In the few days after my husband had dropped the bomb that he wanted to leave I took some time for myself to deal with the shock, however I took a small amount of comfort from the fact he had been honest (when backed into a corner so I'm not sure if it really counts). I had my birthday to get through and I wanted to put on a brave face for my son.
The previous weekend I'd tried to arrange for us to go out for a family meal to celebrate but my husband was being difficult as he's on some stupid diet where he won't eat any sugar or carbs. He said he would come but not eat anything which to me sounded stupid and in hindsight was probably just a way to avoid going out. Also the diet never seemed to be an issue when going out with his gym buddies.
I finally managed to get him to agree to go out when I suggested going to a new smokehouse. This is probably a good time to mention that I'm vegetarian and as you may know a smokehouse is all about meat. Had I known later that day he was about to drop the leave bomb on me I would have told him to shove it in his smokehouse. However, it was booked and my son was excited about it as we had hardly spent any quality time together as a family because 'Daddy's always at the gym'. I felt I couldn't back out but I made it very clear that he was on responsible parent duty and I was on cocktail duty.
The meal was better than I anticipated and I made the best of it for my son's sake even though my husband was sat there looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. I had made a promise to myself that I was going to make this work until the New Year and if it took some compromise and cocktails to get there I was prepared to do the work. I just tried to ignore the sour face next to me and put my energy into making sure me and my son had a good time and we did, even getting a free milkshake (it was called a Slim Shady because it had M&Ms in, it took an emabarrassingly long time for the penny to drop on that one).
We got home and I put my son to bed as my husband got ready to go back out. I gently reminded him not to get in too much of a state as he had to drive us to London to go to the Harry Potter Studio tour we had booked months ago.
I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and I had wanted to go for years but we wanted to wait until our son was old enough so we could go as a family and this was finally the weekend I had been waiting for. I shovelled on some make-up and smile and headed out determined to enjoy it. He once again had a face like a slapped arse but I wasn't going to let him bring me down, if he wanted out then that was up to him I was going to have fun on my birthday with my son. I had a pool of strength that I was drawing from because I knew that I just had to keep going for a while before we could start moving forward in what ever shape that might take. I wanted to be brave so that we could be amicable at the end of all this and continue to have a good relationship with our son with as little bad feeling as possible.
At this point it was only my Mum who knew what was going on and he said he didn't want to tell his family. I was feeling very alone and in the difficult position that I couldn't tell anyone else in case it got back to his family. I suppose it was making it feel quite unreal and I was in a little bubble able to protect myself from the reality that was about to bear down on me. However, my bubble was about to burst.
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