Brennig Jones (and friends)

Sophie has gone to her parents. Maybe for the weekend, maybe for longer.

Her words, that she needed to spend time alone to sort out her ‘fucked head’, really didn’t sound ironic when she said them, yesterday evening.

And yet no sooner was she heading towards the family who dote on her and love her and will treat her as if everything is all right and who won’t once ask her to consider what she’s doing to me, because she is the centre of their universe, not me, only when she was on her way did it dawn on me that I’m the one who is alone now.

But I’m not the one who needs to sort out his head.

I thought we’d pulled things together; there is no doubt that over the last year we have worked on our marriage and have drawn ourselves even closer to each other than we were before we hit troubled waters.

I thought we were good, that we were strong, that we were comfortable and comforting and, well, that we were a couple.

But yesterday evening, when she came home from work in tears and out of the blue she hit me with those words, my world tilted upside-down for the second time in a year.

So I’m in the house, alone, while she nestles in the bosom of her loving family.

Sleepless in Oxfordshire, for sleep, like a calm head, successfully evaded me all night long.

This hiatus might be for the weekend but I don’t know.

I don’t know what’s in her head.

I don’t know how, within the space of hours, we can go from a platform of love and laughter, conversation, companionship and easy comfort, to her walking out.

And wiping her feet on me, on the way.

Yes, I do feel like a doormat; I feel used and abused.

None of this is of my making.

But I’ve tried – oh God I’ve tried so hard – to deal with this and repair this, I’ve given so much to this relationship, and tried to restore the old qualities that were so brutally torn away.

But now.

Now I’m not sure how much more I can take.

The only thing that’s keeping me going is the horses, but I feel as if the heart has been ripped out of me.

‘Devastated’ doesn’t come close to describe the feeling of abandonment that surrounds me.