One word? When seven would do…

It’s our 17th anniversary today. Not 17 years since we met, that was a few years earlier, not 17 years since we married, that was a few years later but 17 years since we became a couple. The actual reason we celebrate on June 17th has become slightly blurred over the years as we were crossing the line from friends to an official couple for quite some time and I think the date corresponds to us becomming lovers (I could check back in diaries from that period) but I know that we moved in together on JUly 1st so we’re mere weeks away from 17 years of living together, we’d bought our house by Febrary 1st, so mere months from a joint mortgage and this was the relationship everyone who knew us predicted would never last.

In fairness the 19 year old Nic and the 29 year old Ady are indeed long since lost in the mists of time – I bear very little resemblance to the skinny stroppy teenager who was going to drive a BMW by the time she was 30, never have children and take on the whole fucking world. I suspect Ady has changed rather less ;). He assures me he still has the woman he signed up for and that I am still fiesty, stroppy and world-changing, just in different ways.

Two different individuals we may be but I guess we are still the same couple. All those potential triggers for pissing each other off are still there but still being overlooked in favour of the many things about each other that are worthy of celebration and make each others tummies tingle. We still talk several times on the phone each day, it is into Ady’s arms I want to run when things are not going well, to Ady’s ear I want to whisper my hopes and dreams, to Ady’s eyes I want to look to see myself reflected at my most beautiful, Ady’s hand I want to slip into mine in rare moments when both hands are not clasping a childs’ and Ady who gives me courage that relationships are indeed worth existing in when I have a day like today.

I left Davies and Scarlett breakfasting and getting dressed while I nipped to the supermarket for picnic supplies, back home to pack said picnic and then we all left to collect Tasha, Toby and Vinnie to head to the beach for a Home Ed meet up. Debs was organising and had already put up a gazebo and laid out loads of circus stuff for playing with including diablo, poi, hula hoops, bubble mix and giant wands, unicycle, plates and sticks for spinning and loads more. Debs’ son Alex was there, as were Archie and Eliot and another family. The spot we were on is a large grass area leading onto the beach with a large wooded area so the kids spent the whole day either in the sea or in the woods, all playing some big, convuted Harry Potter game. A further 6 or 7 families arrived during the day so we were quite a clan with about 20 children at the height. Adults moved between the gazebo on the green and the beach and we all paid at least one visit each to the ice cream van parked nearby (most of us two). Debs did some Tai Chi and most of us had a go at various circus things (loved although was crap at poi). Davies and Scarlett had Archie, Eliot, Toby, Alex, Poppy and George on hand who are some of their most favourite people in the world so they just had a whale of a time. It was one of those perfect home ed days where adults sit around putting the world to rights and celebrating our right to sit at the beach chatting on a Thursday term-time afternoon and the kids just mill about in a pack loving their freedom and popping up every so often for food / money for ice cream / a cuddle :).

I spent lots of time chatting to Caz who I’ve not caught up with for ages and was rather shell-shocked to learn that at the moment she and Bid are living apart. It is all positive and amicable and hopefully not at all permanent but rather world rocking just the same. I love them both and hope the find the right resolution for all of them in as pain free manner as possible.

We finally drifted away from the beach at about 530pm, we dropped Tasha and co home and nipped in very quickly to coo over the five kittens they have. Scarlett was enthralled telling me later ‘I didn’t know kittens could be sooo small’ 🙂

We arrived home to find Ady already here so I left him in charge of feeding and bathing children and nipped up to water the allotment and get a few bits for dinner. While up there I called my parents to arrange to see them on Sunday.

Arrived home again and was chatting to Ady who had got the dinner going and about to open the bottle of fizz when my phone rang and it was my brother to say my parents were in the middle of a huge row, he was scared about them hurting each other and didn’t know what to do. I offered to go over and he declined and then hung up on me quickly saying he’d call me back. I got straight in the car and drove over with Frazer ringing me again on the way to say okay, come then. He met me outside the house looking terrified and we went back in together. The kitchen was a mess where a full pan of food had been thrown across the room, splattering every surface, cupboard door and floor with food and landing in the sink where it had shattered all the mugs and glasses there. I went straight upstairs where there was screaming and shouting and swearing. I shielded my Mum from my Dad and told her to get downstairs and out of the house and then faced off against my Dad who was furious, shouting and swearing me to get out and stay out of it and that they didn’t need me interfering and getting involved.

