I renamed my thread, see title of this post. (how do I make it official?)
Thank you so much, not only for the support but also for the helpful meditations. It is like getting sight of road signs which mark the path ahead, which let you know how to negotiate the next bend in the road (like, slow down and bear left, you idiot, or you'll go crashing through the guard rail & sailing off over the cliff!!)
I love it that I've met a group of people who just never give up (could you all be Taurus sun signs?) and who have plenty of hard information between them about what to do when your marriage stalls out and you can't think of anything else but leaving.
My mood has been remarkably even, calm, consistent since giving the good-bye letter. I didn't react much to H's (very small/weak/fragile) olive branch, and what little reaction I did have is dissipated now. He sent me an email yesterday telling me he'd put the Retrouvaille handbook & notebook into the mail, you should receive it on Friday blah, blah and "thanks for the powerful conversation" -- all I could think was "do you really like this kind of drama? You never used to be that way, H"
But I didn't have the slightest urge to answer his email, to keep the thread of relationship alive like I would have done in the past. Did do in the past, a lot. I used to glom onto any little bit of communication and keep it going, even when I was feeling pretty pessimistic or hurt or angry or disappointed with him. It's like I really have, finally, detached from my attachment to the relationship, to what it was, to what I hoped it would be again, to keeping it going at all costs.
So what am I doing? I'm sleeping well. I'm GALing. My version of GAL is to do my taxes -- which may sound like not much of a life, but it is pretty huge for me. I've never done my own taxes before. There's not a lot of things I'm afraid of. I'm not afraid of horses or large dogs. I'm not afraid of the dark or of being alone. I'm not afraid of dressing horrific physical wounds or of assisting at open heart surgery or of having a conversation with a recently bereaved person. But I am afraid of doing taxes, so that's what I'm doing these past two days. Also, I had 3 ripe banannas and I made bananna bread with them last evening -- for my entire adult life I've always had the intention and the motivation to do that with ripe banannas instead of finally sucuumbing and throwing them in the garbage because I didn't have the time to make bananna bread. I'm also thinking very hard about getting a dog. I even cut out some ads. I always said throughout the marriage, to H, that he'd spoiled other men for me and if anything ever happened to him I'd get a good Lab. Well, something happened to him.
Stay tuned. I haven't given up on the battle for the marriage yet, but I have stood down my forces for the time being.
