Utter madness...

Well I wasn't going to post again today, but I just had a phone call - from Paul.
I haven't spoken to Paul since this whole thing began, and it took me 34 minutes to tell him everything from being handed a note at the door right up to Clare moving in with Jon on Saturday. It is only hearing the reaction of someone who knew nothing of the story that has made me step back and think, "Yeah, utter madness!"
Paul was struggling to take any of it in. Nothing made any sense at all and he just kept saying 'I don't understand? Why?' to pretty much every episode as it unfolded. Phrases like "and just throw it all away", "after all you've been through over the years", "It doesn't make any sense" and so on.
I suppose in a way I was expecting all of those statements, but hearing them come back after you have given someone the whole story rather than seeing this unfold a bit at a time (which is what everyone else has) makes it seem even more unreal.
I keep trying to deal with Clare as if she is 'of sound mind' and in a state to have rational conversations, because I have recovered from this most traumatic event and managed to keep on going and find a way to cope and move on. But it struck me that Clare hasn't dealt with any of this. I know I have said that to her, but it suddenly became really important tonight after hearing all this back as I recounted the tale to Paul. I am worried that Clare is not mentally well. I never stopped to consider this. I even said to her about the breakup "you either never loved me or you have had some kind of mental breakdown" and I'm starting to wonder.
When she is round here and we talk about what she is actually doing, and what she has done to me and what she is leading herself into, she shuts off and almost goes into a panic attack. It's as though all the parts of her brain that deal with rationality and analysis have shut down. At some point however she will wake up. She will expect me to be there, sharing Cajun Chicken and peppers with buttery potatoes, chatting about the time we met Nightwish, remembering the garden in Machynlleth, taking the dog out, going to Glastonbury Chalice Well on Halloween, dressing as a trainspotter at Sparsholt, having the rats as pets, the tickets blowing away as we went out to the bus for the Sparsholt college do, buying an engagement ring, sitting on office chairs in a flat in Drove Road, the woman snoring downstairs, living in Uphill and having cherryade on a Sunday, building a cage for all the rodents to live in, papering the spare room in London with all the posters she owned, living above 10-15 records and me taking sexy photos of her with a polaroid camera, moving out without John finding out, moving to Worle, the sunny kitchen, the trips to Teignmouth and discovering Muse, the white Golf, going to Sussex, Reading and back to Worle, filling the toilet wall with posters of Duran Duran, buying a house together in Stoke and going to B&Q to choose paper, walking to see the 'Evil Tree' and doing reiki on it, attuning me to reiki and all the emotions that came out, moving back to Somerset, the lovely big house in Winscombe, and through it all we have always been there for eachother, every night I smiled as Clare lay sleeping safely in bed, knowing my life partner was there with me and whatever we had been through we would always survive because me and Clare were special and could overcome anything the world threw at us - the special bond that would mean we would be there for each other and together forever through life's journey. And one letter, one mad moment, and she threw it all in the garbage.
I know she will ponder these thoughts, but have any of them really sunk in? It did with me and I tried to kill myself, I drank and drank, I had a breakdown, I lost 2-3 weeks of my life in a dazed almost coma-like state trying to process all that information. Clare has not got to that point. She has been upset, but more upset with seeing me in that state rather than her actually taking all the information onboard and processing it. She has had no time. She left our bed and jumped straight into another.
When we got together in 1993 we 'dated', fell in love and moved in together. It took 6 months. It normally does take this long. We took months to get physical with eachother in a sexual way, and only because we were truely in love. Clare has gone from our shared bed to moving in with someone she barely knows, had a sexual relationship, committed to sharing a house, and all within a handful of weeks, most of that time spent apart, with the exception of 4 or 5 days in his parents house. It cannot be real. It is all too utterly nonsensical, and it is only tonight that I have had the penny drop so hard - Clare has not dealt with US yet!
