It is - at 6.00am - a beautiful morning - a clear blue sky gradually brightening - a seagull drifting across...Outside the window the quince tree is budding - and the white clematis flowers climbing through the apple tree seem to glow slightly.
I woke up early because I had an anxiety dream about moving house: whether this reflects an underlying anxiety that we will have to have our house repossessed if we don't pay the mortgage, or perhaps the issue of housing that affects my heroine in TRF, I don't know. Of course, it could be more symbolic - that I am moving on in some way. But in the dream we were moving from a rented property where we had to ensure we took all our stuff away and left the landlady's stuff behind - and we kept finding more and more things to pack when we thought we had finished. We were moving to Devon - a friend had found a place for us. It was a strange dream, it ended with me hearing a child on a bike in a garden braking suddenly and Bernard (our cat) miaowing angrily. I woke up - Bernard was not miaowing or anywhere around, so that was a relief.
The moving on theme is an underlying one in my life. M is being both thoughtless and irritating and sweet and conciliatory. I feel like a bully. He wants desperately for me to reassure him that we will be together forever - and I can't. I wonder whether we will reach a sort of age-related tipping point, after which I will never be able to "move on". And there is something rather hideous about that idea - that you discard people you've outgrown. I am not sure if I've really become such a wise and intelligent person that I cannot be expected to stay... the unkindness involved in going would be too horrific - I expect a lot of people would think the worst of me. Oh dear, sometimes it is very difficult to divorce fantasy from reality. The fact is, I think about this separation occasionally, and when I do, I immediately shiver at the thought of being so unkind. I think one's daydreams about these things are very unhelpful: they show you the "before" and "after" picture of your life - without all the "in between" bits - where you explain to your husband and children why you are doing it, and the logistics involved. Anyway, it isn't really an issue at the moment. I am too much of a serial monogamist to walk out on my own. As someone said to me "if you really wanted to, you would have done something about it now." I suppose it is a "Good Enough" marriage - there is no urgent need to depart. I wish I felt more positively about it and him. I've been praying that I will get back what we used to have - but I need to change back to who I used to be - and that's difficult since I no longer have dependent children.
I woke up early because I had an anxiety dream about moving house: whether this reflects an underlying anxiety that we will have to have our house repossessed if we don't pay the mortgage, or perhaps the issue of housing that affects my heroine in TRF, I don't know. Of course, it could be more symbolic - that I am moving on in some way. But in the dream we were moving from a rented property where we had to ensure we took all our stuff away and left the landlady's stuff behind - and we kept finding more and more things to pack when we thought we had finished. We were moving to Devon - a friend had found a place for us. It was a strange dream, it ended with me hearing a child on a bike in a garden braking suddenly and Bernard (our cat) miaowing angrily. I woke up - Bernard was not miaowing or anywhere around, so that was a relief.
The moving on theme is an underlying one in my life. M is being both thoughtless and irritating and sweet and conciliatory. I feel like a bully. He wants desperately for me to reassure him that we will be together forever - and I can't. I wonder whether we will reach a sort of age-related tipping point, after which I will never be able to "move on". And there is something rather hideous about that idea - that you discard people you've outgrown. I am not sure if I've really become such a wise and intelligent person that I cannot be expected to stay... the unkindness involved in going would be too horrific - I expect a lot of people would think the worst of me. Oh dear, sometimes it is very difficult to divorce fantasy from reality. The fact is, I think about this separation occasionally, and when I do, I immediately shiver at the thought of being so unkind. I think one's daydreams about these things are very unhelpful: they show you the "before" and "after" picture of your life - without all the "in between" bits - where you explain to your husband and children why you are doing it, and the logistics involved. Anyway, it isn't really an issue at the moment. I am too much of a serial monogamist to walk out on my own. As someone said to me "if you really wanted to, you would have done something about it now." I suppose it is a "Good Enough" marriage - there is no urgent need to depart. I wish I felt more positively about it and him. I've been praying that I will get back what we used to have - but I need to change back to who I used to be - and that's difficult since I no longer have dependent children.
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