Hoovering

What was it like when it finally ended?

I cried all the time. I'd be doing something, like loading clothes into the machine and suddenly I was sobbing into the laundry pile, remembering that his family hated me now.
I'd wake every night and actually sob, out loud, into the empty darkness.
I stopped eating and lost half a stone - try as I might, I've never found a diet quite like heartbreak.

I cried in the bath. I cried at night on the sofa. I cried in my sisters arms in the middle of Sainsbury's.

I'd cry at work in meetings when I caught sight of a wedding band or engagement ring on a colleagues hand. I'd cry as I cycled to and from work. I cried everywhere and all the time.

This sudden sharp grief took me by surprise. I was devastated to lose, not only him, but the ideals I had tenuously held, of 'family' and 'team'. Even now I can pinpoint my grief right there on that spot in my centre, that had wanted a family, that had wanted to be included.
I had loved his parents and his daughter and felt their loss as an ache of something I would never be included in again. No more riotous trips to the Hockey down the bay, where we chugged beer and hotdogs and his mum bought us all tickets to win 'the shirt off his back', no more would my son be surrounded by Lee's nephews and nieces, screaming in delight as the players broke into a brawl, wildly brandishing his foam finger above his head. All of it was gone, fading into silence.

There is a marketing strategy now, seemingly everywhere, that, like all marketing strategies, sucks the blood out of an idea until there is no more life in it. The idea of 'self care' probably has a few more miles to go until we are either bored with the concept or it looses all meaning; like saying a word over and over until it becomes senseless, hollow somehow.
You can buy 'self care' items on amazon; boxes of scented candles and bath bombs to stem your anxiety or grief. Self care manicure? Self care lipstick! Almost as if looking after your fragile mental state could be as simple as buying a blanket and watching Netflix one weekend. Your house, of course, would be spotless, you would look immaculate as you do your self care routine; cosied up cutely in a onesie or your activewear, not a hair out of place.  Hyggeing the crap out of life in an infinitely instagrammable picture of 'wellbeing'.

The truth about self care is its ugly, and mundane. Its doing practical things for yourself, like getting in the shower, doing the dishes or opening your emails even when they make you feel anxious and lost. Self care is feeling worthless or unworthy and doing the nice or practical stuff anyway.
So you gained a few lb's, but you don't punish yourself by eating like crap all the next day/week. You didn't get the job, pass the exam or win a prize for being best at relationships, doesn't mean you get to slope off to bed without brushing your teeth. Your car needs tax and MoT but the anxiety it brings means that you can't bring yourself to speak to anyone to ask them for help, let alone someone at a garage, but you do it, because you are the adult. You are your own parent.
My own self care, before self care was invented, was pretty much made up of allowing myself to feel.

I sat with the pain and allowed it to roll around me and never once pushed it away.
I'm not sure I've ever been as nice to myself, not in a bath bombs and candles kind of way, although there were a lot of baths involved because thats where I liked crying the most, but in an accepting of the feeling kind of way. I'd never done that before.

'It's ok to feel sad' my sister said 'you don't need to do anything about it'

And I didn't. I didn't push it away or try to numb the pain of it. Even though I was still wracked with the idea I was mentally unfit to be a parent, and that maybe I was the abusive one...

'No, no, NO!' came my sisters reply 'He was just trying to make to feel like shit, you are none of those things'

Gradually the voice of the people who loved me became louder and his voice diminished. I started to actually do those nice, instagrammable things, like buy flowers or cook up a batch of bone broth. I went out for sushi one night, another night I went to a gig on my own, running in to a group of friends I hadn't seen for months.

But every now and then Lee would text me. Or show up at my door with something that belonged to me. One time it was my house key he'd taped to the first card I ever sent him.

My sister and I agreed it was creepy as fuck, but that evening still found me crying again on my sofa, feeling his loss more keenly.

He did it all the time, just showing up at my door looking sad and lost.

'He needs to leave you alone Shiv. It's not fair him doing this all the time.'

And I knew it, but seeing him was all I could think about, every single day. It was as if he knew how long to leave it, how long before I started feeling alright again.

That place, of being deeply sad was one of the best times. It's not because I am a morbid depressive. Not entirely. But because I was the nicest I have ever been to myself, before or since.
I have never been so kind, never comforted myself in quite the same way, never needed to be as broken down as I was then. I just let myself be.

The gaping space he left, the feeling that I was the awful abusive one, the terrible parent who could not cope, the failure at life in general was terrifying. But In kindness I found my solace. I began to cry less at night. I began to sleep through. I began to enjoy the calm quiet of just me and my son again. I thought of my AM/FM radio often and bought a battery for it, listening to distant cricket matches and shipping forecasts, enjoying the 'click' of silence when I turned it off.



But in late May he just so happened to be driving down my street. Walking to pick up my son  saw him as he pulled up his car and got out.
'you look so good' he said
In his embrace I felt solid again. His lips meeting mine were like molten laver.