C hristmas came and went and honestly, I remember very little about it.  By Christmas Day I had known about his affair for 17 days. There must’ve been some happy moments that day but who knows. There is a photo of our daughter opening her presents and she looks very happy and I feel pleased about that.  How the hell I managed to get her presents and stocking fillers ready I will never know.  How I managed to keep functioning without people knowing what I was going through, I will never know.  I suppose you just keep on going for everybody else’s sake. In my head, it felt like these were our last few days together. Confusion. A bit like – you may as well at least try and have a nice time because the end is nigh.

I look back and I ask myself why I allowed myself to be with him that day and I can’t really answer that. We were supposed to be with my mum and dad, but my parents were ill and I decided we’d to go to my aunty’s house instead.  It was filled with people and that was perfect for me because I could shy away in the crowd meaning even though the shell of my body was visible, no one would see the utter chaos going on inside me.

D and our daughter arrived on Christmas Eve and I was already there. I couldn’t stand to see him but there he was.  I tried to avoid eye contact with him. I imagine he would have noticed but he generally wasn’t good at reading cues, and later he asked if I’d join him to take our dog for a walk. I did and I told him that I’d rung Natalia, and what she told me, most of which he denied was true.  But I didn’t really care anymore.  I couldn’t even be bothered to argue or discuss it, but deep inside my brain I was still obsessing and over-analysing every single morsel of information I had fathomed about it all.  Everything was one huge, colossal mess.

We stayed at my aunt’s for a few days until we were summoned to D’s home-town to talk about the arrangements for our friend’s pending funeral.  I wasn’t doing very well.  I was barely functioning.  I hadn’t been sleeping, I couldn’t predict our future, and I was absolutely devastated by what had happened, and that night I had my first dark, suicidal thought.  It was f*cking scary, and something that had never happened to me before.

We’d gone into town to meet our family friends and to talk about the funeral arrangements.  We’d then gone on for more pints with a splinter group.  It was late and I was ready to go home.  I told D I was going to go and D said he was going to stay out.  I couldn’t believe it.  Never ever did he put me first.  Never.  So, without any retort, I walked back to his father’s house alone.  When I got there I wept most of the way, despairing about what to do and how to manage and I went straight to our bedroom.  It was nearing midnight.  I was knackered and yet I knew I wouldn’t sleep so I found the sleeping tablets my friend had given me a week or so before, and I took one.  Then, still holding the packet, all I could thinking about was how I wanted to get out of this horrific situation.  How I couldn’t cope with this terrible, debilitating pain anymore, a pain I wanted to be released from.  I decided to take the lot.  I didn’t think about anyone else.  I was only thinking about me and how I needed to get out of this life.  The marriage I cherished was over, he had abandoned me continuously, including earlier that night, and I was desperate to run away from this god-forsaken situation. I wanted to get out and this was the easiest way to do it.

All of a sudden, I could hear my father in law arriving home.  Reality kicked in and I felt frightened.  Terrified actually.  I dropped the tablets and I ran downstairs, sobbing, straight into his arms.  He hugged me back tightly, and I told him what I’d been about to do.  All he did was hug me and that’s literally all I needed.  A safety net in the form of a huge, father in law bear hug.

We eventually went to the sitting room, and he told me he’d once had suicidal thoughts too after separating from his second wife.  He normalised how I was feeling, and it helped.  We went to bed and I felt a bit calmer, the sleeping tablet I did take was working its magic.  Once I was in bed, I phoned another friend and she told me she was coming in the morning to get me, and she did.  She took me away for a couple of nights to a lovely guest house in the mountains.  She held me.  She mothered me, and she smothered me in love.  I will never forget these two days.  It was the complete opposite to the abandonment I had become accustomed to from D.

When I think back about that dark thought now, I can ‘own it’.  It has happened twice since then too.  Once on the way back from a work do.  I was drunk and I just wanted to throw myself out of the train I was in.  And another time when I was in Germany with friends; and standing at the top of stair case, all I wanted to throw myself down it. I spoke to a doctor about it, and he told me that when you’re going through utter s*it, dark thoughts like this are relatively normal, the risk is when you actually plan what you’re going to do, rather than have an impulsive thought like that.

They were all very momentary, fleeting thoughts but very very frightening none the less.  I had never had a dark thought ever before in my life, so this was scary and desperate to me.  When your thoughts have overtaken your mind and body, but 1 in 5 adults have had suicidal thoughts in their life.  I had never once told anyone I wanted to die.  I had never felt suicidal before, but that night was different and I will never ever forget it.