The Function to Breathe

Thirty

2007 – 2012

Marriage to Gavin was good for me initially.

 After we came back from our honeymoon in New Zealand I got more involved in the business, going to more and more auctions and buying properties and Gavin made me a partner in the company. We worked well together and as my confidence grew I was able to add a more creative edge to some of the redevelopments, opening us up to another customer base.

However as good for me being married to him was, it was also complicated, very complicated.

From that first day Gavin told me he loved me I was well aware that his feelings for me were much stronger than mine for him and however much I hoped that would change as our relationship developed, it didn't. That's not to say I didn't love him, because I did, but I couldn't love him in the way that he loved me. I loved him as a protector, a saviour almost, my knight in shining armour rescuing me from a life of loneliness and uncertainty. He on the other hand thought the world revolved around me, he adored me, and I began to feel guilty about the imbalance.

I felt guilty that I couldn't love Gavin the way he loved me, that I couldn't let him behind the barrier I'd built up to protect myself. Even after several years of marriage he had no real idea about my past. I'd told him that I'd grown up without a mother but he had no idea about the miserable childhood I'd lead with my father, about how I couldn't wait to leave home as soon as I'd finished my A levels. He had no idea that I'd been raped by a stranger in my final year at university, or that I'd tried to kill myself not long after.

There were certain things I'd had to explain and I found myself making up lie after lie, to protect both of us, or that was my reasoning anyway.

My nervousness at the physical side of our relationship was explained as growing up without a mother, growing up in a house where love and sex were never, ever spoken of. I never really got over my nervousness about sex and whilst I rarely refused Gavin, I often didn't enjoy our lovemaking as I should have done.

Even the scars on my wrists were lied about. I'd grown used to lying about them over the years, various friends and even a few employers had asked me about them, and now I had a well polished story about how I'd tripped over and put my hands through a glass tabletop while on a drunken night out at uni. The story was so polished that I almost believed it myself now.

The only bit of my past that Gavin knew anything at all about was Ricky, and even then he didn't know the full extent. All Gavin knew was that I'd been friends with Ricky at school and that we'd dated for a while. I'd played that down drastically, but for some reason I hadn't been able to lie about it completely. I don't even remember exactly how it came out that I had known Ricky, I think it was not long after our wedding that we saw him being interviewed on television and Gavin commented that he seemed really arrogant. Immediately I'd jumped to Ricky's defence, saying that he was nothing like that in person, he was really sweet and funny; at least he had been when I'd known him.

All in all, the lies mounted up so much that I didn't really know who I was any more and I began to feel like I was drowning in deceit. I felt lost and confused a lot of the time.

I hardly saw Tara either – while Gavin and I were happily living in the Kent countryside Tara was in Cornwall, bringing up her young daughter, Chloe. When I did get the chance to see or speak to her I never managed to tell her how I was feeling, how I felt like I was messing up the best chance I'd had at a normal life.

The guilt and the lies started to suffocate me and I could feel the black cloud of depression begin to hover over my head and the tangled, jumbled, anxious thoughts take up residence in my brain. I tried to ignore the signs, made myself work harder, tried to be a better, more loving wife to Gavin but it was impossible to drag myself out of the pit I was sinking into.

I hid the extent of my unhappiness from Gavin, tried to pretend that everything was normal and started to think about ending my life again. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it this time; I knew I couldn't slit my wrists again but I couldn't work out what would be the best method.

But everything wasn't normal wasn't, of course it wasn't; not if I was planning my suicide. Gavin kept asking me if I was okay, what was wrong, how he could help, but I just kept on telling him I was fine or I'd make an excuse that I'd been working too hard or wasn't sleeping well – both of which were actually true.

Things came to a head one day when he came home from the gym to find me hysterical with tears over the fact that I'd broken my favourite mug while washing it up. It was a mug that Ricky's mum had bought me, just a cheap thing with cute kittens on it, and it was one of the few remaining possessions I'd had from when my life was "normal". Somehow, against all odds it had survived until now and I was absolutely devastated when it slipped out of my hands and smashed onto the granite floor tiles in our kitchen.

When Gavin came in and found me slumped on the kitchen floor sobbing as if my heart would break he could hardly believe that it was over a broken mug. He dealt with things as best he could, kneeling next to me and hugging me until I stopped crying and then arranging an emergency doctor's appointment for me.

I saw the doctor alone the following day – I refused to allow Gavin to come into the consulting room with me, much as he wanted to – and came away with a prescription for some pretty heavy duty anti-depressants and 4 sleeping pills. The doctor refused to give me more sleeping pills than that, knowing I think that I would have taken them all at once.

Gavin tried to understand, but he didn't really. That was partly – mostly – my fault for not being honest with him from the start. If he'd known what I'd been through, then perhaps he'd have understood why I was now as ill as I was. But I hadn't wanted him to know about my past; I'd wanted to be normal, not to be "that crazy woman" that had tried to kill herself and needed to be treated in a special way.

*~*~*~*~*

It took me a long time to get better, longer than it had the first time I'd been ill. This time I'd let things fester for too long before I'd sought help; the black cloud had not only settled over my head, it had engulfed me completely. Eventually, after countless return visits to my doctor for more anti-depressants, and numerous appointments with a psychiatrist I began to feel a bit more normal. I began to at least not dread getting out of bed in the morning.

It had been over a year since I'd felt up to working, but I started going back to the office, just one day a week to begin with, and started accompanying Gavin to auctions again.  Day by day I started to gain control over my life again. 

Our relationship had been put under immense strain while I'd been ill, but Gavin had always been there trying to understand, even when it was clear that he didn't have a clue how to help me or even really what was wrong. Gradually, as I began to feel more normal, things improved on that front as well and I felt endlessly grateful that he had stuck by me, hadn't walked out.

Little did I know that Gavin had been seeking the comfort and love I hadn't been able to give him elsewhere.