I would add… and hope that he or she is a little bit mad too…

It’s been so pleasant – even uplifting – to be able to walk along the harbour in Whitehaven at lunchtimes, instead of having to dash from one shop to another to keep out of the rain.  Today I walked right down to the further side of the harbour so I could look out at the open sea.  Gazing across the Irish Sea I felt a sense of calmness and freedom – even joy – which I hadn’t felt for weeks.

I don’t understand how someone (New Man) can go from telling me just weeks ago that he adored me to now being almost unfriendly.  I don’t think you can just switch off your feelings like that, but he’s given me no explanation (despite having said he wanted to talk to me, he has done nothing to instigate that recently and when I was at my most troubled we both at times chickened out of doing so) so I’m left feeling hurt and puzzled.  All I can do is ‘protect’ myself: concentrate on things that make me happy, such as singing, writing, running and the children; or things which keep my all-too active brain occupied, including learning Italian in the car and planning trips abroad.

What I do know is that he adored me, and made me feel like a Queen, with him as my Courtier, or my Knight in Shining Armour.  I could kick myself for not having been more secure and trusting of his feelings for me, especially as he always made an effort to reassure me.  Having said that, signs that he was confused, even somewhat overcome, by the strength of his feelings for me were there from early on.  But I want to set out the positives, the lovely things to remember, as once the grief is over they will be important to look back on.  It was a golden, sparkling time and we both glowed with happiness.

He always and frequently said how beautiful and how sexy I am but emphasised that I was not just an escape and not just for sex: and I never felt as if I was.  To his eyes, it seemed, I was the most wonderful woman in the world.  He always had eyes only for me: so much so that other people could be talking to him and he wouldn’t even notice.  He said he knew when I was around even if he hadn’t seen me come in – when he came over to Whitehaven to see me (all that way for about 5 minutes!) I sent him a text telling him he’d spot me because I was wearing pink trousers.  He said he’d have known where I was anyway, without being told the colour of my clothes.  When he gave me my birthday flowers, in front of my friends, he later said it was if there was nobody else in the room.

He said he thought about me constantly: that everything reminded him of me (even a turnip… I’m not quite sure why!).  He loved the taste, smell and feel of me.  I felt that he lifted me high and safe when I was with him, and I loved his huge, protective hugs (that’s one of the things I miss the most).  For both of us when we made love (and he always called it making love, not having sex) or slept cuddled up close together, it was as if our very souls were meeting.  I have never before been able to sleep so physically closely to someone and yet sleep so soundly and feel so safe.

He even mentioned marriage – not as a proposal, but saying that marriage should be to someone you can’t bear to be without.  And listening to the U2 songs he liked best and played to me and danced with me to, also makes me realise the strength – the passion – of his feelings for me: he said if he was Bono up on stage it would be me he would pick out of the audience.  When I gave him a key for my house he said that the problem was that if he stayed there with me, he would never want to leave (one time when he did he missed a delivery the next morning!).  And my singing gives him goosebumps – such a lovely compliment.  He has been fully supportive of my singing since before he even heard me.

One of my very favourite memories was when he sent me a text saying that my eyes were greeny-slate ‘and right there, just at the front of your head’ (or something very similar).  He also stated that he was jealous of my Lycra the time I went for a bike ride and met him at the pub!  And he even liked my feet, he said purely because they were mine and at the end of my legs.  Even I don’t like my own feet, and David used to call them hobbit feet!

But… he has young children, whom he doesn’t want to let down and whom he wants to see plenty of, as do I of mine – understandably.  I can’t help thinking that if he was happier and less stressed that they would also be happier, calmer and more settled – one of his team said he was a different man when I was around : more relaxed and happier.  At one point when he was feeling particularly gloomy he said I was the only good thing in his life – I know that was an exaggeration but it shows how much I mattered to him.

In terms of me, my self-esteem and how I move forward, the positive things to take from this are that it is wonderful to have been so loved and adored: and to have found myself as capable of loving just as deeply and openly in return.  It’s heart-breakingly painful at the moment, but he always referred to the saying ‘if you love someone, let them go – if they’re yours they’ll be back’.  It’s all I can do – to let go.  And in fact at the moment it just hurts too much even to see him: not to be able to touch him; listen to music with him; be held by him; to feel that he possibly doesn’t even want to be friends (or perhaps he finds it as hard as I do?  I hope so, but I don’t know).

I can’t deny hoping and even believing that he is mine and that one day he’ll be back, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it other than take that step away and look after myself.  It’s funny how often people who matter invariably do pop up again in life – sometimes in a completely different role.  In particular I don’t want to be further hurt when he doesn’t even seem friendly towards me.  I loved him more than I have ever loved anybody – body, mind and soul – from the very depths of my being, feeling fully the essence of me, of my femininity.  I don’t think you get a love like that – especially that’s mutual – very often in a lifetime, and some people never do.  But sometimes day to day life gets in the way.  At the moment I’m not quite ready to give up the hope that the gap won’t be for ever.

Just how nuts about me was this man… and I didn’t fully appreciate it.  What hurts is not knowing whether he still is, and feeling when he talks to me that he isn’t even being friendly.  But then maybe that’s more a sign of his feelings and inability to deal with the situation than a reflection on me.  And ultimately, if he can’t be bothered to be pleasant to me – rather than continuing to hurt me – then all I can do is walk away.  The ball’s in his court; if he chooses to loose something he loved and wanted so much, and said that he didn’t want to loose, then there’s nothing I can do about it.