Reader, I Married Him.

'Moving on'. A stupid phrase, with so many negative implications, don't you think? When I hear people talk about moving on, it's always about dumping things, dumping people, dumping situations, and in a lot of ways, it is about all that. The things cluttering up your home that you've held on to, yet never really liked.  Clothes that don't fit, or never suited you anyway (what was I thinking when I bought that yellow suit?).

Those so-called friends who were really a bunch of miscreants whose only source of entertainment was to make your life a living hell, with their bitchiness and dramas, gossip and interfering.

The misery, the sorrow, the grief. Dump it all, let it go.

Instead of investing time and emotion on the negative aspects of my life, I choose now to focus on the important things, the things that have made me happy over the past few years, those moments of joy that have kept me going through - adversity I suppose, for want of a better, less worn-out word.

I have wonderful memories of my mother that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I have family who love, value and respect me as much as I do them, and I cherish that.

I have friends who bind me to them with their good sense and humour, their bravery, their companionship and love.

I have pictures that remind me of happy times, and souvenirs of a life well lived.

I have clothes that make me feel good, confident and strong whenever I choose to wear them, and the books on my shelves and music on my iPod stimulate my heart, soul and mind.

My knitting and cooking fire up my passions and move me to create, even if the end results are a pile of crap, I still love and enjoy them so very much.

As well as these, and so much else, I have a partner in life who has held my hand, kissed my lips and loved me unconditionally for seventeen years, through the good, bad and woeful of times.

"Babe", he said to me one day, "let's get married".

And so we did.

As many of our friends and family that could, came together at a registry office in Jersey, Channel Islands, and watched two confirmed batchelors - or so we thought - solemnly(-ish) declare to love and care for each other for the rest of our lives, signing our marriage certificate to the strains of 'Stone Cold Dead In The Market'. A wholly inappropriate song, I suggest you look it up for confirmation. Much later at the reception, we watched as guests laughed, ate a shed-load of cake, swam in the pool and, in the case of our younger guests, beat the living crap out a fish-shaped pinata. Yes, there were tons of pictures. No, I don't have any of them. I'm hoping to see some at some point, if people are kind enough to send them in. I'm told that some are absolute corkers.

What a wonderful bunch of people you all are, I am still overwhelmed that you came, and send you as much love and best wishes as you sent to us.

The next day, Studley and I packed up our stuff and sailed off to the island of Sark, where we walked a lot, talked a lot, laughed and ate (a lot), and fished in the sunshine, and for the first time in a long time I was truly, completely and ecstatically happy.

And so it is that I - that is to say, we - move on with a new sense of selves, a new feeling of belonging. All the things, the situations, that made us unhappy in the past will never completely disappear, we would be foolish to think they ever will. Crap comes along, it brings its' mates and sometimes eats at your heart. That's what crap does, right? It takes up space in your mind and screws with you from time to time.

But things feel different now. I feel different now.

I'm happy. Happier than I have ever been in my whole life.

I married my best friend.