E is for...

Emotion.
When I look back at the 14 years D and I were together, I find it hard to remember the good times. That's mean of me, because there WERE good times. In fact, people used to comment on how well we got on together, even though D rubbed many people up the wrong way very quickly. Through my working-from-homeness and his not-working-very-much-at-all-ness we spent huge amounts of time together, much more than most couples. And we really didn't argue that much, considering.
Yet, as I say, I find the good times hard to remember. My anger levels are still so high, after 2 years, that I'm beginning to think it's unhealthy (even though he continues to do and say things that bug me, so it's not like I'm solely angry for stuff from the past). And it's just so much easier to remember the bad times, the sad times.
One thing that should maybe have put me more on my guard than I was before he walked out was a criticism he made of me with relentless monotony. Every single argument we ever had, I should think, ended with him making some version of it. And whilst one of my (probably many) failings is that I take criticism badly, I am now adult enough most of the time to accept it (sort of). Except, of course, when I feel it is so blatantly untrue.
What was that criticism? Ha!
D used to tell me I lacked emotion, that I lacked that wonderful human capacity for feeling. In other words, he was basically telling me I am a robot.
Oh, how that hurt!
Even when I explained certain things, he wouldn't back down (for example: when our first baby died in utero back in 2000, we were both distraught. We displayed this in different ways, obviously, but I pretty much sank into total depression. We'd had a holiday booked before our baby died and we decided, even though it was literally days after she died, that we should go ahead and go, it would do us good. So we travelled by train down to Murcia to stay with a friend. D soon got into the full swing of things, and seemed to be having a good time. Me, not so much. I was leaking milk for a baby who was dead, my baby was dead. My baby was dead! And D, just 10 days after the most traumatic event in my entire life, told me to "pull myself together because my miserable face was ruining his holiday". After that, I decided that showing him how I felt bored him, so I bottled it up, kept it to myself).
I know I can appear cold and distant - I'm painfully shy and socially pretty awkward, but also extremely OVER-emotive. I cry very easily, I blush easily, my voice shakes, my hands shake... So OF COURSE I try and keep things in check. So for not particularly close friends or acquaintances to find me distant seems reasonable. But for my partner, of multiple years and much time spent together, to feel the same? Blew my mind.
How on earth could he know me, understand me, so little? It was clearly a warning sign.
Funnily enough, pretty much the same could be said of my parents - my mother in particular never seemed to have the least idea who I was or how I ticked; I think my dad does know, but a) he's an elderly British man so he never shows emotion himself and b) he disapproves of my lifestyle choices so much that he can't quite get his head round who I am.
*sigh*
Clearly, this song was written for me...