Oh Dear...

THAT was a unique and special couple of weeks.

An update, to any and all who read this--THE DAY after I published my last post, my husband left abruptly, taking his computer, some videos, clothes, and a few books, and leaving me pretty much everything else. As a... gesture of goodwill?... he's replaced the PC, and I'm grateful for that. Even more, though, I'm grateful that he's gone.

You cannot imagine what it was like, living with arguably the most depressed man in England. He'd been treating it, with some effectiveness, through the magic of modern medicine, but the results were inconsistent, to say the least. And while I *know* that in these last few months, I've been responsible for some of his stress and/or suffering, I *also* know that our problems started years ago.

Like, the first time he lied to me. Which will have been about a week after we started talking... I've no idea how I got into a marriage like this, where the other party's greatest fault is chronic, habitual, unavoidable dishonesty. I detest liars, and everything to do with lying (mendacity... can't abide mendacity). But I digress. Lying is easily the root of the problems here, but in the end, there was a lot more to it than that.

Some people are just incapable of happiness, and it tends to run in families. I look at my husband, at his parents, his brother, and I see that sometimes, there are those who simply have no interest in the day-to-day business of just BEING happy. It's like they have no taste for it, they prefer to rage and scream and rue the day they ever did this/did that/were born. Miserable. Miserable, miserable people, who believe the worst before the best, and protect their own interests at the cost of everything else, and know nothing of forgiveness and openness and charity and generosity.

Isn't it funny how the word 'miserable' breaks down into 'able' 'miser'. I think that's the root of most misery, truly: an inability to be generous with one's heart/soul/consciousness.

They try. They do try, at times, to see the brighter side of things... mostly, all they manage is a vaguely philosophical shrug, before returning to the idea that they're better off alone, as a tiny, insular, antisocial little unit.

I will not be kept in their cage anymore. If they are happy living without friends, without interests, without the sparks of creativity and inquisitiveness and wonder that fire my imagination, then I'll just have to leave them to it. And even if they're NOT happy, the time has come for me to bid my farewells.

There are so many more things in this great wide world, than a feeling of dissatisfaction, and persecution, and general ill-wishing. I am going to find something else, something better, and I am going to spend every day of the rest of my life LIVING. I am through with the regrets that plague those around me--I will make a new life for myself, and by God, I will make it the best life it can be.

And I will learn (for I, too, was not fortunate enough to be born one of those perpetually cheerful souls) I will *learn* to be happy. To drink in each taste of life as it comes, and make the most of it. I will learn to savour the taste of all my experiences, taking the bitter with the sweet, yet not becoming bitter myself; and I will somehow, through some means, make something of myself.

I am hopeful. I am wide-eyed with wonder, at this new world before me. I can smell freedom, and it is the sweetest scent ever to tease my senses. The air itself feels like he gentlest touch of sunshine on my skin, and far, far away inside myself, I am... I am...

For the first time I can remember, I am, more than not... content.