Diary Of A Single Mum 2

I saw Mary Louis today.

She was not happy that all I’d written in two weeks is just two pages.
She left me sitting in her office for almost an hour to gather my thoughts together before we began our session.
I spent the time crying and she didn’t seem pleased with that as well.
I had to apologise when she returned. What I really should have done was scream at her.

My mother thinks she would not have minded, after all she is always telling me to create an outlet for my feelings.

‘Express yourself’ she says, just like the words in that CD in Lou’s car.

I haven’t been able to write.
It is not because I do not want to, even though that may be a part of it.
I really haven’t written much because I’ve been ill.
Since the last session, I’ve been down with what looks like the flu.
I’ve spent my days and nights in bed except when I have to use the bathroom or get a cup of coffee. Or when my mother comes around and makes me sit with her.
I haven’t been sleeping either, at least not much.
I just lie in bed.

Liz has been in almost everyday.
She is such a sweetheart. To think that I never even gave her the time of day.

She brought me some lasagna on Thursday night after my mother complained to her that I hadn’t been eating.
I thanked her for her kindness and ate a forkful just to please her, then threw it in the bin immediately she and mother were out the door.

I can’t stand Lasagna, well not anymore. It is Lou’s favourite.

Mary Louis wants me to write more about my husband (well, ex) but I don’t want to do that for now.

I didn’t tell her that I saw him recently.
I should have, but it would have been very difficult continuing our session if I did.

He and Lou came to the house. That was the day after my last session.

I was sitting in the upstairs bedroom sorting out the children’s clothes to send to them at their grandma’s where they are staying at present.
I knew he was coming when I heard the horn of his Tuareg.
His is a very familiar sound.
Will likes to give his car horn two impatient taps that if you do not listen carefully you would think it was one long horn.

Peeping from the window I saw them drive onto the pavement and park by old Mrs Mathew’s conservatory.
Will looked tanned, like he had just been on a holiday in a sunny place. And she, she looked like Lou.
She was smartly turned out as usual in clothes that defined her hour-glass figure, her hair newly dyed and cut with not a strand out of place.

They rang the doorbell.
Over and over they did but I did not respond.
I couldn’t have, looking and feeling like I did.
After a while they walked back to Will’s car hand in hand and drove off but not after dropping a package for me through the cat flap.

My hands shook as I retrieved the package.
It was bulky and looked officious.

It contained divorce papers.
Will and Lou had brought me divorce papers.
It stated in one of the papers that he wanted a divorce on grounds of incompatibility, and marriage breakdown.

My whole body shook violently as I read it, I didn’t know when my knees gave way under me and I collapsed on the doorstep, the package slipping out of my grasp and pages of paper scattering everywhere.

I was immediately sick, on the divorce papers, and on the doormat with a happy face that Will’s mum gave us for Christmas.
I have been sick since then, Mary Louis.
That is why I couldn’t write.

Diary Of A Single Mum

Mary Louis is my counselor.

We had a session today.

She asked me to write every single thought that I have about my marriage and how it broke down.

Writing is not my thing and I told her so. The last time I kept a diary was when I was fourteen years old and even then the diary was lost by the month of May Or thereabout.

I am going to make the effort  though as I wish to be whole again.

I met Mary Louis last month. The first thing I noticed about her when I stepped into her office was her name. It was written in dark red wood and was on her table facing the door. That almost put paid to my plans to receive counselling if not for Liz who would not let me cancel.

Liz is my neighbour and friend who accompanied me that first day. She ran after me as I stumbled out of the room in tears, ready to return home than sit with a therapist called Lou.

‘It’s just a name, Anne,’ she had said grabbing my arm and shaking it a little.

‘It’s just part of her surname. Just because she has Lou in her surname does not mean she will turn out to be another Lou Farrell.’

Lou Farrell used to be my best friend, until she took my husband away from me.

In the end I agreed to begin therapy with Mary Louis.

I asked where she wanted me to start writing from but she answered that I should start any where I was comfortable.

‘Let it flow, Anne. Just let it flow,’ she said.

I do not understand what she means by letting it flow. What is ‘it’? And how does ‘it’ flow?

Mary Louis says to think of a river or stream and how it flows.

I have seen a couple of flowing streams in my life and they are beautiful, pure and uplifting which totally contradicts my feelings right now. There is nothing beautiful about what I feel and how I feel. Rather than let it flow, I’d prefer to bottle up all my feelings. Feelings of betrayal, of humiliation, of loss and of bewilderment. Feelings of hatred, revenge and murder, of confusion, fear and pain.

I would take the bottle somewhere very far away like the middle of the ocean and throw it away where I never have to see it or find it again.

And so here I am, writing. Trying to make a form of order to my thought processes, a flow like a river, a stagnating sluggishly flowing river.

I feel so angry now as I write.

I am angry that I am the one who needs to receive therapy.

Why should it be me? It wasn’t me who left the marriage and betrayed the trust.

It wasn’t me who took my best friend’s husband and caused him to walk out on his wife and kids.

It wasn’t me who threw away thirteen years and made it of no consequence.

To be continued…