It would seem that a new life can come at a person from any direction, even from an old one. With the gentle rain falling outside my window, I am looking forward to an indulgent day of reading, curled up on one of my pretty new love seats, with an old cat purring on my lap.

When I moved away from the farm last fall, it was only partly because the addictions experts advised me to do so. The theory was that by leaving my husband with the house and the wealth of responsibility that went with it, I could help him appreciate the consequences of his alcoholism and addictions and encourage him to get help. With my love and support, they told me, he was more likely to come to grips with his multiple problems and be able to lead a clean, sober, happier life. In the end, by his own choice, what has transpired with him had almost nothing to do with me. 

My own private reason for moving out was that I’d seen it all before and didn’t want to become a statistic. When a marriage ends or is in trouble, it is somehow always the wife who gets left with the detritus, seemingly destined  to rattle around in the matrimonial home, with the kids (in our case many animals), the old furniture, the wedding gifts and all those memories of things past. It is almost a given that the husband will move on pretty effortlessly to a brand new and uncomplicated life with someone else.

So it was that I wanted to break the mould; and I was fortunate enough to have friends who made it possible for that new and uncomplicated life to belong to me. Although there was no someone else on the scene, everything was different from the existence I'd had here on the farm.

With my ex in residence on the homestead, I lived nearer town, on a river, in a modern cottage with all the amenities. I sipped wine with friends in the evenings on a deck and I slept in a beautiful loft. Although I missed them terribly, I had no farm animals to feed, almost no lawns to mow, no cares whatsoever except to heal and try somehow to find a path of my own. I indulged myself in long bubble baths in the whirlpool tub, with a book and a glass of chilled white wine in my hand. For the first time in years I had soft, uncallused feet. I lunched, did volunteer work, walked by the water, took up my camera again. I spent most weekends entertaining house guests, dining out, or visiting friends in lovely parts of the province I hadn’t seen in years. Slowly, with time,  I felt my single spirit coming back to life.

So it’s funny now to be back here in the country, especially on my own. True to every one of the cliches, my ex husband lost no time in establishing that proverbial new life anyway. Blithely, without a backward glance, he eschewed the important first year of solo recovery to replace me with a woman younger than I am and nowhere near as well educated or as bright. Because she is living near Chester, that’s the only place on earth he wants to be. By the late spring, like our marriage, the farm and everything on it had faded easily into his "then" while, in the ensuing chain of events, inching its way gradually back into my "now." I am so grateful that it did.

In the end I have come to be the one in residence here, returning at first temporarily to care for my critters, and then of my own volition, to the place I once so fervently intended to leave behind - to the unkempt acreage and the aging animals and the dear, decrepit old farmhouse whose charm I fell in love with all those many years ago.

Thanks to the long months I spent on my own elsewhere, I have learned that our happiness lies not in our geography but in our selves; and that just because the standard scenario usually plays out, doesn’t mean it is always a bad one or that it won't be fulfilling for me.

There are times when it is appropriate to describe life and other times when it is better just to live it. It is now the last day of what, for me anyway, was an incredibly difficult year. In my own experience 2010 marked many months of living alone as a “film widow,” the passing of several much loved animals, the implosion of a lengthy marriage, and the beginning of another life in a lovely borrowed cottage on the banks of the La Have River.

In the four months that have ensued since my last post, the “sturm und drang” that heralded my leaving home have morphed into something else as my husband and I have both had time to process the events of the late summer.  Over time the iciness between us has melted and by now we have grown close again, sometimes even able to really talk.

As I write this, he has been sober for three months, is undergoing counselling, and has become a faithful attendee of AA, an organization for which he has nothing but gratitude and respect. A week from now, by his own choice,  he will enter a residential rehabilitation programme to continue his brave attempts to explore and conquer the underlying problems that have tormented him for years. I will live here at the farm to care for the animals, but only while he is away. 

After a slow year, the legal research through which I make my living experienced a sudden resurgence in the fall and I have been far too busy to spend too much time looking backward. I love the tranquility and beauty of the cottage and the ability to control my own existence. At the same time, I can’t stop myself from missing my home.  

I have come back for the Christmas holidays, partly to allow my kind and generous friends to inhabit their own space and partly, truth be told, to see what is left of the life and love I left behind. This has been incredibly bitter-sweet. Especially here, with the animals and the rituals of Christmas still in place, there is a real battle waging between what I “know” in my head and what I feel in my heart.

This fall I joined the wonderful group of people who run the Lunenburg County Film Series and have volunteered to Habitat for Humanity, who are gearing up to start a new built in the new year.  I have read countless books, taken advantage of the free month subscription to Netflix and joined the occasional ranks of the ladies who lunch. Although I’ve been clear headed and perfectly functional, the emotional pain, anger and frustration that derive from years in an alcohol marriage linger inside me and still get in my way. I too have much internal work to do.

Tonight, in this place, with the man who is still my husband beside me, I will observe again the ritual to which we have held for two decades ; we will dine on cheese fondue and Caesar salad, sit by the fire and watch Casablanca, and toast the incoming year, this time with sparkling de-alcoholized wine.

With the next chapter far from written and the words just beginning to flow, there are only two things I know for sure.  The first is that, even if we can’t rescue the marriage, we will never stop loving one another. The second is that, whatever is to come, that future can only define itself  slowly. 

It will happen  “one day at a time.”