PART 4: VIOLET

January 2020, Sydney

My boyfriend and I broke up. Which, I’m going to be honest with you, is actually not really what I was expecting. I know the incompatibility with have kids is not something that just goes away and the longer that we stay together, another year, another three years, it would have just got worse and been more difficult to extricate ourselves from one another. But I just didn’t expect it to happen now. And now I feel very stupid for trying to bring it up over and over again, and not thinking that this was what the end result would be.

And he told me last night that, that’s why he’d been avoiding it and he didn’t want to face the reality of what that would mean for us. I said that I wanted to still stay together because I’m on no sort of timeline with regard to having kids, obviously. But he said that he was worried it would just hang over us now, and it would be this thing that we would be constantly thinking about and knowing that, no matter what, it was going to be finite. That there might end up being resentment bred and it would end on bad terms. So, his take was that he’d rather us end it now and be absolutely gutted, than to end up hating each other. But yeah. It’s a bit of a bummer.

But we’ll see each other again. We’ll have a pseudo relationship, not see each other as often as we have been. But I’m not stupid, I know were going to be spending the night together and having sex, whatever. I don’t know if that’s better or worse. The thought of trying to branch out and date other people and maybe finding another long-term partner is really inconceivable to me. Right now, it’s very fresh, so that makes sense.

Aside from that not much has been happening. Work on Thursday was way better than it was on Saturday, which was good. I say way better, but I only had a couple of bookings and it was annoying because one was right at the beginning and the other was right at the end. So the middle five hours was spent doing nothing. Watching the tennis was basically all I was doing and playing a dumb game on my phone. But I’m back on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. My joke was a fortnight ago I worked one day, last week I worked two, maybe this week I’ll work three. So yay, go off. At least I’ve ticked that box, in terms of a very base level goal.

Tonight, I’m seeing my mum and my step-dad before they fly to Mexico. So, I have to go and pretend I’m okay. I’m not going to tell them Harry and I have split up. So I’m going to have to hold it together as best I can. Tell them that he’s at work so he can’t join us. They know his hours can be really crazy so they’re not going to question that at all. I’ll probably just get drunk. I don’t have much of an appetite so I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat. Then I have therapy tomorrow to talk about this all and Wednesday it’s back to it.

I’m trying to figure out how I feel about work. Weather it will be a good distraction and an exercise in pulling myself together and putting my mask on and acting happy and by virtue of that, it’s like, fake it till you make it girlfriend. Or weather it’s going to be really difficult and I’m going to bomb and no one will book me. But I guess I’ll find out in a couple of days.