I was 41 years old when I married for the second time, full of hope and anticipation that this was going to be it, the final romantic interlude of my life. I'd only known him for a very short time, just a few months, but I've always been one to follow my heart, and so when I felt a little flutter, I thought, okay, this will work, particularly as he said, it would be quite nice to try and have a baby, and that was something that I'd always wanted. So the first couple of years were great, well, almost great.
I lost a couple of babies, which was very hard, but then I had my beloved daughter when I was 43, and life just continued very happily for a few years. Obviously, in a family, you get very involved in the rest of your family's life, so there's not much time for you, but that is a very small price to pay for the joy you get. After seven years of marriage, my husband suddenly announced that he wanted a divorce.
He was unhappy, he wouldn't tell me why, he wouldn't discuss it, and for several months, he went back and forth, couldn't decide whether to go or stay, and in the end, he decided to stay. Fast forward another seven years, and he had a similar thing, only this time, he actually said that he was in love with someone else. Obviously, I was horrendously shocked, and I suggested he go and be with her if she mattered that much to him, but again, after a few months of prevarication, he decided to stay with us.
Then, just before my, just after my 67th birthday, we were away for a weekend and staying in a very nice hotel, and I woke up in the morning to find him making a cup of tea, which was not unusual, because he made a cup of tea almost every morning of our married life, and I said to him, are you all right, love? You seem very quiet, and he said, and his words will stick forever in my mind, no, I'm not all right, actually, I don't love you anymore, I haven't loved you for years, our marriage is over, and I'm not coming back to live in New Zealand.
We were in England at the time. As you can imagine, I was so shocked, I was just stunned, I didn't know what to say, what to do.
Obviously, I cried and all the normal things, but somehow we got through the day, he didn't want to tell our daughter at that time, I think he just didn't know how to really, but at the end of the day, she was spending the weekend with us, and at the end of the day, she realised that something was up, and so I told her. It was a very horrendous time, but fast forward five years, and now I am a published author. In the two years, I started during COVID.
COVID was a time that changed very many of us, not necessarily for the better, but for me, it was a blessing, because I was alone, that wasn't the blessing, I was alone, I was miserable, I spent the first three weeks of COVID, of lockdown, lying on my sofa, watching rubbish on Netflix and eating far too much chocolate, and then I thought, Pat, this is ridiculous, this could go on for a few more weeks, you must do something.
How naive I was to think it would only go on for a few more weeks, and so I thought, why don't you write a book? So I did, and a few months later, it was published, and I've now written seven, and contributed to anthologies, and been interviewed, and basically, I'm having a wonderful, wonderful time, none of which would have happened if it hadn't been for COVID, and my husband abandoning me.
So now, here I am, aged 72, a strong, independent, powerful woman, not the people pleaser I've been my whole entire life, although obviously, there's still little bits of that still there, but basically, I'm now living a very good life, a life that I've made for myself, and yeah, it just shows that sometimes, if you can manage to bounce back when life becomes awful, it can be better, there can be better things around the corner.
You can hear this story narrated by Pat Backley on Catch the Story! Podcast:
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