Ah yes, Valentine’s Day….a day where loved ones can lavish their soul mates with flowers and chocolates, a day to proclaim to the world their unfaltering love, a day to explore those passionate and rampant urges, and for singletons to await the postman (or Facebook Messenger) to reveal any secret admirers that may have finally decided to declare their undying love!
Ok, so you may have detected the ever so slight sarcastic undertone to the above paragraph, and you are indeed correct to suspect so….to be fair the title kind of hints at the nature of this blog post!!!
Today has been the final straw for me in what has turned out to be the most stressful, damaging and emotionally draining few weeks that I have had to face. I literally feel battered, bruised, defeated, used, broken….. I suppose that is the true nature of depression, to lull you into a false sense of security, allowing you to hold on to the belief that you will never feel as low as you have done. It has literally slapped me across the face and brought me to my knees these last few weeks….I even have the injury to prove it (I slipped over landed on my knee, removing a good few layers of the skin…giant weeping scabby knee – just what I ordered!).
So to give you the overview….my marriage has not survived my Post Natal Depression; it revealed the true nature of the one closest to me, which was a devastating blow. The sale of our family home went through a few weeks ago and now I am trying to sort out the divorce. The icing on the cake is that today, yes Valentine’s Day, would have been our 4th wedding anniversary. So if it wasn’t enough to see mountains of red hearts and the words ‘I Love You’ vomited everywhere you look, I have had to accept that not only do I not have that special someone in my life anymore, but also that I will forever be reminded that the 14th February should have been my wedding anniversary….So my advice to anyone madly in love…never get married on Valentine’s Day, because if you do break up it fucking sucks, as you can never just let the day just slip past unnoticed….especially when you have an ex who has made a big deal about taking his new girlfriend away for a romantic weekend…just perfect!
Ok, the rant is over, I needed to get that one off my chest! So I am now sitting here with a large pink wine, contemplating what I will do with the wedding photos that are currently staring at me from the giant picture frame we had adorning the wall in our once family home! Burn them, chop them up, draw faces on them??? Please feel free to make further (and more creative) suggestions! But no, I am going to remove them from the frame and carefully place them in a box for our daughter. One thing I want her to know is that at some point her mummy and daddy were deeply in love, and that more importantly she was created out of love. If there is one positive thing, or in this case person, to come out of this whole horrible mess, it is my beautiful daughter. She literally is the reason for me living. At those dark times, which have cropped up again over the last few weeks, she is the reason for me to have taken a breath and hold on to the future. Through her I have drawn my strength.
I don’t think I will ever get married again, but if I do I will almost certainly choose a date that is of no meaning, and if my significant other should ever forget our wedding anniversary, I think I would secretly not mind.
It is strange how something that was once flourishing, thriving, blooming, can grow the most beautiful and exquisite flower, to then die away and rot, leaving nothing to show for the beauty that was once there. There will always be the memory there of what was, but also the heavy feeling of grief for what has passed.
My daughter is totally obsessed with bumble bees at the moment, which makes me think of the pollination that occurs when they jump from one blossoming flower to another, and how it is this pollination that allows a field of flowers to flourish and evolve. Without them, and of course the nurture a flowering plants needs, it will ultimately wither to nothing; but I still hold hope that one day I will have my field of flowers.
It is ok to grieve for something that was once such a big part of your life, and I suppose the anger, sadness and the array of other emotions I have been expressing are all part of that process. I now have another 365 days until I have to face ‘V’ Day again, and by then I know that the wounds will no longer be so raw.
So hello February 15th!!! You are my new favourite day!!!!
Mwah
Natalie xxxxxxx
Baby, Me & PND (Post Natal Depression) 