Questions but no answers

It is an interesting exercise, this attempt to reclaim a life, I think it is well-nigh impossible. What is it that one is trying to reclaim? Youth, an identity, a life that never existed and is a total fantasy in one's imagination, an ideal of a perfect relationship that one would have liked to have enjoyed? What? Am I admitting defeat, a failure to engage with the person with whom I spent 44 years of my life? Was this failure my fault? Should I accept that I did not make him happy, that he did not make me happy, who is at fault here? Reclamation, what does that mean?

I am so unhappy, but am I more unhappy than I was in a relationship that was sapping my lifeblood, making me so unsure of my whole sense of being that I could not function. A relationship that was so bad, so dark, so unsettling that it made me into a person that I despised. The damage that human beings do to each other is sometimes so corruscating, so negative, so poisonous, that a way out is not an option, it is like a rabbit transfixed in the headlights of a car.

I know that I am intelligent, I can be witty, fun, I am not unattractive, I am well-read, I love cooking and have a knowledge of fine wine, I love my garden, opera and music, I have a large circle of loyal and good friends, but to my husband, none of these things were of consequence. Nothing about me meant anything to him - he appreciated nothing that made me the person that I am. I cannot understand it - he just did not care one jot about me. He persistently destroyed my very being. His constant affairs were a slap in the face - they were always with strange, needy not very attractive women - don't say it, all my fault. I was needy too, but hid it because there was NEVER any response, even from the very beginning.

The ultimate result of this terrible mis-match is disaster. There is little to look forward to - he has spent all the money, he has no savings despite being a very high earner, so what future is there for me and for him? He cannot have a new life with his current slapper, if, indeed, that is what he wants, because there ain't no money! C'est la vie.

In the scheme of things, this is all so trivial. Actually, I look forward to the peace and quiet which will surely follow when everything is finally settled. Money is quite definitely the root of all evil - I know that the latest affair started because the tired old slapper thought the husband was rich - I hope she now realises that he most definitely is going to be very strapped for cash - no more expensive foreign trips across Europe trailing his expensive racing cars to the race tracks, staying in smart hotels, a life she had never enjoyed before. I hug myself thinking of the remark a mutual friend made about her last week - 'God help us all if this relationship goes belly-up. She is a nightmare in that situation. She wails, keens, throws herself on shoulders weeping hysterically, rings up her girlfriends in the middle of the night sobbing. Frankly, for a woman in her late fifties, it is very unedifying and rather pathetic. She has never understood that most men just want a good time with a woman like her' I couldn't have put it better myself!

I suddenly feel much better.