by Poorna Bell
That simple. It was that easy to go from someone tethered to everything they loved, to someone on the streets.
I couldn’t let that happen to Rob. I couldn’t have him dying slowly in a bedsit. Freezing to death in an alleyway because he had nowhere to live. And there was a danger of it happening because I knew how hard he found it to ask for help, how his pride would kick in.
I didn’t trust anyone else, only his family. He had, as he said, alienated many of his friends. It was a lot to ask, in any case – they had their own lives.
In matters like this, family was needed. And they happened to be in New Zealand. I knew Rob was scared about going back, and in hindsight this was probably tied to the demons he thought he’d left behind by dint of geography, yet had always been with him.
‘The decision is yours, Bobbie,’ I said, ‘but it’s the one that makes most sense. You’ll have a time out, you won’t have to worry about work and it’ll be good to be somewhere that isn’t London.’
He didn’t want to be that far away from me or Daisy, but eventually he came to see it as a way of forging a new relationship with his parents and spending time with his family. We managed to find someone who was willing to foster Daisy through the Wood Green animal charity, so we knew she’d be looked after properly while he was away.
I was relieved because I knew that Rob would be safe, for a time. That he wouldn’t fall down a crack and disappear.
Whenever I see a homeless person on the street, whatever state they are in – elegant like William or shaking in the withdrawal of some drug – I try to give them money. It’s for three reasons. One is to say, I see you. You are a human being, not trash on the street, and I see you.
The second is because it can go on food or it might go on drugs. But I have to hope it will go on food and give them another day.
But the third, and most overwhelming, is that for all our family, for all of our friends, that person caught in a battle raging far beyond the street upon which they sit, that could have been Rob.
We had seven weeks until he was due to leave for New Zealand and, in that time, we were going to stay together under the same roof. On the first day, we didn’t know what to do about sleeping in the same bed.
‘I’ll respect whatever you want,’ Rob said. He looked so defeated.
‘We’re sleeping in the same bed,’ I said firmly.
At first, I couldn’t comprehend that I wouldn’t be able to kiss him. I tried to kiss him and he pulled away. It’s hard to explain without making him sound noble because there was a lot in that seven weeks which was hard and horrible thanks to Rob – but I knew why he wouldn’t kiss me. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to. It’s because, in that regard, he was a better person than me and knew I had made a tough choice, and kissing each other would only complicate things for me.
He wanted me to make the decision to stay with him with a clear head, not out of nostalgia or because of muddled feelings.
Certainly, there were also shades of martyrdom in him. We were on the path of separation and he would see it through on bloodied stumps if he had to. ‘We made a promise to each other,’ he said.
He saw some of this as penance, professing to go vegetarian as Christian saints and Hindu sadhus had done. ‘Just eat the fucking chicken, Rob,’ I said savagely. ‘Salvation isn’t going to come through chickpeas.’
Prue was going to fly over to give us support, and Rob was imminently about to go into the Priory for a second stint. The night before he was due to go in, he offered to cook dinner and I came home to find him with a hoarse, high-pitched voice.
I laughed and said: ‘What happened? You sound like a lay-dee.’
‘I think I’m coming down with something. Maybe tonsillitis,’ he replied. I’d been the same when I once had tonsillitis, so I just nodded.
His voice continued to be hoarse for a few days.
When I saw Rob’s admittance notes after he died, it said that he had tried to hang himself before coming in. My blood ran cold.
An evening of dinner and talking could instead have been coming home to find his body hanging from the bannister. And I had laughed. I had laughed at his voice and he had gone on with the charade.
His stay in the Priory this time was different. There was no swagger, no stories about the other patients. He was broken as a person and looked it. He had gone in there having taken heroin the day before, and so rather than engaging in groups, he spent the first few days in withdrawal.
When I visited him he was gaunt, like a skeleton. Where was the colour in his cheeks? The strong forearms I loved? I was looking at a shell; the man inside was crumbling.
We sat in an empty therapy room and he could barely look at Daisy. He started crying about children, our children that we would probably never have. Then that made me cry. ‘I pictured what they would look like,’ I said through my tears. But instead of holding me, it was a moment of such pain, such sharp regret and loss, that he asked if I minded leaving because he needed to be alone.
I think he realised that even if we managed to patch things up, he wouldn’t ever be well enough to raise kids. A child deserves safety, love and consistency. How, in good conscience, could he put another person, someone he loved, in the chaos of his own addiction? And the blow was even harder because right up to his last relapse, he believed it was completely possible. In a letter to my cousin Prarthana at the time, back when they were teaching each other Maori and Tulu – my family’s language – he wrote: ‘Today’s Maori word: Aroha. Meaning love. Spoken like a wolf, and my daughter’s name.’
When he came out of hospital, days were punctuated with chaos – I’d wake to find him gone, having left the house in the middle of the night to stay with NA friends. My mornings would start with panic, trying to figure out where he was until I received a text saying he was all right.
One of the hardest things was the disentanglement of our lives, the utter mundane mixed with the deeply personal. He needed to wrap up things like his gym membership before leaving, cancel work insurance, put his things in the loft.
