At the end of the last posting, I said that I had been asking for the strength and patience and guidance to do whatever it is I need to do to sort all of this out. I was being slightly disingenuous because I already knew but was fighting with what my instincts were telling me.
Easter weekend with Ross was fabulous - among the bestest of best, best times we have had together, and for a few days afterwards I revelled in an afterglow. But as the week rolled on I knew there was something wrong. Then, over the weekend things went really wacky. During my lunch with Gill as I was talking about Ross and our plans, I started to feel really tense and uneasy. I sort of put it down to nervousness about having Linda and Ian and Helen for a meal the following day or dislike of returning to work. But, in reality, I knew there was something more.
Then, on Tuesday evening, on my way home from work, I had a strange experience. I felt as though someone shouted in my right ear something like "You know, you will have to finish with Ross". It was both like hearing a voice in my head and an external person talking to me. And I know what they were saying was correct. However, I chose to ponder on it and, from that moment, I just felt more and more ill at ease.
By the weekend, the tension was ripping through my body. Massage and meals with neighbours could not disguise from me that something was wrong. I went to Quaker Meeting on the Sunday morning knowing that I needed a quiet space. The moment I sat in the Meeting room, I cried into my hands and spent the next hour alternately looking out of the window at the rain and the wind in the trees and weeping silently into my hands.
Returning, I had a phone call from my parents and spilled the beans to them about how awful I was feeling. There must have been enough in the tone of my voice because they were quite insistent that they should come down and visit me over the Bank Holiday weekend. I put them off. After all, my plans were that I was going to see Ross.
Then I moped on the settee just feeling dreadful. Luckily, I was dragged out of myself by next door neighbours suggesting that I go flying kites with them. That all happened and somewhere in the late afternoon I found myself back in my kitchen in distress. And I just said to myself "There's no point in putting this off any longer". And I just walked up to the phone, rang Ross and told him that I couldn't continue to promise him a home and a future and a partnership in the way that we have been talking about.
It was obviously all much longer than that but that was the essence.
And I've felt absolutely fine since which makes me believe that I have taken the right decision by both Ross and myself. I know I have hurt Ross in the short term but I also know that he has enough inner strength to work through what he needs to do.
I feel that I've dropped about five years worth of stress and I feel cleaner and brighter than I've felt in about four years. I have started thinking about my future and what I want to do in a way that I haven't for a long time or perhaps even ever. And this morning I went into work, sat down and wrote the best piece of work I have completed in nearly three years.