We met the auction person at our old home but with the up-front costs required, it looks as if we're going to have to let the mortgage company take the house. This doesn't daunt me as much as it should, bankruptcy has been an inevitable part of my future for a long time now. I don't like that it's come to this, and do feel guilty, but there's nothing I can do about it, and I have nothing much to lose. Walking around the house we renovated together was odd, but that wasn't what made me sad.. we'd barely finished it before we left to run our own business, and it had never really felt like home. I think it was the comfortableness with each other that did it. Well, after he'd finished glaring at my scars and asking me why I did it in such a prominent place.. 'uh.. it was the first piece of skin available?' See, when I burn myself, I go out (can't smoke indoors) to my 'special' place.. this is not conducive to disrobing to injure secret places. Besides, the first time I burnt I was not thinking of the covering-up consequences, and it was colder.. so, long sleeves. The second time, well, is it weird to admit that the non-symmetry of the three previous burns was pissing me off? I know that there's going to be at least one more time, one more burn would make a star-design.. yeah, that sounds sad, right? I used to cut myself, well 'graze' is more accurate, with a key, across the top of my arm. Still do, sometimes, though it doesn't help like it used to. Much more hide-able. Not from a partner, though. He hasn't lost the same expression of bewilderment as he had that day, many years ago, when he first noticed.
Walter also caught me pinching at my skin in the car, 'you're not self-harming are you?' .. 'um.. no?' It's too hard to explain how it gets me through the day, and that most of the time I don't even know I'm doing it. I've come to realise that some people are either willing to understand, or not at all. Sadly, my husband was always of the 'pull yourself together' category, and no amount of explaining would change that. I knew it was hard for him, too. Before 'the end' I asked him to find a counsellor to speak to - to help him deal with me. He agreed, at first, then decided it wasn't him that needed fixing. He does try to make sense of it, sometimes, maybe more so now: 'I thought you'd be happy once you'd left me' .. but depression doesn't work like that, if that's what 'this' is (more on that some other time). I never blamed him for my depression, it just devastated me that we couldn't find some way through together, and I realised, gradually, that I needed something else. I needed space to be 'me' without repercussions: I met him at 18 - had never lived alone. I lost all sense of self, and there wasn't much of it to begin with.
In better news, the room opposite mine in the house-share has been empty for a while. The door was left ajar yesterday morning and a quick glance made me realise (a) how much bigger it was than mine and (b) how much better the furniture was. A quick call to the landlord later and I was given permission to move. Which took up the rest of the day following Walter's departure. A welcome physical distraction. I have a lot more of my stuff around me now and for the first time since September last year I have a sense of a 'homely' environment. Grateful as I am, I've still spent a good part of the day in tears. Looking through old photos perhaps didn't help..
And now that I feel more settled in my living accommodation, and another nail has been hammered into the coffin of my marriage, I return to the constant, unanswerable question.. 'so what happens now..?'
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