When E and I were students we were broke. We never had any money. Back in those days there were still student grants. I think E had a full grant which, like today’s student loans, was barely enough to survive on. His parents were unable to provide any money on top of his grant, so […]
Category: Mental Health
A day in the life
Even though I’m constantly aware of what’s coming if E keeps withholding child maintenance, it doesn’t actually dominate my life – there’s no room for it to. Generally, my life is not just ‘carrying on’, most days it’s enjoyable, funny and rewarding – although nothing ever goes quite to plan. Whilst I’d love to live […]
Weasel
When asked to describe what his plays were about, Harold Pinter famously replied: ‘the weasel under the cocktail cabinet’. This perfectly describes the sense of unease, even dread, that pervades the seemingly ‘normal’ world of his plays. Like a Pinter play, without the long pauses, on the surface everything in my world is perfectly normal […]
Damage
One thing that I have been more or less constantly aware of for the last two years is the effect that E and I splitting up has had, and will have, on our children. I grew up in the 70s/80s, a time when children of divorced parents were seen as coming from a ‘broken home’ […]
Turn
It’s funny how a day can suddenly change, can suddenly turn from being a beautiful, positive thing, full of potential, into a nightmare. This happened the day I found out about E’s first affair (we had identical phones, and I picked up his, thinking it was mine, to find hundreds of texts between E and […]
Bigger
I was talking to my Aunt on Tuesday. As I’ve mentioned on here before, we lost my lovely Uncle last year, and she is at the beginning of the long hard path of learning to live a life without him. She was saying that she’d seen an illustration about grief, which showed grief as a […]
Heard
I got a text from Oldest Daughter yesterday. One of her essay questions is ‘Defend the thought that silence can be heard’ (she’s doing Philosophy, it was inevitable), but her next comment made me laugh out loud: she said, “Was thinking I could write about my father”. I’ve often talked about Oldest Daughter’s perception and the […]
Dishes
All of a sudden, in the weeks running up to Christmas, Oldest Son seemed to reach Peak Teen. My mild mannered, quietly sardonic son became slightly moody, his amusingly sarcastic comments became increasingly biting and his usual amused patience with me and his siblings was replaced with an increasingly bemused irritation. It was bound to […]
Humpty Dumpty
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” I’ve spent a lot of the last two years wondering how E would describe his behaviour or behave when confronted with it. I’ve seen (and quoted) emails he […]
Trust
I’m pleased to report that E has now paid the January installment of Child Maintenance that the Child Maintenance Service asked him for. He’s still not paying anything towards his share of the mortgage, or any maintenance at all for the girls (I receive child benefit for the boys, so the CMS can only arrange […]
He-total: Life without Ex 