A letter to my ex husband

You have been on my mind and in my heart so often lately, this is a letter I will probably never send but never the less I wanted to write it to express my gratitude. In a few weeks it will be the anniversary of our meeting 26 years ago… Wow can I really be so long? (I had to take quiet moment to do the math.) Then day we met it was a very late night in June as I wandered down the street to get a taxi home, stopping at the bookshop on Oxford Street a voice whispered in my ear, go back to the Courthouse Hotel there is someone there you need to meet and lo and behold a while later you sidled up to me at the bar and we started talking. I was still drinking alcohol then, I don’t think I was drunk but I remember you come to spend the night and we went the following day to Centennial Park. You were only in town for the weekend, you were doing landscaping at the South Coast and living at the Lone Pine Caravan Park and so we began our correspondence. Most of your letters charmed me with the little cartoons you drew of both of us.

It was a while later that you told me it would soon be time for you to return home, your visa would expire and you were planning to return to the UK but not happy about it, it had been a real struggle for you to find work that honoured your high level qualifications in horticulture and so it was we hatched a plan, we would get married, not just for convenience, but because of love and so we did. We were married on 16 October 1993 at St Marks Chapel in Woollahra. Your Mum and sister Beckie flew in from overseas, your younger sis was in Bali and she came for the wedding too and your other sister Claire lived in Sydney with her daughter and partner so she was there with us too. It was a lovely wedding and a small intimate reception.

Today I was thinking of the gift you gave to me, Jonathan, you really rescued me from the darkest night of my trauma and addiction, you came bringing so much light and stability. You gave me an anchor at time I had been so very very untethered. I was still managing to work but my addiction to alcohol was pretty much out of control on the weekends and had been for some time. Shortly after we married things came unstuck for me, I lost my job (for the very first time) and you confronted me about my drinking. It was then I realised I had to do something and so it was I went to my first AA meeting on 6 December 1993. I got sober from the first meeting and never needed to drink again via the grace of God and the fellowship I found in AA with some very special friends travelling a similar path.

The next few years were full of change, I found a part time job and then a full time one through a happy chain of coincidence, it involved travel and it set me free to move into the book trade with I loved and it then gave me the opportunity to get a job at my favourite alternative bookshop in Clarence Street, Sydney, the Adyar.

Six years after we married we made the decision to return to the UK to live after a month long holiday we both came back from crying ourselves awake for several days. I did not think it was totally fair that you were so far from your family when I was close to mine and I was also wanting a change and so it was we decided to move and in time found the most beautiful little terrace house to rent from a don at St John’s College in Cambridge.

Those early months were some of the happiest of our marriage. We both got bikes and you used the car for work so I would cycle to work on the three days of the week I worked as an administrative assistant at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. In the long summer evenings we also enjoyed beautiful soulful rides at dusk through the cow parsley to the meadows at Grantchester.

But my soul was also in a lot of pain at the same time… I knew I needed to get psychotherapy to help with the long term impact of my trauma and in time sadly this quest of mine began to tear us apart. I was also under pressure because my sister who was disabled back at home in Australia was undergoing a lot and the only person close by to support her was Mum. In the second year we were away Mum fell and broke her wrist and so I went home for a month and when I came back it was hard to live with the knowledge of the struggles they were both undergoing and so we made the difficult decision to move home. But pretty much right away things began to go wrong. You wanted to go back immediately to the UK but I stopped you. Then I went back all alone for 6 months leaving you all alone in a very isolated part of the country.

I know now how much that hurt you. I know you suffered but I was suffering too. I have gone over this many many times in therapy, I have cried over it. Anyway in June 2004 after a return trip to the UK for the month to visit your family you telephoned to tell me you had gone for an interview with a nursery in Sussex and had been offered the job, you did not want to come back. We had a bad argument over you leaving me holding all the challenges back in Oz and all your stuff was here and so it was agreed that you would return but only for one month in order to pack up your things That is when my panic disorder began. That month of your return was agony and on 4 August I drove you to Sydney (a four hour drive) to put you on the plane to the UK. I then drove home all alone and was in the Underworld. You continued to write to me and pray for me after you left me which was some what confusing as you told me you no longer loved me and did not want me returning to the UK even though it is where I longed to live. I have a beautiful card you sent me from Italy with the leaning tower of Pisa on it, in it you said you thought of me every day.

I cried about us today and its been a while since I did that but mostly I want you to know they were tears of gratitude. You came into my life at a very dark time and you bought the light to me. I am sorry that due to my trauma the capacity I had to be there for you was not as much as husband may have hoped for from a wife who loved him. I was struggling with my own demons and I had got very very lost before we met and really needed to go on that individuation journey to find myself. In the end our connection was more platonic than sexual. I had been using alcohol for many years when we met to hide my own sexual insecurity and shame, something I was not fully aware of at the time.

You will always be a part of my soul. I hope you remember me sometimes with fondness and not hurt. I remember the day you came to me after my accident in Glastonbury (after a year I returned to the UK to try to start a new life alone but you said you would not help me as I had helped you to stay in Australia back in 1993) I had a bad accident after that and ended up in Glastonbury for a while, while there you visited to say you had met someone and were in love, you told me you had been very very lonely… my heart broke and I remember that night at the 5 rhythms dance class I was attending I just fell to the floor in tears while the other dancers cradled me. I was also cradled in the ashram by other friends undergoing their own spiritual searching and trauma journeys.

The pressure of my compacted PTSD meant that I found it too impossible and scary to stay in the UK so in December 2005 I made the decision to return to Australia. We would never see one another after that. It is now several years since we have corresponded. You kept up a correspondence with my Mum and it was her you told when your partner fell pregnant with your daughter in 2007 or 8. You had a beautiful little daughter which made me cry buckets as sadly I decided to have my pregnancy terminated in May 1995 because I was newly sober and scared to be a Mum. I felt I needed to know myself better and be more recovered in order to cope. This must also have hurt you so much. I am sorry.

Anyway the past is past and I now accept each and every step of our journey has been necessary. I guess it may be that body memory is strong with me right now because the 6 of June is very very close soon and that is when we met. I remember being so very nervous on one of our first dates that I drank two glasses of wine before you arrived from the South Coast and ended up leaving the bar radiator too close to my brown sofa and burnt it. I remember after I got sober how upset you were to find me smoking after we returned from a holiday at the South Coast. I remember the gorgeous painting of daffodils you gave me on one of our first anniversaries painted by one of you favourite clients, the Dutch born artist Eva Hannah. I remember your soft way, your anxiety and your love of photography and flowers.

I hope you remember some good things about me. I remember sadly you told me at one point you wanted back the happy girl you married not this sad person who cried all the time, but honey I had not grieved for my father for all those years of addiction and I was so so unconscious of the psychic forces driving me from within and remember you lost your Dad to cancer too at the same age?

When you left I was thrown back into all the pain of loss I had not processed. I could not do that inner work with you by my side. In 2004 our paths diverged and yours took you back to the UK I hope you are happy, I wish only happiness for you. And thank you for what you did give to me over those 11 years we shared our lives. I love you.

When the dark night seems endless. Please remember me.