The Missing

I know it is over. I know there is no going back. I own that fact now. It's not OK. It does not make me happy to acknowledge this, but somehow I need to move forward. Moving forward is impossible as long as I feel in any way connected to her. I have come to terms with the fact that I have to leave her behind. She can no longer have control over my thoughts and actions.

Then there are my dogs.

This is an altogether far more difficult proposition. In the absence of us having children, our dogs were our children. They are her children now, and I have no visitation rights.

We had two dogs together previously, Shiva and Shanti. They were rescues from the SPCA Randburg, South Africa. Shanti got sick one day, she'd somehow gotten Parvovirus. The day we went together to the vet to check up on her, only to be told she'd died was awful. I seem to recall a lot of that awfulness was due to an acid come down. But I guess that's another story for another day.

Shiva managed to live to a ripe old age, with busted hip never slowing her down. She had a mean streak to her. At the time, my parents also had a dog. Melissa the Basset. She was a special Basset. As a pup, she followed me everywhere. She loved to sing when I played guitar. She was the boss of the house. She used to use the old, fat, blind, happy Labrador as a step ladder to get to the food on kitchen counters.

Shiva and Melissa used to fight. It was around the time my brother and her used to fight. Badly. I was stuck in the middle. Between friends, her, my family, drug addiction and recovery. I chose her. I thought she was my future. She was my everything. Shiva ultimately ended up being the cause of poor Melissa's death. They fought, Melissa's back broke. She screamed. Shiva went for the death blow. It was not a good day. That was the day I had to say goodbye to Milly Bum, the most special Basset.

That's life. It ends.

Then about six or seven years ago, when we still lived in Buen Orden (good order, ironic), we went out to meet one of her friends. Was not a fan. But, a happy wife made me happy. Her friend was more than a little unreliable. The two of us sat at a bar, ordered a beer and a wine, had a smoke, and noticed an American Staffordshire Terrier walking in the road. I went to the gentlemen nearby and asked him if the pup was his. He said no. He was looking after it for someone. Would I like to buy it?

She was beautiful. She was Bonita. She was our first dog as a married couple. She completed us. And to be honest, this was probably the happiest and most fulfilled part of my life. I was too stoned and occupied with video games and playing a role to even notice the happiness. If one dog made us happy, two dogs made us even happier.

Boni got her Clyde, and she was the happiest big sister. They played endlessly. Running up and down the hallway, chasing each other, launching themselves into the couch before running off again. Clyde was a sensitive, scared and nervous little boy. But the long walks through the River Park in Valencia made him comfortable and a central member of the pack.

Then we had to move. Our wonderful flat in Buen Orden was changed. With short notice, we had little choice but to move to a less than ideal neighbourhood. Bars with daily drunks replaced the idyll of Buen Orden. Closer to the park meant more time in the park, with my two dogs. It was still amazing. But she got antsy. She wanted more than just a rental. She wanted us to own a house. Together. 

Her happiness was my happiness. We left Nou Moles, and found our home in the village of Albalat Dels Sorells, outside of the city. A village idyll, open spaces and endless park space in which to walk Boni and Clyde. That is when Bella joined us. The crazy little girl was the perfect middle ground between the two, and our pack grew larger. It was bliss. I started writing again and finished my first book. I thought it would be easy to get published. It was not. I felt that failure, it was difficult. I buried my feelings. She had no reason to know. I started my next book, influenced by the world outside the city and the empty plots in the village.

Then came covid, and with it came Biggles, the most recent addition to the pack. Our pack was now the six of us, and everything felt so permanent. This wonderful quiet outside the city world of just us. I think I might have been happy. I can't quite remember. I grew 12 plants during the lockdown and smoked them all. It was not exactly good for my mental health.

Then came the collapse. Out of the blue, everything came apart at the seems: my mental health, our relationship, my world imploded. I had to leave them all behind. With them lies my heart. Wherever I go without them, I will be incomplete.

I am trying hard to leave them behind and let them go. Her, I get, she made her choice. She chose not me. But my dogs, they never chose. They only ever loved. As I love them. But they are gone. Nothing more than fragments of memory, barely visible in the rear view mirror as I move forward towards the nowhere destination of no idea. 

I miss my dogs. They are now just another thing she has taken from me. My youth, my love, my house, my dogs. She has it all. I have heart ache and a receding hairline. I really do not think it was a fair trade.

Where to from here? Forward I guess. It is so odd to have nothing tying me down, nothing connecting me to anywhere. It is liberating and terrifying. If I were a younger man, I would be excited. However, I feel my age. I do not want to be alone, and I am no way healthy enough to not be. It is an awful cleft in which I find myself.

