Hiatus.

Where do I even begin?

I have just switched on the laptop with the intention of finishing the blog post that I started back in January. This is not that post. Reading back through it, I can't bring myself to publish it because it wouldn't be true. It wouldn't be authentic. I can hear the confusion in my voice behind those words, the upset, the unknowing. It describes briefly the breakdown of a nearly ten-year long relationship, since my (ex)partner and I split up in January.

That was four months ago.

The split was amicable and maybe even mutual. There was certainly never any talk of us trying to "make it work". There was no anger, no fighting, no cruel words.

There were tears.

We continued to live together in that same tiny house until March when I moved in with a friend. He stayed in our old house until the tenancy ended at the end of April and then together we loaded a van with his things and he moved away while I stayed behind and cleaned the house ready for it's next tenant. That last weekend together was very pleasant. We talked, we laughed, we hugged goodbye. We always were a good team and worked well together, but that spark that makes the difference between friends and lovers went out a long time ago. We were left as two friends who loved each other, whilst living separate lives under the same roof. We weren't unhappy but we also weren't really living. We were stuck in a rut that we couldn't see.

When friends and family heard that we were still living together (and yes, still sharing a bed) weeks after we made the decision to ends things, they were wowed. "But isn't it weird?" they would ask.

Perhaps the weird thing is that it wasn't weird.

It wasn't really any different.

And I think that says it all.

The only thing that felt different in the days and weeks that followed was that I noticed a definite shift in the way he spoke to me. He is not an emotional man and anyone would be forgiven for thinking that he is rude because he has a very direct way of speaking to people. But there was always a softer edge to his voice when he spoke to me, a subtle difference, that when it was gone, was louder than any harsh words would have been.

Almost everything else felt pretty much the same and I think that says more about the state of the relationship than anything I could (but wouldn't) tell you. We continued our day to day lives, him working from home and me fed up of coming home to his office, sometimes mid-meeting, not getting a greeting and having to be quiet in my own home. On the days that I wasn't coming home to his office, I was stepping into a dark cave, devoid of natural light because he'd finished for the day and was settling in for a night in front of the TV or Xbox. We still spent our evenings sitting on the sofa watching the same shows but not actually watching them together or more commonly, him on the sofa and me elsewhere in the house, doing something else entirely. We still talked without having real conversations. We still slept on the edges of the same bed with a pillow between us to support his back while we slept. We still got into that bed every night without kissing each other goodnight. We still had no intimacy, emotional or physical.

So no, it wasn't weird. It was very much the same.

And if I'm being honest, I'm glad it was that way. I'm glad that we took our time to move on gradually. Ten years is a long time to cultivate a life with someone and, for me, that kind of slow burn needed a slow ending too. Ripping off the band aid and letting our lives crash and burn around our ears would have been stressful and upsetting. Going from spending the rest of our lives together to not speaking, not being around, losing our home, our routine, our sense of normality all in one go would have been damaging. Slowly coming to terms with things, gradually moving further and further apart until we were both ready and willing to let go and were actually wanting to move on made the whole situation gentler and easier to process. For me anyway. I can't speak for him. There was no gut-wrenching, hole in the heart pain to deal with (I'm sure you know the kind I mean), just a dull ache and a sadness that hasn't quite gone away just yet.

And for that, I am grateful.