apologise for swearing and for saying all that stuff in my son's ear shot... a very quiet disagreement on a noisy crowded beach. But the way he retold it later I had demanded an apology in front of my entire family and humiliated him.
They were all oblivious of course.

In the car on the way back to the camp site that afternoon I started having difficulty breathing, my throat completely closing up. I was crying, telling him that i didn't plan this to upset him but that i wasn't going to change my plans, it was something I had already made arrangements for. It was non negotiable but it went on and on. My voice disappearing till I could no longer speak to justify myself.
Only to say, I think I need to go to hospital now.

We were due to go over to my sisters that evening, but as soon as we got there I had to ask my mum to call 111. I was so short of breath, my throat so tight I was worried I would stop breathing entirely. 
Sitting on the stairs of my sisters house with my mum on the phone I started shaking and shaking. I know it was just the relief of letting go, adrenaline flooding my body because I had driven myself to the point where I could only hand over responsibility.
He drove us both to AnE and I remember laying my head down on the reception desk and trying to breath and knowing that this was just stress. deep and extreme stress. Not asthma, not a chest infection, just my body refusing to cope any longer.

They put me on a ventilator, oxygen and steroids and gave me horse pills to take for a week. It was slow going that night in AnE, being a weekend there were so many coming in needing help. At 10pm Lee took my mum back to my sisters house and I waited to see the consultant. They floated the idea of keeping me in, and though I knew I didn't need it, all I wanted to do was let them lead me away to a quiet bed somewhere away from the fresh hell of Lee and his twisted, demented logic.

But they discharged me once I was breathing easier and my peak flow had gone up again. There was no problem with my oxygen levels, there was no problem with anything other than the massive stress this man kept applying.

In the car, as he drove me to my sisters, he pointed out that he had just paid for parking again. He told me that my mum had talked affectionately about my son's dad almost non stop. He also refused to stay at me sisters that night but went back to the camp site alone.
I slept in the warm dry room with my son in a ready bed at my side. In the middle of the night he woke up and exclaimed 'Mum! You're here' and cuddled up beside me. He and I, an island, as a Cornish storm blew outside.

It didn't end there with Lee, he didn't let it go. My trip to AnE bore no relevance to him, he did not let up or soften in the slightest. The next night he gave me an ultimatum of sorts, saying that he couldn't be with someone who didn't prioritise him. 
I said that he had to make a choice then and went off to the shower to weep silently. My voice a ragged whisper still. 
He backed down of course, but not off, he loved me, he would compromise, he would be the martyr and me the selfish neglectful girlfriend.

And on the way home I guiltily offered to pay for the petrol and he made sure to fill up his tank to the brim. All £40 of it.

the still point

I wanted to set it down. Not to glory in the intricacies of its horror, but to understand it better and finally see it on the outside of myself. Perhaps it will help you understand your own crash and burn.

He was not my first abusive relationship. But he was my last, of that I am certain. And in that I suppose I am grateful in a way, that I no longer have to do this.

But there are only fragments that I remember. And as I remember I write. Here is my story...

I remember now that he was grey. His colour, or the colour that surrounded him was like a newspaper print on a crumpled broadsheet; dusty and irrelevant and out of context. I wonder now that I didn’t listen to myself – trapped from this viewpoint of hindsight, I now see. But of course I can see it all from here. And I can see that I saw him, so clearly, and that it only became a footnote in my mind. I saw that he didn’t know who he was. I saw that he was fragile and afraid. And I saw his vulnerability and sweetness and I choose that instead of anything else.

I was on the top of my curve then. At least I thought I was. I was running a creative business, bringing up a beautiful boy in the wake of a financially and emotionally abusive relationship and doing a great job thanks to counselling and Cetalopram. 

No one explained to me that taking anti depressants would be like switching a light back on. I didn't even know I was in the dark, but gradually I began to laugh again, to make plans and sleep soundly. It was groundbreakingly normal and I didn't know just how beautiful that could be.

I met him on the first day of the Christmas market, having been setting up my stall since 6 am in the mild winter weather. I had worked so hard, as was so proud of what I'd done, all my creativity had found it's outlet finally and I was centred in this. Grounded and happy and single. 

My relationship with my son's dad was courteous and helpful albeit flawed. He'd actually helped me set up that day and wished me all the luck. It was as if life had plateaued out to a still point surrounded by the twinkle of frosty fairy lights and promise. Calm before the storm I think now.

I can't really say what happened on that first date without feeling wholeheartedly ashamed that I didn't get up and leave after the first drink, or the second... But I was oblivious of course. Here was a charming, intelligent man buying me drinks, flattering the hell out of me, making me laugh and finding connections to things I loved I never thought possible.

But I came away with one sentence ringing and ringing around my head that I did not heed;

'you don't know who you are'.

At the time I thought he had lost his way. So far from the colourful crowded life of bus dwelling, dreadlock wearing music and creativity to the sober life of living in a flat, working in the public sector, responsible job. I admired him for it of course, we all eventually have to grow up and contribute, but I could not shake that strangest of feelings..  I saw that he was a grey washed out shadow of himself and those words that went round and round, as if it were me saying it to him' you don't know who you are, you don't know who you are...'

Looking back on it now I wonder though, were they really meant for me?