Life, later.

It is interesting reading old blogs… like reading old diaries and letters, you see yourself how you were, and sometimes that person is a stranger. Many of the emotions, I felt two and three years ago, I see as so selfish and self indulgent now. I want to shake my slightly younger self and say, "Do you realise how amazing your life could have been, how much time you wasted?" I have read a dozen or so posts this morning and have been sobbing, reliving it all over again… the sadness, the struggle. I have swallowed many of those memories. You never really want to live though the sad stuff again but seeing what I went though and where I am now, I'm proud that I made it ok. I could have sunk deeper but I chose to swim.

I'm not saying the last few years has been easy… I have probably had my heart broken in more ways than in my previous years put together but I think with experience and knowledge you deal with things differently. I have already talked about my Mothers terrible illness and the repercussions that it has had on the family. But other members of my family have been ill and some have died. Death, when it happens more regularly, makes you take a really good look at your own life. Have you lived your life to the full? Are you proud of what you've achieved?

I went through years of panic attacks and endless dark days, struggling to come to terms with being childless. When I finally accepted I wouldn't be able to have children of my own, and there was no sperm donor or IVF treatment in the world that could help me, it finally set me free. That was January 2012. But then, of course, came the philosophical questions. If women are put on this earth to procreate, what is her role if she cannot have children? Why am I even here... what's the point? I began thinking of gloriously dangerous jobs I could volunteer for, because it actually didn't really matter if I died. Ok, sorry, that probably came as a shock to read. What I mean is… I just felt that there was nothing stopping me, I had no one in my life that relied on me for anything, so why not do charity work in a war zone. I thought about this for months and months assuming that now my life was worthless, I could devote myself to helping others instead. I rang up the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières, offering my help. I was rejected again and again. Having a BA in Graphic Design is not really the qualification they are looking for… doctors and nurses, yes, a girl with an eye for a good typeface, no.

I finally rejected all the extreme ideas and focussed on what I could do... be a good friend, a supportive and loving daughter, a wonderful sister. I seemed to be able to make people laugh and cry when I wrote, so why not leave that as my legacy instead? So I started a new, more positive blog called “What I Saw. What I Heard.” I began a creative writing class, writing story after story, until finally one of them won a prize. After years of feeling worthless, that one silly little literature prize made me feel that life wasn't shit and that I could do something worthwhile. I started traveling more, visiting friends and family around the world, really embracing the freedom I had, that not having children had given me. Instead of being made to feel selfish (my own doing), I took my childlessness by the horns and ran with it.

2012 was my year of writing and finding my new independent self but 2013 was my year of love, passion and heartbreak. I had woken up in January, happy and confident, realising that my life was pretty wonderful but that I really wanted to fall in love again. Friends and family can fill your life with love and laughter but being in love, having a partner to hold your hand and grow old with, that can not be replaced with writing and traveling. So, I bit the bullet and joined a dating website. I had 9 disastrous dates and then I met Mr Blue (a pseudonym of course).

Mr Blue was the most romantic, handsome, loving, tender man I have ever met. He was a widower, having his lost his wife to cancer 15 months earlier. He had been married to her for 21 years... they met when he was 18. She was his only love. He was still grieving terribly but felt ready to meet someone and try and love another. In fact, in one of the very first letters he wrote to me (yes, he really was old school romantic), he said, “I just want you to take this big broken heart heart of mine and hold it in the palm of your hands”. His letters were beautifully written and made me weep with the tenderness he expressed. I have never ever experienced anything like the love I felt for him. It came quickly and explosively and I was so unprepared for having this man turn my life upside down, that I really did go through all the ridiculous symptoms... not eating or sleeping, crying all the time. But I realised a lot of my tears were for him and his wife and not for our happiness. The more I heard him talk about his late wife, the more I knew he wasn't ready. His grief was palpable and raw and he cried openly about how much he missed her. Every day I spent with him was emotional... his pain and sorrow transferred from tears to incredible passion in bed. It was the one time we were together that he could forget her and so it became all consuming. He did love me, I don't doubt that for a second, but he also knew he wasn't ready to leave her love behind. He began feeling that he was being unfaithful, that he was betraying her by being with me. I honestly thought we could get through it, that our relationship was strong enough. I offered him time... time to grieve on his own. We talked, we cried, we wrote letters to each other and after a week away with a friend, I came back, thinking things would be ok. We sat on Wimbledon Common and he told me he couldn't do it anymore... that his guilt was eating him up, that he was betraying her and that he would rather hurt me now, than a year from now. That he would rather be alone with the warm comfort of his grief than be with someone he couldn't give himself fully to. I was devastated. I cried for weeks. I wrote him letters saying I would wait, and then didn't send them. I wrote him letters saying how much I missed him and, they too, are still sealed in my kitchen drawer. I stupidly deleted all traces of him from my phone, I threw away the letters, the books he had given me. My heart was in so many pieces that I couldn't risk seeing a glimpse of him.

It has been 6 months. I have only just been able to wake up without thinking about him. When friends ask about him, I still cry. I miss him so much but my recent tears are not only for the breakup but for him, his grief. I am so sad for him... I can see past the relationship and my love for him now and recognise the grief and pain he must have felt. And I want to reach out and comfort him and make it better, but I know he will never reply if I wrote. I know his guilt is too much. He knows he broke my heart and will never ever contact me again. The heart hurts more when there is no tangible reason to break up... no one was unfaithful, no one shouted or screamed, no one moved away. It's sad.

I went to Alaska for a month in September, which helped me think about other things. I then had a stupid fling just before Christmas... the cliché rebound. A Canadian, with so little in common it was quite perfect. And so here we are in 2014. No boyfriend and certainly no internet dating... I may have found the love of my life on there but I just can't go through that again, any time soon. I have a very full social life though, great friends, I try and challenge myself all the time by doing different things, and have booked 4 holidays already. And, of course, I'm still writing...