My relationship with Alex started to suffer the effects of the situation. I’d get upset whenever I spoke to or visited them. I felt guilty at the way I was treating them as everything I was doing was against the religious and cultural beliefs I’d had drummed into me as a child. I was in a relationship outside the sanctity of marriage, I was living in sin and I was hurting my parents. It couldn’t have got worse in their eyes unless I’d murdered someone.
The guilt was
and still is the most difficult thing to live with. I try not to dwell on what
I’ve done, but it’s always there, hanging over me. It’s like a bad feeling all
over my body and inside me. Sometimes, without warning, it makes my heart
plummet at the realisation of the enormity of what I’ve done. It’s like a slow
disease which I feel creeping all over my body. It doesn’t matter how much
I or others justify what I did, the
guilt's always there.
Alex was
understanding but the situation started to suffocate the relationship. He felt
there was no space for anything else but my issues, my family, my guilt, my
religion. I hadn’t realised how much I was leaning on him for support as I was
just trying to get through the situation. But we managed to stay together, with
a couple of brief periods apart.
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