The Universe is a Funny Thing...

I'm agnostic.

The reason for the rather blunt opening, is that is says a bit about me. Part of me would like to believe that there is a higher power at play and sometimes I see a glimpse of this, but on the whole I need some hard evidence or a pretty amazing experience to turn me around.
Having said that, I haven't quite got the commitment to be an atheist.

But over the past several months, there have been some little occurrences that have started me thinking that if there isn't a god, then maybe there is some kind of universal life force gently steering us in a certain direction, or at least giving us some hope when it starts to feel a little desperate.

I may have mentioned some of these before - for example meeting a woman who would become my best friend here where I live who has helped and listened to me a lot over the past several months. She came into my life at just the right time.
That my baby I is a lovely, chilled out, healthy baby. Without sounding terrible, if she had been ill, upset, a bad sleeper, it may have been enough to tip me right over the edge.
And other little signs.

Recently I was down the street with the kids and my friend and her kids, when I began to feel a little melancholy. BS (before separation), I would have called P to say hi, see if he wanted to catch up for a lunch/coffee or see if he wanted me to bring him anything while he worked. But that day I didn't feel like I could. I'm sure he would not have minded, but I'm still working out this new territory, and don't want to do anything which makes me seem over bearing and pushes me outside my comfort zone, but I also don't want to give the impression I'm being rude or deliberately ignoring him. So I didn't call him.

He called to see how the boys were going that afternoon, and he found out I was metres from his work. So of course, I brought the boys in for a quick hello.

So we walked to his work. The place that I had visited many many times before. To meet him there after work when we shared the one car, when I would take the kids to visit him when he worked on a weekend, sometimes bearing coffee or lunch, where I would pop in sometimes on my lunch break bearing lunch or just to say hello. But on this day, I approached with a little bit of dread.

And then when he came out to see us, I started feeling sick. Anxious. Uncomfortable. And I started breathing quickly. I hard to deliberately breathe deeply to calm down.

We made chit chat. I found it difficult to make eye contact. I breathed deeply. He could appreciate how I felt, so he offered to walk us up to our car. Or that may have been a nice way of making sure I didn't hang around!

And then at a time when I was feeling out of control and out of my depth, I bumped into a friend who I was planning to catch up with in a couple of weeks. We chatted in front of P, and I thanked the universe for reminding me that I'm capable of making other new connections who will help pull me through, whereas BS I would have been solely reliant on P, being my husband and best friend...

But then as we left, I dropped again, and cried in the car, with the kids in the back seat. They rarely see me upset, and while I feel bad for them to see me sad, I also think it's good for them to see that yes, I do find the separation upsetting. My little boy asked me again and again "What's wrong Mumma?" and my eldest explained wisely "Mum gets sad sometimes when she sees Dad".

So I pulled out of the car park, the tears in my eyes clearing, my eldest pointed out that my favourite song was playing on the radio. So I cranked it up, and we sang about Happiness is the Truth all the way home.