Happy Fucking New Year

01/01/24

My husband of 20 years told me, on 29th December 2023, that he no longer wanted to be with me and was leaving.

This was presented as a fait accompli – a place to live had been found and mail had already been redirected. He told me he’d be moving out on 1st January. No discussion, no conversation – done deal.

I told him I didn’t want to be there when it happened; I couldn’t bear to watch the process.

So while I was at work today he packed up his shit and fucked off.

The speed and thoroughness of the removal make it pretty clear he’s been planning this for some time.

All the time I was planning Christmas and being excited about the gifts I was buying him, all the time I was talking about the plans I thought we had for the coming year…. It was all a giant lie. He was planning to leave me.

Yesterday evening we talked like we should have done years ago.

We cried.

We had sex, which he initiated and I almost refused. I’m glad I didn’t say no – if I’m never going to hold him again, I have that one last memory.

He held me, clamped around me, all through the night, for the first time in so, so long. Why now? Why, when he tells me he doesn’t want me, does he act as though he does?

He insisted on driving me to work this morning. Part of me thinks he was having a ‘one last time’ moment, but the much more cynical side of me thinks it was just to be absolutely sure I was at work and out of the way before he and his accomplices stripped his possessions from our home.

I think I might be in actual shock.

I was mostly able to stuff the whole thing aside while at work. Admittedly I was skulking around doing back of house stuff, avoiding colleagues and customers, but after the initial sob as I walked away from his car this morning, I managed not to cry all day.

At 10.30am (just over 3 hours since he’d dropped me at work, and I assume at the point he’d finished packing up) I got a text message from him saying:

I do love and care for you. I’m so sorry this has happened. I’m not saying that’s it. More I need space. Please call or message if you’re stuck, need anything, a lift, anything. xxx

What the fuck? Is he having a mid-life crisis? Is it not over? Am I insane to grab onto this hope?

I came home from work to a cold, dark house. The silence was so total I could hear a ringing noise.

Still in my coat I slowly trailed around from room to room, trying to make myself believe this is real.

The spaces in the wardrobe, the bathroom cabinet, the treats cupboard, the shoe rack… all these gaps are clear visuals it’s real, but somehow I can’t accept it.

My mind skitters away from the totality, from the gaping nothing that’s opened up ahead of me.

After about half an hour, during which I found it increasingly difficult simply to breathe, the emotions broke and I could not stop sobbing. Big, ugly, snotty, howling, animal sobbing. The physical pain in my chest felt like I was being ripped apart by some sharp clawed creature.

I called my older sister, Lena, who was amazing and helped calm and soothe me somewhat. However, her continuous urging that, “You must be kind to yourself, self care is so important“, gave rise to further feelings of serious panic: what the hell does that even mean?

I realised I have no true friends, no social life, no hobbies or interests, nothing that didn’t involve him in some way.

I fucking have nothing and I don’t know what to do.

I have no idea where to even begin.

I feel utterly bereft and lost and alone and rejected and terrified and old and worthless.

I sent him a goodnight text message, but he didn’t reply. I feel like I shouldn’t have done it. He asked for space and I’m already pushing in; I need to do better at listening to what he wants.

His earlier text gave me hope and that’s all I have to cling to right now.

JP