The atmosphere at home is … I don’t know how you describe it. When my husband talks to me, which is rare, he speaks in little more than a whisper.

Things are polite. There are no more difficult conversations, but somehow the silence is so much worse.

There has been a delay in organising the buyout due to a problem with the deeds. Initially, I was glad about that because I thought that it would create some space for detente between us. Instead, we have this phoney peace.

Yesterday, we sat in the garden together. I tried to talk about things going on for me, easy things to open a conversation, but it was like drawing blood from a stone. I had to get out, so I went for a walk into town.

Last night I got us a Chinese takeaway, then I walked the dog. Thirty minutes after I got back from the walk, he took his pills and went to bed. I was woken in the wee hours of the morning by the sound of the television downstairs.

This is how things are: the timings of our lives have been skewed so that we spend as little time as possible with each other.

I desperately want to hold him and make all this just go away. To undo the past and forget that I ever dared look inside Pandora’s box of marital disasters.

Yet, I did open the box. All this is my fault. His hurt (and my own) is down to me.

The strain is causing almost daily migraines, which rob me of any joy.

I don’t want to go out, so I lie in the deck in the garden and watch the clouds collide through the tattered remains of the Buddhist prayer flags we brought back from Nepal. I do not know what the words on the flags mean, I believe they are words of hope and peace – so very different from what I am feeling.

The wind is too loud, but I can’t hide from it, just like I cannot really hide from my sadness – deep grief – at what has happened to my marriage.

I know that I will go out soon, because I cannot remain in this place. I can feel my husband’s pain even from here.

For more than a moment, I wish that he did have me sectioned when I first began talking about castration. Anything to stuff this ruin back in the box so that I can go back to dozing in his embrace.

But I wasn’t sectioned. He said that he wouldn’t do that to me. He didn’t think that I was insane.

He has been unhappy for so long

Now he knows why. I curse myself that I could not make him happy. How could I when I wasn’t honest with myself about who I was?

The sun has gone. I am cold. The tears are chilled by the strong breeze.

I have to go in the house.