Yesterday I walked

Yesterday I walked around Seville. It is a remarkably beautiful city. Now that it is fully in the grip of spring, its beauty is magnified, augmented and intensified. Add to the weather, the warmth, the green of fresh leaves Semana Santa and top tier fashion, and this city becomes an absolute jaw dropper. However, I cannot deny that even in the face of all the beauty I look through skew eyes. I know there is something missing. 

I spent Easter week alone. Properly alone. It was good, bad, necessary.

The Good

I have not been alone for close to 20 years. It is weird to think about. It was good to be alone. For a bit. Until it became bad, but I will speak about that in the next section. The first few days were great. Full zero. Ate junk, drank all the beer, smoked all the weed, played the Witcher III from morn till morn. I watched the Truman show. War documentaries. History stuff. It was super awesome pretending to be in my twenties again.

But then I woke up and remembered. I really remembered. I chose to ruin my week off by doing a deep dive into my memories. I fully and without limits dove into all my thoughts and memories and thoroughly engaged with the collapse of my marriage. How did I get here, what do I do while I am here and where to from here? It was not fun, but it was good. It was healing. Three days of deep depression were concluded by a long walk around the city, from park to park and beer to beer. I got to see flamenco dancers in the park, I got to listen to house music on the river, I got to see statues of some dude getting murdered to death paraded around the city. Cool. 

The Bad

All the loneliness got pretty ugly pretty quickly. I found myself inescapably confronted by the collapse of my marriage. It weighs heavily to say the least. To be perfectly honest, I have not fully wanted to process it or even confront it. It has been there skirting the edges of my consciousness but with a rigorous diet of alcohol and cannabis, I have avoided it. I want to get through this collapse with my sanity and dignity intact. I do not want to slide into bitterness and resentment. This has been far from easy. The nature of the end has me broken. More questions than answers plague my waking moments. 

Fundamentally I want to know how she could have done everything she did. Fundamentally, I can never truly know. I will have to live with the not knowing. Right now, I don't know how to do that. Her single selfish action has poured taint and slime over every single memory I have of us. Every single fucking memory. I don't want the good times we shared to be tainted in this way. I just have no idea how to compartmentalise it all. 

So in this time alone I was confronted by the loss and the collapse of a life I had built with another person. It was not pleasant nor was it fun. However, it certainly was necessary.

The Necessary

Growth. It's something I would like to have. It is also something I cannot have until I process this pain that writhes deep inside the cavities of my hollow and empty inner. I need to wrestle this beast into submission. If not submission, at the very least, some sort of mutually agreed truce. At this moment, I know the beast of depression has far too much control over my thoughts and actions. 

Trust is the first thing I need to learn how to have. One area that I have focussed on is friendship. I don't have many. She was the only friend I thought I needed for such a long time. I never put any work into making new friends. But friendships are necessary. Friends help us and we help friends. The social human succeeds by the strength of their social support networks. 

In my time outside of South Africa, I am unsure how many friends I have made. Not people I am friendly with, but friends that would mourn your passing. Before meeting her, I had an extensive network of friends and people I was friendly with. Now, I question all my relationships. I doubt everyone's honesty. I just assume that ill intent exists so why bother. That is not healthy and I need to flip the mental switch to healthier ways of thinking. Again, I have no clue how.

With this week of isolation, I have identified areas for work. I need to get back to the basics of the Three Ws. Work, Workout, Write. There is no space for women, whining, nor weed.

Conclusion time. I am not going to lie. I am exhausted and I want to give up, but I won't. I have too much love left to quit. Too much love for my family to quit. Too much love for the last few remaining friends to quit. Too much love for the beautiful blue planet to quit. Finally, I still have too much love for myself to quit. I just wish, for just one brief moment, for it to maybe, just maybe, get a little bit easier, or even, just a little bit more bearable. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen.

So for now and the foreseeable future, I am to carry this weight. I have to carry this weight. Yes it can be shared, but that would lead to reliance on an external force. As I have unfortunately learned, reliance on outside forces can be problematic, because when they leave your life, you are left without the ability or the knowledge of how to carry the weight.

I will instead focus on becoming stronger, without becoming harder. Becoming more flexible and adaptable, less likely to break when confronted by the inevitability of change. Becoming happier even in the face of loss. Becoming more positive regardless of the challenges that come my way.

This has been a week of pain, heartache and tears. It was also a week that ended with a walk through a world of astonishing beauty. Spring's warm embrace, spring's flower scented breath, spring's birdsong whisper. The beauty of two women dancing to flamenco softly strummed through shady walkways in green places, designed by minds focused on building a life surrounded by beauty. The winter of my heart slightly warmed by the golden sunlight of spring in Seville.