I have been so preoccupied with my own state of mind and trying to put my life back together from the broken pieces she left me with that I have not even bothered to realise that my timeline of progress may be about 6 weeks in and doing outstandingly well, but Clare's hasn't even started. Of course she is upset, because there is upset in the air and she has seen enough of me to know I was a broken man. But Clare has been distracted from day one. She has ALWAYS been with John the whole time, so the self-reflection has not happened. When confronted with it as I have done on a few occasions she has freaked out, because her mind cannot deal with the enormity of the situation, and she says things like 'I can't cope with thinking about it' or words to that effect. This is such a dangerous situation. It is like a bomb waiting to go off. It might go off at Lympsham or it might happen later. But it will happen. Maybe THIS is what my 'guide' has been warning me about. The future and dealing with what she has done.
I'm sure Clare is thinking on the surface that she has thought about it, but believe me, I KNOW what it feels like to deal with this, and Clare has certainly not been there yet. The one brief moment was on the Sunday when she did come out of it for a few minutes and told Jon she wasn't ready to be with him and couldn't possibly entertain living with him. But of course he is rushing her along as quick as he can to commit and settle down, so it is ever likely that she hasn't had time to stop and think.
One day she will be sat there watching the TV and turn round expecting to see my face, and it will be Jon's instead, and she will know what she has done. I don't know when this will be and what will happen. I don't even know if I will be here. Should Jon present her with a ring and she accepts it then I can't see how I can still be in the picture to be honest. Engagement is a commitment ( I should know, I am still technically engaged to a girl, as she still has my ring!) and you cannot have three people in a relationship that is that far down the line.
Don't get me wrong, this in no way contradicts what I have said before. I love Clare with all my heart and I always will, and I want to be with her forever, and I will always be on the end of a telephone whenever she needs me, but relationships have levels of intensity, and if she is living with someone and engaged to them, then there is no space for me at all. I will be pushed out eventually even if not intentionally. They will spend more and more time together and all the free time will be spent together, and in settling down Clare will be forced to work due to the high cost of living in this area so I won't see her in the day and at night she will be with him. Unfortunately this is how life works even when we intend it not to. We settle into patterns and don't notice the passing of time. Routines form. Take Paul for example. A very good friend who I used to share a place with, see every day, then less often, then he got married, settled down, had a kid - I haven't seen him for years. I think I have seen him 3 times in 4 years now. This is where friendships outside a relationship end up - it is unavoidable.
I think from the moment Clare moves in with Jon, the sands on the egg-timer will start to flow. I know she intends to see me, and we will to start with. But unless she has some kind of a revelation then she will proceed down the road to settling and before we know it we will be seeing eachother once every two months, the 6 months, then who knows...?
My problem is I cannot fight for this - I have to let Clare go. She is free to do as she pleases, but I'm not sure she is pleasing herself with where she is going and even if it looks like I am losing her I will be unable to intervene. Jon wants her all to himself, of course he does, he is her boyfriend now not me. My memories with Clare are now a closed book on a dusty shelf somewhere in the back of the mind, she has a new book open on the table with Jon's name on it and she is busy writing in that one.
I am not committing to anything at this stage. Selling my gear has bought me a couple of months to see how it goes, but I would be stupid to hold a candle for Clare 3 months or longer down the line. Stupid and unhelpful for everyone. After all, Clare is making the choices now, not me, and if she does decide that Jon is her life partner and the person she wants to wake up next to when she is 60 then that has nothing to do with me, but it would be tragic for me to be still here hoping one day she will come back.
I hope none of this happens I really do. I want to see Clare all the time. I love her and she is my best friend in the whole world, and we understand eachother like no other relationship either of us could ever have again. I love her so much I am even here watching her move into another sexual relationship, and however much that hurts me I am still here for her, ready to forgive and forget, but there may be a time when my position diminishes and I must move on.
Like I say, I hope and pray that it will never happen, but I must also not kid myself into having too much hope.