A Town Called Malice

I’d never listened to the words before.

It was a song from my teenage years. A time when my life was in upheaval because I was still a child but with a huge number of adult responsbilities.

Ruf laughed at me because, yet again, I had said I was sorry about something for which I had no need to apologise. It was not my error or fault for not being a mindreader and thus being able to preempt a desire or prevent a problem.

He started humming the tune and then mumbling the words:

And stop apologising for the things youve never done,
Cos time is short and life is cruel -
But its up to us to change
This town called malice.

…which, of course, became an earworm in my head so I had to look up the lyrics.

Struggle after struggle – year after year
The atmospheres a fine blend of ice -
I’m almost stone cold dead
In a town called malice.

It seemed to sum up quite succinctly the way I feel about the last few years in terms of my homelife. The issues are unchangeable but, with Ruf’s help, I was starting to be able to deal with the effects of those stresses in a way that did not leave me in a black hole of frustrated depression.

Because, as Paul Weller sings:

… I’d sooner put some joy back
In this town called malice.

It was another reason that I knew that things could not continue as they were. Something had to change radically to stop my life from spiralling out of control into the abyss.

I have to regain my independence in order to show my children that I do have the self-respect to fight back. That marriage is not all about sitting on your hands and becoming submerged in misery.

I need my own space where I can say without fear of contradiction that something should or should not be done, that there are acceptable codes of behaviour which involve consideration for others.

And, you know, since I had that first conversation, things have started to improve in terms of the relationship with the man whose name I bear. In an effort to reach the most satisfactory outcome for our children, we have talked more in the last few days than in the last two years.

Certainly those discussions do not relate to blame or behaviour or intimacy so there is no going back.

But, if it is possible to have a civilised divorce, then we will do our utmost to achieve it.