For maybe a year I wept for what I had lost.  I wept for the man I loved.  I wept because if I had only tried harder then we could have stayed together.  Then I cried because I couldn’t forgive him.  Then I cried because he wasn’t sorry.

I didn’t have a moment when I saw the reality – it just gradually dawned on me.  When people who had been strangers started chatting to me. When I found new friends.  When my online work became successful.  It dawned on me when I got the windows and doors fixed and managed my own money.  I found a quiet acceptance at church.  I developed my own routines.  Ones that worked for me.  I went to bed when I wanted to and I wore the clothes that I had chosen.  I could eat my favourite food and knit and watch TV.  I thought about him less.  I cried less often.

I started going in the sea.  The North Sea is pretty cold in the middle of summer and in December its icy.  But I went in.  I learnt how to get in and out of a wet suit without freezing and no one told me I was stupid.  (Some passersby did ask if I was mad though!)  I showed myself how to be brave.

I bought a new car and no one sat impatiently next to me and announced that they were bored and would I hurry up and make my mind up.  Slowly, slowly, I stopped being frightened.  And that left a space for me to see the reality of the way I had been treated.  I could see that he was a narcissist  and that I had survived a relationship based on coercive control.

There was, however, a still small voice in my head.  The voice that told me that once I got to seventy it was pretty much game over.  People who are seventy are sexless and invisible – I thought.  At seventy I need to worry about routines and being sensible.  I began to become the stereotype that I had imagined.  And, quite frankly, I was unhappy and scared and I was lonely.  There were so many things that I thought I couldn’t do because I was old and alone.

I had done a lot of campervanning with a partner once upon a time and I missed the freedom.  But of course I couldn’t do that could I – because I was seventy and alone.  But it began to dawn on me that if I didn’t do something then my life would start to shrink.  Mother would have (at last) been proud.  My kitchen floor was clean and I had a routine for the washing.  The draining board was clear and the ironing was up to date.  I went singing once a week (which is glorious – the choir – not my voice!) and I was a volunteer.  But I was home alone an awful lot.

 I googled campervans, I visited campervan show rooms and work shops.  I did more mental arithmetic than I had done since school.  And I did a lot of thinking – much of it at about three a.m.

I didn’t want a big motorhome as I don’t have off road parking and didn’t want to run that and a car.  So I found out about micro campers.  And got excited at last.

A seventy year old woman – excited – imagine that.

 

This blog is written by Marion, hosted by Carrie