Don't you think this is pretty? I love the colours. I'm looking for a new dress for a wedding; I've been recycling my old ones for a year or two and I'm very much over all of them.

I haven't really spent much money on clothes for the last couple of years - or at least, I've spent far less than I used to. Partly because I have had less money, partly because there aren't many good shops here, partly because I don't work near shops and the weekends have been spent with him, partly because he disapproves of new clothes. I think it's been quite good for me to get out of the habit of needing new things. One of the ways in which I did not mind changing to suit him; though I disliked feeling as though he disapproved of me.

It's strange feeling so ok about being single again. Of course there is a big gap in my life where he was but actually I'm fine, really, considering. I think, anyway. Maybe it'll all come out in a big splurge of hopelessness soon. I did have a message from a friend I haven't spoken to for months last night on my answering machine, and it was the most lovely thing to hear her voice. I'm missing my friends at the moment. I've been ok about them being so far away because I've had company. Now I don't, it's more difficult.

Tonight

Tonight I walked through a park after sunset and felt anxious as someone clanged the gate of the children's playground behind me.
Tonight I was faintly moved by a sentimental musical.
I sat at the side of a drinks event tonight and felt lonely.
I hovered on the edge of conversations, not really feeling a part of them.
I mentioned my boyfriend because it was relevant to the conversation and someone there expected me to, even though I don't have one any more.
I noticed someone noticing me as I left, but I didn't feel interested and I also realised that I didn't feel single.
Tonight I felt sad, and realised how empty New Year will be again, after one year of having someone to be with.
Tonight I came home to a silent empty house.
I was ok though, tonight.

How much is enough?

I'm so fickle. Here I am, back again, the minute I'm single, flirting with blogging again. Only flirting at this stage, I have to say, I wasn't totally sure I wanted to go back to exposing my private thoughts on the internet. Clearly blogging is about filling a gap for me and I'm not sure that's a good thing. But hey, I'm bored. My train is delayed, so here I am.

I'm dealing with it ok, in case you're interested. It makes me feel slightly ashamed that I kept trying so long with this relationship when it was clearly a charade: it felt like it sometimes at the time, too. Which is not to denigrate him at all: I think if anything kept me in it, it was how much I respect him as a person. Almost everything he did which I didn't find easy still had a good, valid honest substance behind it, a positive statement about who he is. That was real. It was real to start with, too, how we felt about each other. What wasn't real was to keep pretending that we both still felt the same; to try and keep things going, to try and give it a chance in case it got better and yet it never did, and we both knew that. It really finished almost a year ago, when he said he wasn't sure we had a future. I cried for a week straight. It was much worse than it is now. And then we agreed to keep going. If I'm totally honest, I liked being in a couple too, of course I did, yet now I'm single again, I know that's better for me than pretending, having this doubt hanging over me.

Of course I'm still sad, sometimes. About remembering the good times, about how I wish it could have worked. I wish we could have understood each other better. Yet I can't now believe how I could have gone on being so angry and frustrated for so long, and knowing he was with me, and really thinking we still had a chance. Like he said: knowing you'll miss someone if they're not around, knowing they've improved your life, that's not enough. It wasn't enough.

I should be writing my presentation for tomorrow. I'm doing a part time MA. Attending for one day a week instead of work is a joy, and I'm finding it really interesting, but it's such an effort to try and make myself work in what used to be my free time.

An unexpected benefit of being single again, really, that at least there is no worrying about abandoning the man, and I do have my own time back. We have always spent all the weekend together since we don't see each other during the week, and it does put a bit of a kabosh on having any time to reflect.

Now I have plenty of time to reflect. I went to church this morning, for the first time in Plymouth, and walked back down the road with the most intense awareness of being alone again. It is of course possible to feel lonely when you're in a relationship but the aloneness of being single is different, even if the relationship isn't perfect. I scuffed the leaves, bought the paper, and came home to my solitary existence in my new (rented) house, where I have not yet a flatmate though seemingly at least one family of cockroaches for company instead. At the same time, even as I was thinking it, I made myself know that actually we are all alone, in one way, and yet all part of the world and mankind, in another. A woman drove past in a car, a young man in a beanie hat walked along the street in the other direction, and I found comfort in the fact that here we all are, living our lives alongside each other. I had text messages from my friend, the ex-tenant came round to collect her mail and ask how things were going (I politely did not mention the infestation) and I know I can call my friends and family later if I need to chat.

The sun is shining outside and occasionally the sunbeams hit my be-socked feet and reduce the slight chill I'm feeling, being on my own, inside.

It's a bit sad that the only people coming to my blog now, practically, are people searching for solace in their sad twenties. Search terms like:

• mid twenties crisis
• late twenties loneliness
• when mid 20s and lonely
• mid twenties expectations
• mid twenties and lonely
• twenties crisis
• wasted my twenties
• lonely mid 20s

Thank god I'm now 30 and don't really feel like my twenties were lonely or wasted - at least now I look back at them. Oh yes, there were times.

