Hope has left the building...

Strange how life just throws great big bowling balls at you when you least expect it. My writing seems to be taking off and at the same time my own self-esteem seems to be plummeting. Hope, such a dear friend of mine, flounced out of the door yesterday. You know relationships which end, but which end on such a good note that even when the person concerned begins with someone else, you hope that someday, you and he will come to your senses and be together. That fundamentally, the one thing that tore you apart was the fact that you almost suited one another too well? That you both wrote, you both inspired one another, your children were the same ages, your taste in literature, people, movies and music were similar enough to be shared and yet different enough to be stimulating? And when that person goes on to meet someone from their past and recreate a past relationship, half of you hopes that it works, and half of you hopes that they will fall (but only gently) and be back knocking at your door... Only gently, of course, because deep below all the tough, hard-talking, sardonic comments you are really very, very fond of them...

And then, like a slap in the face, life does what it normally does and behaves entirely differently. Like the toddler that you expect to have a tantrum in the supermarket who just walks blithely past the sweet aisle, saying ' not today mummy,' I have been left, open mouthed myself.

Naturally, I am glad he is happy...but I think, as always, the way I feel is more about the fact that I think so low of myself. When we split up in July, I thought, then, that I should have a break from men. I tend to fall from one relationship to another, to be passed from hand to hand like a tennis ball, and needed to come down, to think about where I was going, what I was doing and with whom I wanted that to happen. I thought I did, and yesterday, yesterday, the dream dissolved, like soap bubbles in my hand.

Now, I need to disseminate all the things that I liked about that person, that relationship we had together, and put them away, to bring out and compare against someone who may be in my life in the future...