sociable, fun, busy life together. We had talked about marriage and all of those things and while we weren’t remotely ready to do any of them yet, the understanding was that we would eventually. To each other. When we grew up. But in the process of growing up, I lost him. Somewhere along the way. Not over one day, it happened gradually, he disappeared a little more and more every day. Not his presence, we were always together but I felt like he was going somewhere, even when we were in the same room. Then he sat me down and we had the chat. And that was it. Well, the chat came after an important conversation.
He’d just signed the deal to do his new travel show at that time so he’d started travelling on his own, I suppose it was kind of practice, or that’s what I thought it had been at the time but maybe it was something more. Maybe he was searching for something he just couldn’t find in our converted bread-factory apartment. Sometimes now I think he was seeing somebody else but I have absolutely no reason other than paranoia to back that up. He had been on a trip to Finland and when he returned you’d swear he’d just walked on the moon or had a religious experience. He wouldn’t stop talking about the calm, the quiet, the peace, how much he was at one with whatever the hell else could survive in minus forty degrees. He kept telling me how I had no idea, I couldn’t possibly understand what he was talking about. I told him I could understand. I understood the calmness, the clarity, the contentment in life when you have that perfect moment. Yes I did, I understood. I didn’t use the same words when he was describing it, my eyes didn’t light up to a pure icy blue as if I was seeing the gates of heaven, but yes I understood those feelings.
‘Lucy, you don’t understand, believe me you do not understand.’
‘What do you mean, “ you ” do not understand? What’s so different about me to other people that I couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have a moment of fucking contentment? You don’t have to go to Kathmandu to find inner peace, you know, some of us have it right here in the city. In a bubble bath. With a book. And a glass of wine.’
And then followed the chat. Not immediately after, it may have been a few days, it may have been a few weeks. But whatever it was, it was afterwards. It had given me enough time to digest that he felt I was a different type of person from him, one who didn’t understand the depths of him. I had never felt that before. I had always known we were different, but I didn’t know that he knew that. It sounds like a small detail but actually when really thought about, it became everything. When I travelled, I travelled to see new places; when he travelled, he travelled to find new parts of himself. I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.
Then here’s where we did a stupid thing, and he walked me into a scenario that I wish I could change every day of my life. Obviously, I was upset. I was very upset, I was so upset I turned to religion – the Silchester religion of worrying about what People would think. He told me that if it made me feel any better we could tell people that I left him. Now, in my current reasonable-ish state I don’t know why I would have agreed to that. But I did. It helped me after the break-up, it gave me a strength that I needed while having those conversations with friends and family so I could say, ‘It just wasn’t working, I had to leave him.’ Because when I said that, there were fewer questions. If I’d told them he left me, there would be endless amounts of pity, of trying to figure it all out on my behalf, what I did wrong, how was it my fault, then them being afraid to talk about it when they met him or saw him with a new girlfriend. My dumping him was to make everything easier. Only it wasn’t easier because he had left me and I
He’d just signed the deal to do his new travel show at that time so he’d started travelling on his own, I suppose it was kind of practice, or that’s what I thought it had been at the time but maybe it was something more. Maybe he was searching for something he just couldn’t find in our converted bread-factory apartment. Sometimes now I think he was seeing somebody else but I have absolutely no reason other than paranoia to back that up. He had been on a trip to Finland and when he returned you’d swear he’d just walked on the moon or had a religious experience. He wouldn’t stop talking about the calm, the quiet, the peace, how much he was at one with whatever the hell else could survive in minus forty degrees. He kept telling me how I had no idea, I couldn’t possibly understand what he was talking about. I told him I could understand. I understood the calmness, the clarity, the contentment in life when you have that perfect moment. Yes I did, I understood. I didn’t use the same words when he was describing it, my eyes didn’t light up to a pure icy blue as if I was seeing the gates of heaven, but yes I understood those feelings.
‘Lucy, you don’t understand, believe me you do not understand.’
‘What do you mean, “ you ” do not understand? What’s so different about me to other people that I couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have a moment of fucking contentment? You don’t have to go to Kathmandu to find inner peace, you know, some of us have it right here in the city. In a bubble bath. With a book. And a glass of wine.’
And then followed the chat. Not immediately after, it may have been a few days, it may have been a few weeks. But whatever it was, it was afterwards. It had given me enough time to digest that he felt I was a different type of person from him, one who didn’t understand the depths of him. I had never felt that before. I had always known we were different, but I didn’t know that he knew that. It sounds like a small detail but actually when really thought about, it became everything. When I travelled, I travelled to see new places; when he travelled, he travelled to find new parts of himself. I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.
Then here’s where we did a stupid thing, and he walked me into a scenario that I wish I could change every day of my life. Obviously, I was upset. I was very upset, I was so upset I turned to religion – the Silchester religion of worrying about what People would think. He told me that if it made me feel any better we could tell people that I left him. Now, in my current reasonable-ish state I don’t know why I would have agreed to that. But I did. It helped me after the break-up, it gave me a strength that I needed while having those conversations with friends and family so I could say, ‘It just wasn’t working, I had to leave him.’ Because when I said that, there were fewer questions. If I’d told them he left me, there would be endless amounts of pity, of trying to figure it all out on my behalf, what I did wrong, how was it my fault, then them being afraid to talk about it when they met him or saw him with a new girlfriend. My dumping him was to make everything easier. Only it wasn’t easier because he had left me and I
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