WAW says "I'm filing for D", but no papers

[SirPrizeMe]

YES, on the all-of-a-sudden getting renewed interest in activities....

In my case, W was drawing before the bomb, but some of it was "for" OM. In one case she spent 8+ hours on a self-portrait and signed it to OM, and then hung it in the studio I had set up for her.

It's as if the shrapnel from the bomb contaminated the act of drawing. What a nightmare. The one thing she really likes to do, yet after the bomb she totally stopped.

Why? Why avoid what fulfills you? why avoid what you love? guilt? shame? obstinance? Maybe she really does despise me, though she has never said that), and she was refusing to draw while I was around because she knew it would make her happy. (Doing things you love - that's the path out of depression.) Whoa! Ok, what I just wrote sounds like a paranoid hallucination. Maybe (more likely?) the act of drawing made her think of OM, and she couldn't bear it.

Now she is feeling free to draw again, to pursue her passion. Only now, after papers are filed. I wish she had felt free and inspired to do it, long ago. It's sad. I didn't know how to encourage it.

There are other similar things, too. We had bought a bunch of picture frames to hang up family photos in the new house. But the photo frames sat empty for a year. The week after I left, the frames were up with the kids' photos in them. It really *is* too bad that she couldn't do this while I was in the house. I don't know why.

Of course I could have hung up the photos myself, but the point was not to have the photos on the wall. The point was to go through the love-building effort of selecting family photos and hanging them. While hanging up family photos, you cannot help but look at them, think lovingly back to when they were taken, remember fondly. And that is what she could not do, while I was in the house.

So yes, maybe she's feeling freedom. With the divorce launched, maybe that set her free. She did comment on that idea of feeling free when we separated. On the advice of a book, we wrote up an agreement on the separation, and one of the parts was whether we would see other people during the separation. She suggested we agree that "it's ok to date other people during the separation." I told her, "Not ok with me. I don't want to reconcile with you, if you want to date other people." She said "I have no intention of dating, but I need to feel free to do so." or something like that. I stood my ground. In the end she grudgingly agreed that neither of us would date during the separation. She was not happy about it though.

This is kind of spooking me, giving me a negative vibe, which I don't want. Also I heard from my sister that she reached out to W again on her own, to encourage her to go to retrouvaille with me. Yikes! I called sis in a panic asking her please please please, do not offer any more unsolicited advice or opinions to W.

So I am a little off my game here. I need to get my head straight, in prep for another encounter with W this evening.

Maybe the filing of the divorce, and the feeling of freedom is the thing that will shake her loose, and see that things with us are not all black. Or, maybe she is galloping joyfully away from me, never to return. We shall see....

I have a bad headache now...