Last Sunday morning I walked the dog with the daughter. A nice and energetic walk around Tooting Common, watching the dog bounce through the long grass and chase sticks into pond. It was sunny and warm and easy. And it helped start a strange day well. It’s our wedding anniversary today. I didn’t quite know what to do with it. I felt sad, but not overwhelmingly so. I felt disappointed and slightly cross. But mostly I just felt at a bit of a loss.

It was difficult not to keep remembering what a great day we’d had. (Read 16. And then I talked about our wedding.) But I remember also that he went for a run the afternoon before the wedding and left me and our friends to put up the gazebos in the garden and the flowers on the tables. Always that one step away from a full commitment.

This evening we went out for something to eat together. I shy away from saying that we went out to dinner, it has the ring of a date about it, and I had no intention of it being that. It was my idea, to do something positive when I was feeling rather wobbly. I think the anniversary had upset me more than was obvious. It was, maybe coincidentally, the start of ‘one of those weeks’.

Anyway, we met in a lovely, quirky, joyful little restaurant on the hill. It’s a place I often go, and we used to come together on occasions. I know the man who runs it, the smiliest person in the world who always greets me with a “Hello Sister” and a joke about my meal choice. I think I needed to know in advance that, even if the evening may be ‘iffy’ the food and the service definitely wouldn’t be. It was a bit noisy outside, and looked like rain, so we moved indoors, where it was just as noisy because there were musicians rehearsing. So we could chat, but only loudly, and I didn’t really feel like loud. I hadn’t  exactly prepared a list of subjects but the ones I did want to, hopefully, get into weren’t really for projecting across a table.

But we did talk, well, we chatted. About his dad and the holiday home, about the dog, his decorating, his yoga, a bit about my work, about the daughter and her plans. It was ok. It wasn’t great. I’m not entirely sure what I expected. I know I hoped, at some point, to be asked how I was doing, but it didn’t really come. I’m not entirely sure he want’s to know. Because, in reality, it’s not so much that he’s moved on, it’s that real understanding that he wasn’t truly there in the first place. And that’s the sad realisation. The feeling that I get when we talk, when I see him is that I don’t really miss him, because he wasn’t properly here. He spoke of the security that he knows he doesn’t have now; the company, the intimacy he misses, but I don’t think he misses me.

He spoke about aloneness, but as a thing to get used to, not that he was lonely. About the plans and ideas he’s starting to have for his future. He talked about the difficult relationship he still has with his parents, and maybe that will never change. And as we sat, surrounded by the noise and bustle, I thought ‘I don’t want to be friends with you’. Because, while not for one moment to I want to get back together, I would, for once, like to hear something from him about me. Because he’s the one that left and I’m the one that made it easy for him. I’ve been actively supportive and helpful to make the process better. I know it’s been less of a drama for those around us, But even a small acknowledgement of what I’ve been through would be nice. Isn’t that what friends do? Even things out a bit? Understand what the other person is going through?

I don’t want to hear all about him, and wait for a suitable moment to tell him about me. I want to be asked. So I don’t want to appear to be ‘like a friend’, because that’s not the type of friend I need. I can’t be bothered. Really I can’t. And the difference now is that I don’t have to.

So I’ll still be nice, because, after all, we are doing this well. But that’s what it is. Being nice. I’ll be friendly. But he’s not a friend.