Fears and Tears

I am coping remarkably well.

'Well', in this instance, meaning I did not cry throughout the whole of his departure day (this may have been to do with the fact that the day before, having consumed a bottle of champagne and made a good dent in a second, I wailed ungraciously for quite a substantial period of time once I had gone to bed, so I think I managed to get a fair amount out of my system) and we actually had, well not a 'nice' day, but as damn near as.

I did not cry at the airport. I did not get cross or emotional. I was practical, funny in a slightly unhinged, hysterical way (but at least that's something), helpful and a smiley as physically possible (again, a touch of hysteria has helped to create a faux sence of euphoria which manged to hold the corners of my mouth up successfully for a good few hours, with only a few minor lip tremblings which I hid, I believe, successfully- in packing, my boyfriend had dived towards his ipod to skip any track that could be deemed vaguely, in some tenuous way, emotive - when you have to skip a Greenday song for fear of its emotional influence on its listeners, you know things are bad). If a subject drifted into conversation that I could not deal with, I silenced my boyfriend and attempted to distract us both swiftly, plucking a subject at random from a bank of inane conversation I have stored for such events (offensive looking people at Bluewater featured highly in my topics of choice).

I drove all the way home without a tear, with my poor mother playing dj and feeding me cucumber marmite sandwiches. She has never been wonderfully relaxed with my driving (I have the rather unfair name of 'Senna', especially because top speeds in a Rover 200 series that's seen better days, can only be achieved down hill with the wind behind it, but my nickname is due to, apparently, only having two driving settings: stop and....go - in my defence, this largely derives from living in Bradford where you had to floor it at traffic lights) but she only exclaimed once when I veered uncomfortably closely to a rather large, unforgiving concrete wall.

Even when, after firing up the erratic CD player in the car, and, given a choice of 6 mum-friendly albums that I'd compiled for the journey it decided that 'other side of the world' by KT Tunstall was an excellent choice of song to play as I left my boyfriend of 2 years at the airport about to fly to NZ to start his new life, even then I just laughed; unhinged, hysterical, but still it was a laugh of some vague description.

So he flew 36 hours ago.

And I have not as of yet, as he would say, blubbed.

My parents have rallied around me, finding out what they can and can't say on the subject matter by painful trial and error (however this method, due to my widely varying and unstable emotions, is often incredibly inaccurate and a topic of conversation that I had previously deemed acceptable can instantly become a no-go area). They are coping with my teenager worthy mood swings and inconsistencies incredibly well. I feel like I'm not really here, just functioning, running on backup, a million half thoughts in my head never being addressed.

They have plied me with a variety of WebStress-friendly food substances including new and exciting variants of soya produce, which has even led to me deviating from my comforting, highly fat-and-sugar ridden breakfast of jam on toast, and this morning I ventured into soya yoghurt and crunchy territory (although we'll see what tomorrow brings).

My mother has kindly hinted that, perhaps, eating bread for every meal isn't exactly a balanced diet (Atkins lovers would recoil in horror if I revealed the real estate of my calorific intake that bread related produce has managed to commandeer) and is trying to steer me towards integrating a wider selection of vegetables into my eating habits.

They have humoured me with warm ribena and numerous cups of tea. They distracted me with the entire series of Spaced. They are treating me gently, waiting, waiting, until I lose it.

I have been wondering when this will happen.

Its not a matter of if, you see.

I have managed to wrap myself tightly in a clingfilm of numbness in order to hold all my emotion inside my skin, underneath. This wasn't planned, this wasn't a conscious thing, in fact I had absolutely no idea how I would deal with him leaving.

But I can feel it, adjusting, shifting, stretching, tearing. It is moving beneath, it is murmuring, pushing at the edges, testing the weak points to see where it can exploit and vent.

It needs to, I know. I slept badly last night, trying desperately to find other topics to bury this emotion beneath, so I wouldn't think.

I always cry. If anyone's going to take the monopoly on tear-shedding, it'll be me. Its how I deal with things. I am emotional. But I haven't been this time. I can't feel. I can't find myself.

I could help it, I could aid the process if I were to simply think, I could begin the healing I guess. But I am terrified of opening the floodgates and then not being able to control what cascades from within, not being able to control how I feel, not being able to function, to cope.

So now it is a waiting game. As I seem vehement in not permitting any usually cathartic tears I will merely have to wait until they take matters into their own hands. As my usually prominent self analysis, even despite vast quantities of personal time and space, has not been so much as touched these last 36 hours, and, as far as I can tell this is the route that my mind is quite happy to pursue for the foreseeable future, I will have to just...wait.

I have had amazing support from my friends and family. I don't want to let them down. I don't want to let myself down. I have to know I can get through this. I can't break. Not now, not now. Its just the start.

I can't find it in myself to speak to anyone at the moment, because I don't want to lie and say I'm fine and I don't want to hear anymore 'its not for long' and 'he'll be back before you know it' and 'you'll hardly know he's gone' and 'the time will fly'. But I don't want to talk either. I don't want to talk because then I'll have to think.

Just don't let me near the gin.