So anyway if you're wondering why I'm here, all you poor lost twenties people (it'll pass, honest!) after so long... it's over. My struggling, bittersweet, lovely, hard, frustrating, fun, mutually misunderstanding, comforting, friendly relationship is over. I'm terribly sad, I'm relieved, I feel slightly guilty about being as ok as I am about it. I will miss him, very much, but it was thankfully mutual and we both know we have done the right thing; that perhaps it should have finished a long time ago but neither of us quite wanted to give it up, or to hurt each other. We had to try, we had to see it as far as it could go, but it hasn't been right for such a long time.

It only seemed appropriate to come and say.

perspectives

Innit funny how only blogging every three months can help you see so clearly your changing perspectives?

I'm not sure anyone will read this anymore. I've not been working for my readers! Maybe I don't mind. It's mainly for myself that I want to take this moment to reflect and it's no coincidence I'm on a train. Feels like old times.

Where am I at? Well, literally, just trawling up through middle England. I've departed Bristol Parkway and am passing through green fields: incredibly green, even in the fading twilight. I've just taken a phone call about a disaster at work. Work is generally fulfilling but still full of challenges. My trouble is I'm a perfectionist and want to get everything right at once, and please everybody, and that's impossible.

Which leads me onto my relationship, but now I'm there I find I'm not sure there is that much I want to say right now. I don't want to ill wish it, neither do I want to hope for something that maybe can't be. It's hovering there at the moment, a fragile thing, a petal ready to drop but hoping for a miracle. I think what strangely has transpired is that I've realised either way I'm not running back to London: my home is in Devon right now, for better or worse, I love this countryside and though my roots are tentative, pale and spindly, they're growing. Which is not to say I'll never leave, but if there is a next step it may well not be back to the big smoke.

I think the sensation of growing older - and more mature - I had last time I posted became concrete as I hit 30 with no grief for time passed but rather a sense of fitness. I wimped out of my party at half past midnight and went home knowing that I may still be young, comparatively, but my real youth is behind me. I honestly don't mind. I don't think, anymore, that marriage and children may be right round the corner, and I do hope I get there before it's too late, but other than that, I'm ok right here right now, how things are. Life isn't easy but it's good.

happy new year

Was it really only in September when I last posted? It seems like years ago. I came back to answer the traditional questions but, half way through and really bored, I decided that wasn't a good omen.

However, 2008 does feel like it's been a significant year and it's definitely been interesting. There have been events, minor and major, like moving down to Plymouth, meeting the person who is now my significant other (for want of a better phrase), nearly writing off my car. More than that though my last year in my twenties has felt like a time of transition. I'm nearer feeling grown up than I was, and that's partly do to with meeting someone and a world of possibility of marriage and family being opened up that was increasingly feeling barred to me, at least for the moment. It's probably also to do with seeing so many other people get married, or pregnant, or have babies. Most of all though I hope it's about having moved down here and surviving pretty much on my own, and building a life. I've done it before, in pieces, but doing it all at once was quite scary.

I've met lots of new people too, mostly good I think. People who, for the most part, are not from London and perhaps have a different perspective on things. I've realised the city is not everything: it sounds stupid to say it but until this year I was convinced that I'd spend the rest of my life in London and could never live anywhere else. I'm still not totally sure I'll survive but I might end up having to give it a go.

There are also the people who have stayed with me, friends who have made the effort to come down and visit, my best friend who calls me pretty much every week, my family who are always there to go home to and feel secure with. I've appreciated them all so much. How did that happen? How did that lonely, suspicious, quiet, too sensitive child end up being a confident, talkative, friendly adult?

And of course the major relationship of my life so far, eclipsing all those which have gone before, finally erasing old habits from my subconscious. Until this year, when the vague character of "boyfriend" appeared in my dreams, he had the face and shape of my eight years ago ex. This holiday I found out that one of my ex-boyfriends is going to be a father and the other has just got engaged. It was delivered in sensitive hushed tones but I've barely thought about it since.

I can't say it hasn't been a challenge, and it continues to be. I wonder whether some people really do find relationships easy, or whether some are just less bothered by the problems, or feel they can't talk about it? I think it would be true to say it's the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. I hope I manage to succeed. I think it's worth it. But perhaps that has been part of the growing up, too. I don't want to let go of my romantic ideals but you can't let them ruin something good.

What do I want out of next year? I don't know. My life is in the balance at the moment. I think I might know a bit more about what's going to happen to me by then. He'd like to live off the land, self sufficient and sustainable, have a family, grow fruit trees. I'm not quite sure what I want right now or whether I can make that work for me. Either it will all go hideously wrong and I'll run back home to London with mixed feelings of relief and bitter disappointment, or I'll probably be settling here for better or for worse, definitely poorer in ready cash but with the prospect of an honest life. Hopefully I'll have achieved a measure of calm and contentment, whatever happens.

Happy New Year!