Daily Archives: June 4, 2011

Killing the Silence, Killing the Thoughts

I usually keep talking to kill the silence, in just the same way as I keep doing, to kill the thoughts. Almost everyone who I wanted to tell about our seperation has now been told. Some know about M’s adultery. Nobody knows what to say.

So I keep talking to kill the silence, doing to kill the thoughts.

Jesus, people say, I don’t know what to say. The scale and severity of the cheating really does knock people cold. I find it comforting. That the lies and deceit can kick people so hard, people who have not been directly stabbed by them, makes me feel stronger than I am.

I haven’t screamed, shouted, smashed or struck out. I’ve stayed calm. A friend who’s a counsellor tells me my reaction, my lack of anger, is unusual. I suppose I’ve always liked to be different.

I overheard a woman in the theatre yesterday. She asked, in an opulent, privileged pleased-with-ones-self voice;

Would you give me the number of the police station please?

The staff acquiesed.

I think my bag has been stolen, she continued. I left it in the taxi and the driver was black.

She was tall, slim and elegantly dressed, yet her face was marked with the sourness of a thousand frowns. The body of a swan with the head of a vulture, I thought. Nothing as bitter as the bile in her throat.

Tomorrow M will come back here. She is selfish and a liar, but not as bad as the woman in the theatre. Her new place isn’t ready for two weeks and she’s nowhere else to stay.

A lot of people I know think I shouldn’t let her back. And I wonder: Should my kindness not be confused for weakness? Or my weakness not for kindness?

I need a little anger. I need to feel a little less sad about who’s leaving my life.

Dear M,

I’ve worried about him using you, of you ending up all alone. And then it struck me: In what way have you changed? Perhaps he will leave his wife and kids, and perhaps one day you’ll cheat on him too. I think I’d probably like that, and I’m sure that you would cope.