I was scared that all this time in lockdown and the way it brought me to focus on my loneliness, it emphasised my singleness and my childlessness – surely this was not a good thing?
In August, I found I could not make the trip to the UK that I’d planned – I felt safer staying in Spain, but it was hot and I felt strange. My normal structure – yoga classes online, my English class, things that punctuated my week were missing.
Everything felt so raw and painful. All the couples eating out in the street cafés, friends on holiday with family, or with partners. I felt as if I could only survive if I withdrew from everything, every trigger of loss or loneliness. I felt such envy.
On Sunday morning, it engulfed me. The grief, the utter, deep sadness and pain.
And yet, different and new. Alongside, was the realisation, gleaned from writing and re-writing ‘My Story’ for WCW, that none of this was my fault. Writing and editing over and over and then leaving it for a few days and coming back again helped me to see my story as if it were someone else’s.
And some of my tears were not only for my loss but tears of compassion for that girl whose father died before she knew him, that deeply depressed woman who struggled alone, that woman who didn’t even know if she wanted children really (how many do?) and whose body anyway would not allow it. So there was no one particular moment of loss. Nothing that was already there to be lost. The grief was for things that never were.
My heart went out to the woman who suffered all the cramps, the gripping squeezing pain, the embarrassment of all that blood loss, the frustration of trying to find treatment for the fibroids that would leave her still able to conceive. And all the while, time passing.
My heart broke for the 37 year old woman who broke free of the wrong marriage to follow her passionate heart. Who was, for a brief time, pregnant, and gloried in it. And then lost that life. Was abandoned. Dropped down into a life that never felt hers, getting jobs and losing them, jumping through hoops to get state help. The shame of living a life that didn’t belong to her.
The weeping doubles me over and I curl into a ball. And I emerge through it, lighter.
The weeping will return, I’m sure. The therapist, who has been the one constant over years, and can hold me even over Facetime, tells me this is the way. The writing is the way and all is good. All is right.
And later, sitting outside, I look at the plants I’ve grown, the fairy lights I’ve strung up, the cushions that I’ve covered with bright, seaside fabric. The table top I’ve decorated. I look with new eyes.
I look with a new pride. It grows in me that there could be a new life, a way forward. Maybe this is acceptance. That so longed-for, so resisted, classic stage in the process of healthy grieving. I was stuck, for so, so long. But now, I think I feel those damp wings beginning to uncrumple a little. Very delicate, very hesitant. A slight beginning of a flutter.
I am 66. I am single. I am childless. And that is the case – not what ‘should’ be, or ‘could have been’ or even ‘might be in the future’. I work with what I have, what is ‘now’.
I remember a dream about being up against a brick wall. And in my dream, the wall somehow melted and I walked through it.
Jane said land is cheap near Chiclana, along the coast from here in Cadiz, and you can buy a wooden cabin for 9,000 Euros. There are co-housing schemes in the UK. There are possibilities. And I feel an openness that I’ve never felt before. My resistance to ‘what is’ is dissolving and it’s releasing a new energy within me.
There are things that have not changed - I have no property that I own and not enough funds to buy a house or a flat. There is no one who will offer any financial assistance to improve that.
I will write my book – I WILL write my book! I will continue to learn to play the recorder. I will continue to do my running training, and to swim.
As to who will care for me when I can’t, as to who will get the few precious things I own, as to powers of attorney, as to all those practical and important issues – I have yet to make those decisions.
But now I feel I can, and will. Now that I am in the realm of acceptance. Even after all this time, it has been possible to rise.
I have a future, and that future is mine, and now I am eager to walk forward into it.
Julie