This is the most difficult, awful thing I’ve ever had to put down in words. And I don’t know how to begin with it — knowing that I must begin, that I must say the words and drag them out into the light and make this soul-crushing awful thing I’ve been grappling with for so long real, real in a way it can’t otherwise be — because how long can I hide it, really? How long can I pretend it isn’t real, when almost every day I have to talk to all of you, as I have been for five years now, and say something, anything, about myself and my life? It’s impossible. I’ve never been a person who could convincingly put on a mask, not without everything I feel and think, the truth, visibly leaking out around the edges.
This weekend Jamie and I separated. I can’t even begin to tell you how unreal it is, saying those words. It is amicable and a decision mutually come to, but that doesn’t make it any less gutting and heartbreaking. And I have no idea how to talk about it — there’s a lot obviously I won’t, can’t, say about it, because whatever happens and however things end up this will always be my family, and I love Jamie, and also because I am in full wounded animal mode and dearly wish I could just draw a protective force-field around my life, shut down. But I can’t, not completely. Friends, family, and this life online I’ve constructed over ten years, will intrude, have to intrude, and I have to find a way to handle that reality or I won’t be able to go on writing here. And maybe I won’t anyway. But until now writing here has been, with only a few notable exceptions, something I’ve drawn a lot of comfort and understanding and strength from for many, many years. A place I’ve felt understood — sometimes more here than anywhere else. And now, today, and for probably a long time to come, I’m going to need that understanding, and your patience, more than I ever have.
I don’t know how to get through this, how to survive this. How do people survive this? How are they ever happy again, how do they go on? I want to know, really. Those of you who have been here, where I am, I would love to hear from you. I could use to hear that, despite how it seems and how I feel at this moment, my life really isn’t just kind of over now.
