Mid week blues

It's Wednesday. Feels like Monday to be frank, as the 5 day week after a 4 day one is always interminable. The sun is shining and the birds are singing but...I just can't seem to get this nagging feeling out of my head that things are sort of, odd.

It's my 35th birthday on Sunday. K and I are off to Rye for a long weekend and I am sure, especially if the weather holds that it will be lovely. But there is a cloud over the whole thing as this is the first birthday I shall have without my family. They stopped speaking to me last year as they disapprove of K - above all his recovering alcoholic status offends them but other than that, the fact that he is 42, unmarried (i.e. never been married before which makes him 'weird' in their eyes) and has battled a serious illness, all contribute to their decision to ask me to choose between them and him.

I put my foot down as this is not the first boyfriend they have disapproved of and I had had enough of my life being dictated by others. The last 12 months have therefore been up and down emotionally. Some staggering lows compensated by some poignant highs, but traumatic all the same. As a result, I still don't know if I will get a birthday card from my parents or brother (who has come out in their defence without even discussing the situation with me).

I suppose I have reached that point in life when bumbling along regardless is no longer an option. I may have chosen not to go the 'high-flying corporate career' or 'yummy (ha ha) mummy' route and have ploughed my own furrow of benevolence and hedonism in equal measure! But now that I am betrothed and the future has to take some sort of shape, I am finding it a challenge to face up to all that it entails. I know that K and I need to be singing from the same song sheet or the long-term future is in question, but what sheet might that be? Whatever one we both think it is, it's certainly working right now. That said, I haven't yet figured out where it is taking us. We are both on a journey and the next few months, leading up to the wedding, will help us confirm that it's ours, unique and one that we share completely. We just need to give it some definition!!!!

I read a really thoughtful email from my friend Simon today, a career consultant, on the subject of meaningfulness. It pretty much summed up where my head was currently at. In the absence of wine (7 days and counting!) my thoughts have become much more omnipresent and powerful, as the sedative effect of being regularly sozzled since teenage slowly wears off. Even though I have abstained before, for up to 3 months in one case, I have always done it for physical rather than mental health issues. This time the issue I am addressing is my mindset and it's quite a scary path to embark upon. As Simon put it, with this quote from George Bernard Shaw:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."