So.

I haven’t been here for a while. And to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s right for me to be here now. But if this is my space and my place to be honest, then there’s some stuff that needs to be put down.

This last week has been a strange one. It started off like any other, and I was relatively happy with how things were going. All the things that I’ve been taking time off to look at had seemed to be bearing fruit. All the big things that needed little steps to start them off had been put in motion so I was feeling fairly content with life. J’s happier and more forthcoming, the ex and I are on steadier ground and being more respectful of one another, Evie’s happy and light-filled as always. Work’s getting more complicated because we’re losing another engineer and my boss doesn’t really seem to understand the impact this is going to have on an already depleted service team but, hey, you know what? You don’t always get everything perfect in one go. And the rest of  my lads are in excellent form so it’s all good overall.

But then an inadvertant collision with TRM’s wife sort of knocked all the steam out of me. It wasn’t her over-reaction,or my disgust, or the words I had to swallow for the sake of their children (and TRM, come to think of it.) It wasn’t her anger or her threats or her childishness. It was the overwhelming feeling that this just isn’t going to change any time soon. And the realisation, slow to dawn after a trip to the UK with TRM last month, that I have laid emotional claim to something and someone who isn’t available to me fully yet.

The ins and outs are not solely my story to tell so I won’t. What I will say is that I am sitting here feeling flummoxed by indecision. TRM and I are, pretty much, of different generations. He feels that certain things are acceptable and right and How Things Should Be Done, and in some notable cases, I think that’s bullshit. I feel, for example, that people should take responsibility for their decisions and should have sufficient self-respect to take care of themselves. I also feel that one probably shouldn’t embark upon a relationship unless one is prepared to make the other person their main priority (excluding small people, obviously) because, otherwise, really, what’s the point? I didn’t stop to think, in any great depth anyway, about what would happen when the exes still live together and when one evidently feels a huge burden of responsibility towards the other, even if that appears to be completely one-sided.

I always felt that, when two people separate, then that’s probably exactly what should happen. It shouldn’t mean that you wouldn’t lend the other person a hand if it were needed, but simply that two lives had ceased to co-exist and had moved on to other directions independently Now, in this case, I understand logically that, in fact, not enough time has gone past for that to happen – and certainly not with the characters involved. Sensibly, I completely get that TRM is still in shock and needs to grieve for his lost marriage and wife. I can empathise with the idea that it will take time to get over a fifteen year old partnership.  And I can see that when you’re still sharing the house with someone who isn’t quite your ex, it complicates matters further. But on another, more emotional level, I’m wondering where, exactly, does that leave me?

Typically, I didn’t consider the possibilities or problems that would be prevalent in this type of relationship; I just fell in love and wanted to share it with him, and the rest of the world. I understood that there would need to be an amount of time spent faffing about until we could move in together and get on with our lives, and that in the interim period, time would be somewhat limited by the normal daily stuff that would take up our days. But I believed that, after a while, a space would be made where I could live with the man I loved, and my children, and his two as and when they could join us, and that we would make a little patch of family that would grow stronger and more entwined over the years; a space that would nurture, rather than stunt, growth in all it’s forms. I believed in a life that would bring out our best sides more often than our worst, and that would allow each of us to blossom in our own ways, secure and accepted with all our various weirdnesses and wonders.

After this week, what I see plainly is what I should have seen before. I don’t doubt that TRM feels a lot for me, or that he wants to be with me. What I doubt, frankly, is his ability to disentangle himself from the harpy that his wife has become. (Yes, it’s unfair to make such comments, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that I have known her for years and know, quite well, what she’s like. I never had any doubts on that score, even when we were friends.) I doubt his ability to say, cleanly and clearly, “You have made your choices in life so now you need to get on with doing whatever is necessary to enable you to live the life you seem to want. Dream big, follow your star, but while I will help to raise our children who are our greatest responsibility, I will not allow you to drain me all of my resources, be they time, money or concern. Your choices have directly affected my life, and they’ve made me change direction, and that is now my responsibility and I intend to get on with it. You are no longer my main priority. We have to stand on our own two feet now.”

Perhaps I’m overly harsh. I don’t know. But I don’t think I’ve spent all this time on my own, growing and learning and strengthening, only to end up playing second fiddle to TRM’s almost-ex-wife.

And so I feel a bit numb. Because I love him, and I want him to be happy. I want him to be contented with life in that deep down quiet way that I have known and been blessed by. But at the moment, I am almost silent around him, scared that all the words which want to come are too negative, too hurtful. My interest is in him, but he cannot yet seem to think of him as an individual unit. My hope is for him as a person in his own right, not as an accessory to her, which is what he has been for so many years. So I am stumped. Because I am afraid to consider that he might allow her to accompany us into our life together, rather than restricting her to being an occasional visitor. And I refuse to live my life, as an individual, curtailed by her endless demands.

And I don’t know quite where that leaves us.