The first thing I did when Richard (my counsellor) arrived was apologise for breaching his privacy by looking at his dating profile earlier in the week. He was fine – I said that I was so shocked about crossing the boundary that I swiped left, but I could have “woofed” or swiped right. So I looked at him and said “woof” to make up for it, and we chinked our mugs of tea. Phew! I feel a lot of relief that’s OK.

Then I did a brief recap of the week, including telling him about the upcoming weekend in London with Cicero – I love that Richard gets excited for me! Its so … validating? It makes me feel good anyway.

Then we got to the meat of the session: the timeline.

Last session, Richard had suggested that we work on a timeline of my relationship with my (ex) husband as a starting place to drilling down into how my relationship evolved.

Earlier in the day, I had taken a piece of backing paper the length of the dining room table and drawn a line down the centre. I then divided the line into yearly segments. I did this very scientifically – hey! It’s me!

I started by anchoring the timeline from the day we met to the day he moved out, with our Civil Partnership almost dead in the centre.

From there I marked key events, some sad and some happy, and many with mixed emotions. Interestingly, our Civil Partnership was mixed emotions because there were some members of my husband’s family who weren’t present.

I marked when we moved in together and when we moved houses, which pets we got – and when they died.

And I marked out when there were major changes in the landscape of our relationship – the time he assaulted me in front of his son, the time he spent two months in a mental health hospital, his last suicide attempt in our last home, and many others.

This started to get painful – very painful. Not overwhelmingly so (I wasn’t at risk of shutting down), but I felt like crying – but the tears remain unready to show themselves yet.

A few things really struck me hard during this session:

How long we have been struggling as a couple – and how small the time was before these struggles began.

That my husband might well have given up on me much sooner if he hadn’t have gotten ill (and become dependent upon me) because I could never communicate; shutdowns of one kind or another happened from the very beginning of our time together whenever he tried to tackle some difficult subject.

I have to own my own prejudices coming into the relationship: I had a problem with the way my dad drank. In my mum’s, brother’s, and my own opinion my dad is an alcoholic. Any problem I might have had with my husband’s use of alcohol was coloured by my experience with my father – that is what I saw, not depression. I certainly didn’t consider PTSD or bipolar.

What I do have to give myself credit for is that I had no experience with this kind of thing, I had no skills to call upon, and I had no professional support. I was doing the best I could with the resources I had.

I kept the problems from my friends and family until he exposed the issues by acting out in front of them.

As I write this, I realise just how alone I have felt.

Five minutes before the end, Richard let me know that we were running out of time. I think he allowed us to go over.

He gave me the warmest hug.

I said that next time, when we come to the end of the session, that we should mark off our holidays on the chart so that we finish off on a happier note.

After he left, I made myself tea (actually, the time of night I ate it would more properly be called “supper”), wrapped up the chart, and wrote up my thoughts.

Then I planned to pack for my trip to London, have a shower, and watch a bit of Star Wars Acolyte before bed.

While packing my rucksack with kink gear and toiletries for my journey in the morning, I noticed that it still had the travel tags on from our first trip to Nepal – in 2012 – the year that my husband had his biggest ever breakdown and the most traumatic time of life. My stomach rolled about inside me with the memories.

I am feeling quite churned up right now though – time to put my mind onto something else!

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That night I was tormented by dreams of my past – running, hiding, fear, crying, anger – his and mine – and conversations never had.

I woke in the darkest night and could not get back to sleep.

Perhaps this is the psychic puss of decades of painful living that I had completely disassociate from.

Sometimes, the only way is through the pain.