A New Journey Begins

‘It’s not you, it’s me’

After 8 years of love and loyalty, with over 4 of them spent in unwavering support for his triathlon antics, and an unfortunate conversation, I found myself a single lady. For the first time in my adult life. ‘It’s not you, it it’s me. It’s 100% me’ I think were his words when I forced a conversation that neither of us really wanted but had to be had.

Turned out he didn’t want marriage (I’d asked him to marry me earlier in the year, but with no real rush). He didn’t want children (we’d been talking about it and our friends had just had children). He didn’t want commitment either (so 8 years isn’t any commitment is it?). Oh, and that it was all too late to try and sort any of it. I clearly had no input in the decision making here. This is were the ‘Jilted’ bit comes in. Jilted means to be suddenly rejected or abandoned in a relationship, and that is essentially what happened a little of a week ago. My whole world and future plans came crashing down in an instant through no real fault of my own. That almost hurts the most, as if we’d had the conversations needed sooner, it might have been a bit different. Clearly there is more to the story than that but, in a nut shell, that’s it.

So why blog? Why am I here, writing/blogging?

As a teenager, full of angst and woes, I kept a diary religiously. It was therapeutic. I’ve turned to it on and off over the years. When I say years, until this week, my last entry had been 3 or 4 years ago! I’m hoping that writing here, and keeping a blog will help for several reasons…

• • healing – hopefully writing will prove an outlet for thoughts and fears of what’s to come. Having not been single for over 12 years and facing the single life, I have no idea what to expect really. The pain is still quite real at the moment and fluctuates hourly/daily.
  • motivation – to keep going out and doing things so I have something to blog about. I’ve already started – an overnight trip to Northumberland. I think it will prove quite hard doing things solo, maybe not so much if I’m dragging friends and family with me, but still, hard! You end up thinking, whats the point? Although… not having to consider what other people want to do, or having to wait for them was quite a revelation, a strange one, but a revelation.
  • female perspective on training and triathlon. After talking to one of my friends, she was saying how hard it was to find female triathletes who blog and balance life, children, relationships and training. I can’t help with the children side of things I’m afraid – although when I mentioned my idea about this blog to her, she said she should start one – so watch this space…. though having twin babies….. might be a while – or the odd guest post!. There is also another point that was mentioned by a fellow triathlon friend – triathletes can be very selfish people, especially in terms of training!
  • incentive to keep training and holding myself accountable. Often I have chosen races which my ex was doing, or fitted in around him. A lot of my ‘training’ was just following what he was doing so I trained with him as a way of spending time with him. My self discipline is appalling when it comes to following plans, partly due to life plans/motivation and partly due to the fact I don’t really like running too much…. but I need to find my own feet now.

So with all this in mind, it really is a new journey, and one where it will take some time for me to find my feet!