Regret

I’m going to stick to just these two entries. We are hot off the press of the entry I’ve just written for Thursday 3 September and now, given it is Sunday evening, I’ll write the entry for this one.

This weekend I went to Manchester and spent Friday and Saturday night at J&J’s home and was introduced in person to their new son E. They surprised me in the most wonderful way by asking if I would like to be E’s godfather. I have accepted and I am delighted and I thank them profusely but I also need to think carefully about what it is it means to be a godparent. I think it means I have some responsibility in ensuring E is raised properly and potentially to some degree raised properly in the Christian faith.

This is the sort of thing I think J&J might take reasonably seriously and so I am inclined to take it seriously too. This week I will take a few minutes to think about my new responsibilities as a godparent and to make some plans about how I could be a good one.

Before I go too much into the good stuff I have a small confession. Yesterday was L’s birthday and I still haven’t quite let go. I definitely feel a lot more sadness and some regret too so I think these are emotions which reflect I am coming to terms with the idea our relationship is over. L hasn’t contacted me, other than to ask for the return of her deposit, since December 2025. I should admit I feel a little bit ridiculous thinking about her in September 2026. Yet I do and so why should I be ashamed of my feelings? They’re my feelings and I am having them, and that’s OK.

I sent her £10 for her birthday. I still have her bank details so I sent the money with the reference ZNSRKL. These are the initials of the Chinese words meaning I wish you a happy birthday. I feel a little bit embarrassed about all of this. I broke up with her, I had good reasons to break up with her, I was concerned about where I was going in the relationship, my mental and physical state, how durable the relationship was, given some of our differences, and I felt moving out of London was the right time to break the relationship up. All she’s done is accepted a decision I made.

I do sometimes feel upset. When L and I first got together she went back to China to visit her family and while she was there had dinner with her ex. Initially she didn’t tell me about it and later when she did tell me she said nothing untoward happened but they needed to talk about certain things like the home and other bits and pieces their families had started to buy for them. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I have not appreciated the breaking up with L was going to mean having no contact. I imagined we might be the same. Able to see each other.

A couple of years into our relationship I asked whether the people she was following and being followed by on Instagram and other social media platforms were people she’d had some kind of romantic connection with and the next day she told me she had removed them so I guess I just felt surprised and hurt she would proactively remove me when this hadn’t been her way before. One possible reason is she was hurt and upset and needed the space perhaps she still needs space but I am not doing a very good job of giving it to her.

So a bit of a mixed weekend, some time with friends, a new godson, the third Toy Soldier event at Element Games in Manchester and time with friends from that community. But in the background some quiet moments of sadness. Why was I vindictive at the end of that relationship?