In the midst of all of this, we argued like we had never argued before – I was so angry that he’d thrown our marriage away, that he’d thrown me away. I was sorry Prue was caught in the middle of it, but at the same time her presence was an immeasurable help, especially because I needed to talk to someone about what was really going on.
He’d say things like: ‘You know, if you were a bartender, I can’t help but wonder . . . ’
‘Wonder what, Rob?’ I replied, my jaw clenching at the subtext of what he was saying. That if I was a bartender, I’d be more focused on him and would have more time. Less career-minded. That maybe this mess was my fault because, y’know, I hadn’t spent quite enough time worried sick and helping him.
If I was the type of career woman who worked long hours and weekends and cancelled plans with loved ones, I could completely understand it. But I’m a Type A, who works like a laser-focused motherfucker during the time I’m in the office. I leave on time, I sleep like a boss and I always, always prioritise my family over work. This is because I know that, when I eventually die, I’m never, ever going to say I wish I’d spent more time in the office.
‘Because,’ I continued, not allowing him to reply, ‘if I was a bartender, you wouldn’t have had private treatment. Or access to the best doctors. You would’ve been left to rot and die in this shitty, poor excuse for a mental health service that we have in this country. So put that in your fucking pipe and smoke it.’
It would’ve been more dramatic had he not actually been smoking a cigarette at the time.
But who was this person? My husband – my real husband – was proud of me, and of my job. When we started dating he was glad he was with someone who could pay their own way. This was the illness manipulating his mouth like a marionette – trying to rationalise and bargain the wrong things. Avoiding insight at all costs.
Despite wonderful nuggets like this, genuinely, deep down, the
re was a spark in me that hoped Rob could find his way. That he would hit rock bottom and come back up.
A week before he left, towards the end of March, spring had arrived.
It seemed wrong that amid all of this anger and sadness, cherry blossom appeared in pink hopeful puffs, daffodils shook their yellow heads at us from the ground, and tulips, brief but bright, puckered their lips as we moved about our lives in grey.
We went for one last dinner at our favourite Italian restaurant, having almost argued our way out of the evening. We wanted one night when we didn’t fight, didn’t cry and didn’t get sad.
‘We need to conduct the rest of the week with dignity and love,’ he texted. I agreed.
At dinner, I ordered crab linguine dusted with cheese; Rob had tiger prawns and clams. We looked at each other and felt that connection back to a place of pure love. Whatever the reality, whatever happened between us, we knew that our bond existed in that place.
Somehow we had an evening where we felt loved, we discussed the true state of our relationship, the possibility of not being able to reconcile, and walked home.
There was a moment I remember perfectly. We held hands and walked down a lamp-lit path that ran through a small park, connecting a canal to the road our house sat on. I could hear the water rushing past in the stream. See the fringe of cherry blossom up ahead, the earth stirring itself into a lush green, and a clear sky of stars looking down.
We stopped along the path and Rob cried because he started talking about babies. We held each other and hugged underneath the moonlight, and something told me in that instant that this was the last time we would ever stand in that spot together.
I tried to remember every detail: the way he smelled, how his arms felt around me, the blossom under a night sky. I felt his sobs pass through me.
Then when we got home, as we were fishing around for the door key, I asked him what would happen to all of his plant pots crammed into the tiny front garden, little green stubs waiting for the right season. And he said: ‘Well, they’ll start to do something wonderful soon.’
And then I started crying. For the flowers that would arrive in the absence of my husband, for the irrepressible nature of life, that things go on living even when you feel like everything in your world is dying.
A week later, Rob relapsed on alcohol, turning up at 3am drunk and unable to stand.
The following morning he was remorseful but said, ‘It’s not a relapse’ and, ‘It’s not a big deal.’ But I knew how big a deal it was. By this point I was angry, but I wasn’t surprised. And the anger felt different this time – it felt like I wasn’t carrying our future in my hands. Our season was over, and it would take a miracle for us to find our way back.
After my anger exhausted itself, we spent the day together. We shared the same bed and our limbs were wrapped around each other for the last time. There was no sex, just us under the sheets with our pyjamas on, being as close as you could possibly be.
The next morning, he walked me to my car. I was driving to my parents’ to spend some time with my family and I couldn’t be at home when Prue and he left for the airport, it would be too hard.
I remember the exact spot on the street. The sun was shining, the leaves on the hedge glossy, young and light green.
‘You are the love of my life, Rob,’ I said, holding his face in my hands. ‘I’m going to miss you so much. Please, please look after yourself.’
‘I love you,’ he replied. ‘I will always love you. You will always be perfect and beautiful to me.’
And then he kissed me. Properly kissed me. From the earth’s core, past rock and roots and up through our toes, it came from that place where big love lives.
It was lightning and fire, and it was the last time we would ever kiss.
I felt how keenly he reached out to me when he was in Auckland. I felt his heartache and yearning across the ocean, wiggling past sea urchins and clownfish, over the backs of sharks and through the blowholes of whales.