We all moved downstairs where Mum was cuddling Frazer and continuing to yell at my Dad. I told her to get out of the house and into my car and then Frazer and I sorted the kitchen out with Dad ranting at us. He very quickly calmed down – I have always been able to diffuse my Dad’s anger where Mum and Frazer can’t and got him to agree that no-one was being rational or productive and that if I’d arrived over there recounting a situation like I’d walked into there between Ady and I he would not be letting me go home again (violence from both sides, very ugly scenes 🙁 ).

Once we’d cleared up and he’d calmed down I said I was going to fetch Mum as actually I didn’t particularly want to bring the whole circus into my own home. She was in my car, sobbing, covered in the sauce and not wanting to go back in the house but I insisted and they began talking and then rowing again. I stayed for a while and started to get dragged back into the role I played for all those years of mediator before deciding this was not where I wanted to be any more and leaving them to it to go and see my brother who was holed up in his bedroom with the music turned up really loud. He said he was so sorry for dragging me into it but he was just so scared, had talked to them twice to try and calm it down but been told to go away and not get involved and was just so upset at listening to them saying such horrible things to each other and was really worried someone was going to resort to violence and didn’t know what to do so had rung me :(. I reassured him it was fine and I was always there for him and we had a big hug and clung to each other as years melted away and we were two scared little kids trying to drown out the sounds of our parents shrieking at each other.

I went back to them and got dragged further into all sorts of details about their relationship I neither want to know nor care about. I said to Ady later that I had assumed they had calmed down in the 17 years since I lived there and possibly forgotten quite what a warzone it is. I listened in horror for a while until Frazer arrived, about to go out and asked me for a lift which extricated me too. I hugged them both, told them I loved them and would never take sides but always be there for them equally, that they both deserve to be happy and need to take personal responsibility for their own happiness and that walking away from each other is probably the best possible action they could take towards that and Frazer and I left.

Frazer spent the 10 minute car journey shaking, blaming himself and wringing his hands like a small boy caught in the middle of his parents shitty marriage and I realised for the first time that that is just what he still is even though he is 34 years old. I had no idea just how messed up he is by living with them and dealing with this all the time. He said he feels he can’t leave as he is one of the chief factors keeping them together – I said all the more reason to leave. I offered for him to come and live with us to get him out and told him that he shouldn’t be there and this should not be his problem. He has just started seeing a new girlfriend but I can’t help feeling any relationship he has is so doomed from the shitty model he has lived with his whole life :(. We had another clinging to each other hug and said goodbye and then I cried all the way home 🙁

I’m not sure why I’ve blogged this really, my life being influenced by them and the state of their relationship has long since ended and I don’t dwell on it, know other people had far shittier childhoods with far worse things going on and I am living proof – 17 years today – that you can come away from that and still find a healthy, healing, loving relationship but I had no idea just how damaged my poor baby brother was and I am feeling dreadful for having skipped off aged 19 and leaving him there to deal with it alone. I’m so very sad for two lives way over half way through that have such destructive and damaging and hurting each other things happening in them and just exhausted at having had so many traumatic memories of my own childhood raked up that I had fixed with almost as many years worth of good, healthy, loving relationship of my own. I heard things tonight that have really shaken me about them both and having turned my back on such complicated things I am really struggling to make any sense of them at all.

Back home Ady had got the kids ready for bed and was watching a film with them. I put them both to bed and drank in their sweet innocence and uncomplicateness, cracked upon the fizz and toasted Ady and I, eat a lovely curry and then sat with Scarlett who had obviously picked up on my mood, mulled over all those kittens she’d seen today and was sobbing about missing Candle and then wanted to know just what the meaning of life is? I fielded that (as best I could given the bottle of fizz and day I’d had) and sat with her til she fell asleep.

So, lovely day, lovely beach, lovely friends, lovely Ady. All of the rest probably something I’ll never blog about again but there is laid bare for tonight. Maybe the reason above all others that I am so proud and happy to be celebrating 17 years with not even one fleeting second of the sort of relationship I was dragged into this evening.