Upwards

That last entry was indeed the last entry in that beautiful diary of mine and even reading it back now has me in floods of tears.

But of course my story was not yet over. Life goes on even if my accounts of it do not. So right now I’m going to take a moment to fill you in on everything that has happened between the time of my last diary entry and the time of my first entry in this brand-spanking new leather-bound beauty.

In films and TV shows, everything always works out alright. Love is so simple in the plays and the novels and the power ballads that sometimes we forget how complicated it can be in real life. How much it can hurt. Of course, they always try to make it seem that love does hurt, in sitcoms for example, with all of the cheating and the illegitimate children and sudden horrific death by tram crash. But essentially we all know that these are just temporary setbacks. We know that the Rosses will always end up with the Rachels eventually because what else is there to believe in? Nobody would be happy if everything turned out shit, with all the heartbreak and the crying and the endless nights of real life, would they?

My life is not a movie (yet), more’s the pity. But I guess you can probably imagine where I’m going with this. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that love is not easy and things don’t always turn out alright in the end, alas.

I lived my life without Frank Iero for two years. And that is not to say that those were two easy years, by any stretch of the imagination. They were long, hard years and not a day went by that I didn’t think about Frank and wonder what might have happened had I decided differently that night and pushed my doubts aside and stayed with him. That way madness lies, believe me.

Of course I missed him. For all that time I ached for him, pined for him, spent some nights crying because I was alone and he was god knows where with god knows who doing god knows what. But as the time went on these feelings faded until it was all so long ago that I could barely remember ever being with him at all. For the most part I was far too busy to be reminiscing and feeling sorry for myself.

So let me catch you up. We left with me scared and alone in Philadelphia, waiting for Kate. Waiting to start a new life. She found me and tried like crazy to get me to change my mind but I was stubborn. I had made my decision and I was going to stick by it, even if it dragged me into depression. All of my thoughts felt far too dark and private for me to write them down, so the diary entries stopped. I don’t regret that. Reading through my own raw heartbreak would be awful.

We got out of the motel but stayed in Philadelphia. We found a crappy apartment to rent. Kate went back and forth to the UK and back as we were selling my father’s house. It sucked, but what can you do. The last time, she brought Atticus back with her and I was so happy I cried. This was all I felt I had to be happy about.

Kate got a good job at a top restaurant, supporting me through my pregnancy, bringing us to the birth of my daughter.

Rosie Frances Iero was born happy and healthy on August 1st 2006, with a mass of dark curls and her father’s hazel eyes. I cried for days, unsure in the end whether they were tears of joy or sadness or just relief. It didn’t really matter, I suppose. The tears all mixed together eventually.

Unless you have a child, you won’t appreciate how much you can truly love something. There was a time when I thought I loved Grey’s Anatomy and enchiladas and hell, even Frank Iero. But as soon as I looked into those big blinking eyes and held my baby in my arms and she smiled up at me, I felt a love stir within me the likes of which I could not even comprehend, even though everybody told me it was probably just gas.

A couple of months after Rosie was born, I got a job lecturing maths and statistics at a local university, and eventually they took me on as a full-time professor. I made good money; good enough, in fact, for Kate to quit her job at the restaurant (claiming she “hated the bastards anyway”) and act as a sort of live-in nanny for Rosie. She could not have been more wonderful. Every afternoon I would arrive home at four, just as they were both waking up from their nap, and every afternoon I would hold my baby in my arms and ask myself how something so incredible and beautiful could possibly have popped out of me. And Rosie would make spit bubbles or grab my nose and I could tell that what she really wanted to say was that she loved me too.

For a while we just got along. We were a family unit now. Perhaps not the most conventional family unit but we worked through it. We upgraded to a small but very pleasant house in a good neighbourhood out of the city, where apples grew on the trees and the neighbours all said good morning to one another. On the surface I was happy. But every now and then I would pass a magazine stand and My Chemical Romance would be on the cover of something and my breath would catch in my throat and render me completely winded.

It didn’t help, of course, that the band were now hugely successful after the release of their third album. It didn’t help that I couldn’t turn on MTV News without being reminded of the whole damned affair. And every time I saw Frank’s face in a music video or on the cover of a magazine I felt as if my entire life was collapsing beneath my feet and soon it would just be nothingness. It blindsided me, every time.

But still life goes on. Through all the shit and the mistakes, the world keeps turning. I never bought the magazines or the albums or the posters. Mostly I was afraid of learning something that I wouldn’t like.

“Do you miss him?” Kate asked me one evening, as we sat on the couch and drank rosé wine and watched a Jennifer Aniston film. I forget which one, but aren’t they all the same, really? She is sad for a while but then everything is okay. She gets the man. The one who has loved her all along but didn’t realise it. Sigh.

My reply came easily. “Every day.”

She nodded in understanding and we turned back to the screen for a while. Something important and life-affirming was happening in the foreground and she was driving around the city crying and they were playing a song by Plain White Tees which always made me want to cry, too. Then Kate turned back to me. “Any regrets?”

I thought about his success with the band. How people knew his name. How some kids in my classes wore t-shirts and hoodies with his face emblazoned on them. None of that would have happened if I had stayed. Christ knows how we would be living. “No,” I had said quietly but firmly. “No regrets.”

You might be thinking that there was a lack of romance in my life at this stage. You wouldn’t be far wrong. I attempted dating (Kate basically forced me to) but as I think I already mentioned, I barely had time for anything these days, and truth be told that was quite alright with me. The thought of being with another man while I was still married, and still very much in love with Frank, made me just too anxious. I had Kate to order takeouts and watch movies with, and I had Rosie to cuddle and love, and I had Atticus to occupy the other side of my bed every night. Very rarely did I feel lonely. I even had a couple of friends now.

So I guess you could say that yes, the times they were a-changing. Gone was the awkward, solitary, nervous wreck Daisy, and here was the new, improved, socially-aware and almost confident Daisy. At long last, I felt like I had crawled from my cocoon, or some shit like that.

A lot can change over two years.