Becoming Single: Week One
Day one was very good. I travelled all over the world in my mind, and just behind my eyes a film festival was in town, and I kept catching glimpses of black and white movies and European language films as the day went on. And I looked through the world, just those few days ago, through some combination of a telescope and a microscope, a mental device that allowed me to see the minutest detail of mine and everyone else's lives with perfect clarity, as well as the huge big whole cosmic life picture of the universe and everything at the same time. Possibly I was having some kind of mental breakdown or episode, but who cares? At least it gave me something to write about just now. So the first day was a good day, a day of floating on air, of feeling tremendous relief, of smiling and feeling suddenly awakened. The decision to take charge of one's own life and to choose to split the conjoined destinies that you and another person shared is - there's no other word for it - a whopper.
On that first day my thoughts were wholly positive, entirely focused on me, my sons and our exciting new future.
On the second and third days it was still very much the same. I was walking with this group of circus performers, Confidence, Excitement and Hysteria. They kept making me variously laugh and grin inanely, and sometimes filled me with an urge to learn to trapeze (to be fair, I already had that urge anyway).
Now it is day four, and the coronary tattoo that was picking up speed and threatening to burst out of my chest has calmed down a bit, allowing me to breathe normally again. That's nice. But I think this might officially be the day that doubts start poking around in the brain, trying to find a dark corner to settle in. What am I doing? Why upset the status quo*? Why destroy someone else's life? Will that make me happy? Will I be able to manage financially? Is this all too selfish? No doubts about whether my children will be alright though - I already know they'll be fine.
But there's this other feeling now too, which just arrived this morning and is something akin to being adrift in open water, I think. I have never been adrift in open water, but I bet I'll dream about it tonight. There might be sharks. I do feel as though I have pitched myself from a nice big safe cruise liner into the middle of the Atlantic, and have only a brittle old branch to cling to to save me from drowning. I'm a rubbish swimmer, because I do not float at all. But it looks as though I'm going to have to learn. That's fine though - I've always thought I'd have to learn sooner or later. It's ridiculous to go through life wearing armbands - they don't match with anything.
That cruise ship that I just leapt from? I just saw it's name: Titanic, of course!
No doubt I'll be somewhere else tomorrow; possibly a desert with no water, or a rainforest full of huge-pincered insects. At least those places will be warm.
*'Down, down, deeper and down...' though, eh?
