At the end of last year I split up with my husband. We had only been married for three and a half years. He was (and still is) a functioning alcoholic who has yet to admit that to himself. For some reason, early in our relationship I thought that I could "save" him. By the time I came to the realisation that nobody but him can save him, we were married. Ending the relationship was my decision and having spent to the last two years of our marriage really just in it because that's the way things were and the last year very much emotionally detached, it was an easy decision to make.
We had moved from Surrey to Cornwall two years before. He had been unemployed for eleven months which put an enormous strain on an already failing marriage. By the time he eventually got work, our marriage was under so much pressure that without hard work from both of us, it was never going to work. Unfortunately, alcohol was always his first priority and so I watched as what was left of a brief relationship faded away to nothing.
I work from home and he would always try to deflect the blame for our problems onto me by saying that because I didn't see people during the day I was lonely and therefore miserable and it wasn't really a problem with "us" more a problem with "me".
Long story short, I finished it in December 2018 and he moved out of the matrimonial home on the last day of January 2019. I then embarked upon my new life without him.
At the time of him leaving I was just days past my 50th birthday and I weighed 15 stone. At only 5'5" tall that is substantially overweight. My diet started the day he moved out and I started Clubbercise classes a couple of weeks later.
I had been sleeping in the spare room for the last year of our marriage and so once he was gone, I set about changing the main bedroom so that it bore as little resemblance to our joint bedroom as possible. I bought new artwork for the walls, I moved the furniture round and purchased new pillows, duvet, duvet covers, throws, cushions, curtains, lampshade, bedside lights, even the coasters on the bedside tables! I made it girly. I made it pink (but not too much!). I made it mine!!
I then did the same in the living room giving that a touch of "me" rather than "him".
Slowly I started to lose weight and gain a little more confidence which then led to me wanting to do more than just work, walk the dog and do a couple of exercise classes every week. I took golf lessons and after 12 lessons, and what I considered to be a waste of £200, I gave up! Maybe I'll start again next year with a different club and a different teacher and see if that makes a difference.
On the 13th February I went on a date!
I had signed up to a couple of dating web sites and after I'd managed to swiftly swipe left on my husband's profile(!) I got chatting to Jeff who lived only about 5 miles from me. We got on really well and the conversation flowed with ease. He was ex-army and walked with a stick. I remember him telling me about his stick before we met and he asked if I would find it a problem. I said "Not at all. If you misbehave I can kick it from under you!" He liked that I hadn't gone all weird and that I had replied with a sense of humour. It didn't make a difference to our friendship at all. We were firmly in the friends zone rather than romance, but friends we were nevertheless. Over the course of the next two months Jeff came to mine for tea and cake, I went to his for dinner, we went out drinking together and had a lot of fun getting tipsy together. We also went to the cinema on what we called "mates dates". We would message each other most days just to make sure the other was ok. Even when I went on dates, I would message him and let him know how they'd gone. When I was let down by a date, Jeff would be there with a glass of wine for me and a shoulder to cry on. He really was the best mate a girl could ask for.
Jeff told me that he thought we'd be friends for life. And it turns out he was quite right, although I hadn't quite anticipated how short life would be.
On the 15th April, Jeff died of his third heart attack. He was just 47 years old.
Despite only having known him for two months, I suddenly felt more alone than I had for a long time.
To steal a line from a Beautiful South song, I knew I'd have to sail this ship alone...
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