I am not friendly with the new Oxford Thesaurus. The original, assembled in 1800 and something, would have been filled with delicious words, now long stuffed in the attic. Words with musical flow, words which have depth, structure, timpani and texture. I don’t mourn their loss. I do mourn their loss, but I will still find them, even though I knew nothing of the 1800s beyond the authors and constraints of the day. Today I was thinking of conjoinder, of the word for life partner, of the push and pull of any relationship. Glancing back to my own past, I saw a scatterment of brilliance, of sunlight and of storm and of unclinch. I saw the giving and the taking, of the imbalance. In the words of my old Thesaurus, battered and losing yellowed pages given half a chance, I find so many words. I was satellitic. I know I was when I fell in love. I orbited without question until I did, and then came the tumbles. I think we all know what I am saying here. Falling is wonderful and euphoric and scampatious but it doesn’t last. Looking back, glancing, I can’t say I can point a finger at the timeline when something shifted, but it did.

Relationships are a bizarreness. We contain, maintain, restrain, align, define, rejink, rethink. It’s how life is and that’s not a gloomy thing, a shadow counterpart, a darkling sepulchre. Oh no. It’s a profferance, a chance to rise. When I realised that this orbiting thing just made me dizzy and distant, I cut off all my long and thick chestnut hair with pinking shears. I was in a temper, yes. He loved my hair. I hated it. The cutting was a ferocious hack, painful and very slow. I remember walking out looking like a waif in wellies and taking pack lunches to both himself on the silage cutter and Bruce on the Something Else. I went to Bruce first. Oh, he said, his smile a bit wonky. Good luck. I nodded, handing him up big sandwiches and a drink. That walk between both tractors saw me and Lunch full focus, could have been miles. I was so visible. My first No More Orbiting illuminated, every stumble step, every mental correction, every giveaway, every risk held in my body like fizz.

He took his lunch, his face rockface, turned away. I had hours till he was home, the weather good for cutting and bailing the precious winter food. I remember the skin on my back alight as I walked home, the relief on entering the farmhouse kitchen, then the fear, the judgement I knew would come. School collection and noisy kids were a good distract. Eventually, he came back, tired, wanting what he had left at breakfast, missing that. But I had landed, no more orbiting. I had no idea where I had landed, but I had, I could feel it, the roots growing from my feet, solid and symphasistic. I didn’t feel strong at all, and even though I was banished from the marital bed, I had begun a singular journey in a conjoined duo, and I could not go back, would not.

Sine Qua Non.