We were in contact every day at first, and then kept in touch via email, Skype and talking on the phone. The disapproval from the people in my life was not just palpable, it was vocalised pretty loudly. We shouldn’t be in contact as much, they said. ‘Yes, yes,’ I said to their faces, and behind closed doors I ignored them.
None of them understood the complexities of your loved one having depression, and who was to lay out the terms of separation but the two of us?
‘It’s not fair, Poorna,’ they said. ‘If you know things are over, you need to put him out of his misery.’
But I didn’t know things were over. Or if I did, I wasn’t ready to articulate it. I didn’t know what I wanted, and I was going through the first bout of depression I had ever experienced, caused by the breakdown of my marriage.
We didn’t break up because I stopped loving him. We broke up because I loved myself enough to realise that I deserved to be in a relationship where I wasn’t lied to, and because the longer I stayed with him, the less I respected myself, and eventually I would stop loving him.
The idea that I wouldn’t ever want the best for Rob, that a day would come when I wouldn’t care what happened to him, was simply unthinkable – I couldn’t stand that.
So when we separated, I was in love with him.
These people expected me to be clear-headed and to make huge decisions around things I barely felt capable of acknowledging. In fact, it was so overwhelming I needed to sign off work for two weeks.
When we Skyped, I wanted to be with him. I saw the books behind him at Prue’s house and when I closed my eyes I was there with a cup of tea and a biscuit. I saw him on the deck at Felicity’s and I could smell the roses in her front garden.
But, at the same time, I had a creeping suspicion that something was wrong in New Zealand, and I was worried that he might have started drinking again. There was a slightly bizarre edge to some of his messages.
As usual, any misgivings I had were muddled by signs of recovery. He signed up to a detox programme that seemed like it would help him turn things around.
‘But that would mean I’m here longer than the three months,’ he said, squinting at me through the screen. Three months was the period of separation I’d asked for, and said we’d have a chat about what to do with our relationship after that.
‘Rob, whatever happens with us, your recovery is more important than our relationship. I’ve already told you that,’ I replied.
The problem, it seemed to everyone else, was that Rob was placing so much hope in us being able to reconcile, while in my mind, that was going to be very unlikely. ‘But he knows this,’ I told them. ‘We’ve spoken about it.’ Under no circumstances had I tried to fool him or lead him on. I had been very clear that the future did not look good for us.
This manic hope was pure Rob – it was the inability to accept the circumstances while at the same time being aware of the reality.
I suggested that we take a break from talking about our relationship for a while, but he couldn’t help himself. He sent me an email.
I don’t ask that you respond in any way. I just need to get it out.
So where we’re at is either a beginning or an ending. I believe there’s a parallel with recovery, in that our marriage is at the kind of rock bottom that brings people into recovery. We either go our separate ways or we bring our marriage into recovery and use this rock bottom to build something much stronger, durable, rewarding and powerful.
I believe we have a true love, one I personally would have no hope of replicating in the rest of a life without you in it. I believe our marriage is worth us fighting for.
And I also understand very, very clearly why that is something you’re asking yourself whether you can do, whether you can take the risk, whether you would be made to feel a fool.
Despite him saying he didn’t want an answer, he did. Despite me saying I didn’t want to talk about it, he did.
Those words were a bolt of clarity that cut through my
mental fog: I didn’t have it in me to trust him. I didn’t have the energy to rebuild our life because I knew – however hard he tried – that it would fall to me to do so.
And so, eventually, eighteen days later, when I finally mustered the courage, I wrote him a letter saying I didn’t see a beginning, only an ending. I told him I loved him, that he was the only man I had ever loved like that, but that too much had happened for me to think things would be different.
He called me. He soothed me as I cried down the phone. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Rob, I love you but I can’t.’
‘Hey, hey, honey,’ he said, ‘it’s okay. I understand. I love you, okay?’ In that conversation, his voice was calm, full of love and compassion. He said everything I needed to hear, perhaps things I didn’t deserve to hear. He said he wanted happiness and peace for me, he said he would be all right. That he was going to try to fix his life and find value in it.
But over the next seven days, he went up and down dramatically. The next day he could barely talk. Then he asked me not to contact him while sending me texts asking why I hadn’t replied. He said, ‘We should speak one last time’ and I would go, ‘What the hell do you mean, one last time?’ This went on and on. I couldn’t win.
He was at Felicity’s, in her back garden, when we had our last Skype chat. I was in my bedroom, wrapped up in blankets at eleven in the morning, still signed off work.
‘I don’t know how I’m ever going to be happy again,’ he said and started crying. ‘There will never be anyone but you.’
I looked at this man, my husband, and wondered how we had gotten here. I wanted to hold him, see him, touch him. The thought of us never being husband and wife again seemed wrong, considering how much we loved each other.
We started talking slowly, then we made a joke about someone we knew and started laughing. He smiled at me and said: ‘I love you. I will always love you.’
I love you too. I think the words. I think them with all my heart. But I hear everyone else’s voice in my head about leading him on and so I don’t say it back.
