Please don't read if you disapprove of rants

I haven’t been near the computer for a day or so. I felt I needed to do some thinking and lay some groundwork for where I want to go next.

My relationship with my ex is not going well. If I start to try and explain why here, people may not understand so forgive me if I don’t go into details. At the end of the day it’s how I feel that matters and right now, I feel that distancing myself from him would be the best thing to do and as soon as possible.  The simple fact is this – he hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve known him. I can’t make him change, only he can do that. As far as I can tell, he has no wish to change. End of story.

I feel bad about this. I feel I’m using him. He’s coming round later to take me to Armley to look at used office furniture. I need a new desk. I’m currently using the one that I bought to do my painting on as the other one I had fell apart after having been dismantled and reassembled too many times.  I was thinking of getting a new one from Ikea but at the end of the day, all I need is a desk. Whether it’s new or old doesn’t matter, or what it looks like as it will soon be covered in paper (I’m a messy worker). Saving £100 plus feels like a good plan.

So  I feel bad about getting him to do things for me. I forget all the times I’ve done things for him.  The money I’ve spent. The innumerable times he’s disrupted, interrupted, and ignored me.  The way he ALWAYS (I use that word with great care) has to criticise, not just my writing, but my cleaning, my taste, my food, so many things. I didn’t want this to be a rant, but sometimes it’s better just to get things down. I wrote a novel years ago, finally giving it away to a publisher just to get rid of it. John took years to get round to reading it (he reads a lot so it wasn’t that). Then he pretended he hadn’t got round to it when actually he had read it. He didn’t want to have to say that he didn’t like it.

It’s not a great book. It’s not aimed at men in their sixties. I would have hoped, knowing how fragile I was feeling at the time that he could have said SOMETHING nice about it. He’s great at telling lies at other times.

I feel better now I’ve got that out of the way!

After Armley, it’s back to the flat to get on with the decorating. I’m going to ask somebody to paint the ceilings as I draw the line at that these days. Now I’m going to  try to book a place on a poetry course.  Just for fun.