The Meeting

To Be Expected

It was to be expected. That's what they said when the news began to trickle through that Leah and I were living separately. It wasn't an easy decision to make, nor was it what I wanted, but it wasn't just Leah and I that had to be considered, it was the children too.

How did we get here though?

I hated the term grown apart, but I guess that's exactly what you would call it. With the children getting to an age of understanding, we knew that we had to have that talk, the talk of do they really need to be there to watch us fall out of love. We hadn't though, well I hadn't, I couldn't speak for Leah. Leah and I had long talked of having four children, it was something that always came up, no matter how many times we dismissed it and decided against it. Knowing that neither of us were getting younger, we had decided to try, just for one more. We hadn't expected that it would be easy, and we were right. It broke us.

Being older, it was inevitably harder for us to have a successful round of IVF. Leah had began to lose hope, I was sick of it though. I was sick of facing difficulty in everything I tried to do. It was difficult for me to make Leah understand my frustration, the frustration that life seemed to do nothing but take away the people I loved, even the ones that didn't exist yet. I guess you could call it delayed grief.

The final night we spent together was something I had held onto, it wasn't the drama fuelled night that people had invented, it was one filled with love and admiration for one another, with a horrible trickle of endings running through it. We both knew that this was it, that tomorrow I would move out of our family home, and we would begin to build our lives separately, joined together forever by the children, and the memories we had created along the way. When I woke the following morning, I ran my fingers along the bare skin of Leah's back, thinking of all the times I had done this previously after a night filled with passion, and wishing I had never stopped.

Flashback:

"I should go, before the kids get back." I croaked.
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry we couldn't make it."
"Me too, Al." Leah's lip quivered at the sight of me stood by the front door.

I opened the door, turning to take one last look at the woman who had shaped my life, the only person for me. Every emotion was made more intense by the fact that we were still so incredibly in love, and had we not have had the children, we probably could've fought our way through this. As my left foot stepped through the front door, a whisper from Leah stopped me in my tracks.

"I love you, Alex. I'll always love you."
"I love you. Always, Le." I whispered, making my way to the car before I broke down.

— — — —

The children struggled with adapting to this new life, staying with Leah half of the week and me the other half. They asked me, and I'm sure Leah too, if I still loved their Mum, I assured them that I always would but sometimes love just wasn't enough. Leah was good with words, she was good at telling them exactly what they needed to hear, but I had only ever truly been able to convey my emotions by writing, wanting to create a song to sing during my appearance on the Jonathan Ross show but failing miserably. In the end, I pulled out of the performance part of the show, being kicked from the line up altogether due to failing to meet contractual agreements. The headlines soon followed.

Alex Ryan KICKED from Jonathan Ross line up as she refuses to sing.

Diva: Alex Ryan gives conditions, and gets told where to go!

Alex Ryan - are we witnessing the downfall that many had foreseen?

Of course, the second the headlines dropped, I began ignoring every call that came through to my phone, except one. Except my Leah.