transponderings

Another stream-of-consciousness ‘unpost’ written on the bus to and from speech therapy. I’m very conscious that it’s been a long time since I last posted anything. Perhaps that’s because I have grand ideas for a couple of series of posts that are blocking me from doing anything ‘trivial’ (so this unpost is very necessary to get me out of that frame of mind). It’s also partly because for a month or so my son was on exam leave and I didn’t feel able to make the time to post anything more substantial than a tweet.

Talking of my son – and I know he won’t want me to talk about him, so I will try not to embarrass him here – my wife and I imparted some news to him on Friday, which he took remarkably well. We’d avoided telling him until his exams were finished, to spare him any additional anxiety on top of exam stress, but ended up telling him the day before we’d planned to, thus slightly spoiling our codeword for the event: trooping the colour. (That’s not because either of us are monarchists or fans of marching displays – we’re neither – but because Apple’s holiday calendar saw fit to highlight this important event on the day we’d picked.)

The news we imparted? It was the decision my wife and I had taken right at the beginning of the year, just before one of the last of our 30 couples counselling sessions, that we were going to separate.

*break for speech therapy*

I’ve been reading a lot of positive stories recently about couples that have survived, and even thrived, after one partner’s transition, and sometimes I wish that could have been my story too. That’s what I hoped for when I first told my wife, even though I knew the odds were no better than 50:50. Anyway, it wasn’t to be. Someone else drew that straw.

I’m not unhappy about it, though. Not anymore. I think those counselling sessions gave me (and my wife) time to come to terms with the way things are between us, and with the idea of a future where we don’t figure so prominently in each other’s lives. Of course, we’ll still be jointly involved in supporting our son, and there are other areas where our lives overlap (both being part of the same church family, for instance), so it’s not as though we’re cutting off all contact. And, for the time being at least, we’re still friends.

Practically, there’s a lot still to sort out. I’m planning to restart my PhD in September, and I hope to be able to find somewhere reasonably close by (and affordable!) to live before then. That may be a rather tall order, given Edinburgh’s housing market and the fact that I don’t have any income.

Anyway, even though it’s not quite time to get off my bus home, I think I’ll leave my ramblings there for now. Until next time …