4. We Need To Tell You Something

And now on to the next person.

Downstairs we went to tell my father-in-law, my one day to be ex husband’s dad. This one really hurt. Even now I keep welling up, getting that awful pit of the stomach feeling. Because this good, kind, annoying, funny, practical man won’t be my father-in-law, and that breaks my heart. That moment when I realise that this huge family that I’ve been part of for twenty one years won’t be mine has hit me badly, and even now, especially now, I want to say more, to fill in the gaps, to make it make sense.

But it doesn’t really make sense. It’s just two people wanting the same things, but just not the same way. Wanting better. He just gave up before me. And I don’t blame him. I want better too.

But to say it out loud is really, really hard. And there’ll be more soon. More shocks, gasps, whats?! Because no one has seen this coming. Or have they? Soon find out I suppose as the news slowly seeps out through the branches of the family and friends. So the test of our relationship (that was) will now be in the way we can still be as we were but in a new way.

Many of our friends are intertwined as neighbours and also people himself works with. And thats complicated. Oh! it’s all complicated I suppose. So do we tell everyone together? Stick it on the street email group, pop it on the community facebook page? There has been a strength and a gentleness about telling people together. But I am joking about the facebook page.