Since the last time I blogged I’ve gone through a life-changing event, in truth, I’m still going through it. I consider myself to be in a transitional period. As time passes from the original catalyst event I’ve benefited from that wonderful facet, hindsight. A natural-born worrier, over-thinker, empath and pragmatist means that I am bound by my ‘wiring’ to reflect and analyse on, well pretty much everything, and so I have, and am, as a result of what has happened.
I had a life, or so I thought. I had a husband, a house and joint plans for a wonderful future. One Saturday in September 2018 everything changed forever; in an instant, it all went away. On the build-up to it, I had realised something was not right and I prayed I was wrong, even though I knew I wasn’t. What happened was that my then-husband, despite denying it, left me for another woman. I knew there was something wrong because this wasn’t the first time he’d been unfaithful to me and the same signs and indicators were there. This time around it was even more hurtful because I’d made so many sacrifices for him and to be with him and here I was, cheated on (again), betrayed, abandoned and he couldn’t even be honest about his affair and in fact, he even tried to deflect away from his actions by picking faults with me. On that morning it felt like he had reached into my chest, ripped out my heart, thrown it to the floor and stamped the last beats out of it. Suddenly I moved from having a life to realising I had merely had an existence; an existence created, controlled and manipulated by him, and I had therefore by default also been controlled and manipulated by him.
From that day on I have scrutinised, analysed, examined and interrogated just about every moment of our 24 years together. This critical review has lead me to recall situations, events, memories and moments (some good and many not so good) and this, in turn, has lead me to a number of revelations and the need to formulate plans and make difficult decisions as I strive to keep my head above water and putting one foot in front of the other even on the days when things have been/are so difficult, sad, scary or hopeless that I have considered actions that would bring it all to an end.
Over a year on, and many decisions and plans made and underway, I was recently hit by another revelation… I am not, and have never been, anybody’s most important person. It’s true to say that I did believe that I was once my now ex-husband’s most important person, but having had a chance to stand back and think carefully, with brutal honesty, I can say firmly and without a doubt that I never was and, had we stayed together, never would have been. There would always have been someone else or something else more important to him. Reaching that revelation brought many emotions and feelings to the surface. Yes, it hurt to realise that I had spent almost half of my life with a person who for me was number one, but for whom I didn’t even make the top ten in terms of importance, but it has actually helped me arrive at a point where I have been able to focus on some of the chewier situations that I need to make some of the hardest decisions about. I am at the moment of writing this able to report that I am drawing strength from something so devastatingly heartbreaking and I am most definitely NOT letting it define or destroy me. Sure, I’d love to be someone’s most important person, but the way I’m looking at it is, I can’t miss what I have never had or indeed been. So I’ll just keep on keeping on, learning to be single, learning to be me again and making plans that might mean that one day I can live again rather than just exist.
GiGi Yorkshire Lass 