Tin Anniversary

The Thirtieth of June Two Thousand and Eleven. Thursday.

Ten years ago I got married. It was a perfect day. We wed in a registry office to the sound of Colin Vearncombe (aka Black, my Fourth Music Recommendation (actually, Colin gave one of the best gigs I've ever been to in Stockton some years back, but that's another story...)), we ate at the Ivanhoe pub, our friends and I walked down to the beach and spent the afternoon by the sea and we all ended the day with chippy chips. It was magical.

I mentioned about our strange wedding night in the Windmill Hotel here.

Today the relationship status part of my Facebook profile - the only true indicator of where one is at in these uncertain times - reads 'single'. Although we are still married, I suspect this will be our last anniversary. We have lived apart for nearly 2 years - when we have that will be sufficient grounds for divorce.


I'm not going to go into the many and sordid reasons we broke up. Suffice to say it wasn't a decision taken lightly, as it shouldn't be when children are involved. But we are both committed to providing the best for our family and we are both still friends so we've tried to navigate these choppy waters as best we can.

But the thoughts still remain: was the marriage a mistake? Were the problems always there? Could it have been saved? Who's the villain?

Well, I suspect the answer to that last one is me. Consequently, I feel as though I have to put things right somehow. That there's still some way to 'fix' this. On my worst days it's crushing to realise that any opportunity to steer things back on course has passed. So you do the adult thing - you take the best of what the situation has to offer and you move on. Taking me a little while to do that, but I'm getting there.

A mistake? It might have been less hurtful in the end if we weren't married, but there was more than enough good stuff before that to make up for it. Could those good times ever come again? That's the tragedy - the acceptance of the fact that the future is more likely to be full of the worse parts again, not the better. So it's better to let go. But to never have tried? Surely love thrives on the hope that it's worth it all. And if you don't try then that hope never sees light of day. It's cruel when it's dashed, but while that hope is there anything's possible - that belief at the beginning is priceless. How can there be anything wrong in giving hope its due.

So I'll let me express my feelings through the medium of the theramin. There are things I might have done differently but no, I regret nothing.

More soonliest.