H just moved out, 13 months post-bomb

[Dawn of Hope]

I have been reading a little here and there on the boards, but not posting...I've been so sleep-deprived over the last few weeks that I would literally fall asleep every few sentences while typing. This has not been good for my business...but I did finally get my extreme procrastination of late under *some* control and got caught up with my work, finally, and am on a more normal pace with it now.

Hey, Ali, thanks for checking on me. No, I didn't make it to church last Sunday (hope to this weekend, though), but I did bake with Lynn...sugar cookies, yum! They didn't last long...I didn't even get them frosted, 'cause I couldn't stop eating them! I also made four pumpkin pies, special family recipe, and gave one to Lynn and her H, one to my neighbors who have helped me so much lately, and have been working my way through the other two, with much smacking of the lips!

No contact at all with H in two weeks now (not since voice mail exchange while I was out of town). It's been almost 3 weeks since I saw/spoke with him, and almost 4 weeks since he moved out. The only evidence I have that he's still alive is that messages periodically get moved around in our joint email account, and also most of the bills still come here, so I see the paper trails of the great masses of money he has been spending. I can't imagine that he can sustain this sort of thing financially. He's already cashing in life-insurance policies that his parents bought for him when he was young, and borrowing from his retirement funds, to pay for his current activities. I don't know how he plans to keep this up. I AM happy I don't have to listen to him complaining about finances right now, though. Maybe OW will be more sympathetic. Or maybe she will realize that he doesn't have the financial resources to be her sugar daddy indefinitely. Of course, she's only 23. I was pretty naive when I was that age, myself.

My mom was asking me last night what I was going to do about seeing that my cats are taken care of while I'm at her house for a couple of days over Christmas, and I told her either I would check with Lynn to see if it would be okay for her to stop in, or I would just make sure they had plenty of food and water, since I will only be gone for two days, and they will be okay for that length of time. She suggested having H look in on them (his family is mostly local, so he probably wouldn't be going out of town on Christmas, unless things are moving really fast with OW). She seemed surprised when I said "NO!" to the idea of asking H to stop in. I explained that I was leaving H strictly alone to give us both some space, and also to give him the opportunity to begin realizing that I am not actually the source of all the misery in his life. I don't think she really understands why I am doing NC, but she accepts my decisions.

So...I wish I had posted yesterday, when I was feeling pretty good, thinking that my ADs were working nicely. I had gotten myself completely strung out from lack of sleep over the last few weeks, but I finally started turning it around the night before last, and got to bed at 1 a.m. (which is the earliest I've been to bed in two months), and got about 10 hours of sleep. I felt a lot better just because of that. But then last night I stayed up later than I should again, although it was still dark when I went to bed (unlike a lot of days in the recent past), but then I woke up upset repeatedly--four nightmares in a row that had to do with H. I got to the point that I was almost afraid to fall asleep again. I have a history of nightmares, but not usually this many in one night. And I haven't had as many in the last year and a half or so as before, which I think is because my nightmares are happening while I'm wide awake these days. So, anyway, my upsetting night is my take on the reason I'm feeling sad and sorry for myself again today, and yesterday's good mood has completely evaporated.

So, yesterday I felt kinda strong and courageous and almost happy. Today I feel sad and hopeless and tired and overwhelmed. Angry, as I feel a lot these days. I have studied the stages of grief, and I know that I whizzed through denial and bargaining, but have spent enormous amounts of time cycling between anger and depression. I don't think I am anywhere near acceptance yet.

I also pray every day about forgiveness, but it seems totally out of my reach. I did finally figure out that a big part of my problem is that I feel like forgiving H means that in some sense, what he has done is okay. And it is definitely NOT okay in my mind. I finally just started saying to God, "Okay, I can't forgive him on my own. I know I have to do it somehow or other, but I simply can't figure out how to do this by myself. I'm totally stuck. If this is going to happen, I need your help. I'm handing this off to you to take care of, because I simply can't manage it by myself." Usually I try to control most things on my own, so this is a real switch for me.

I wish I could be more positive right now. However, I've noticed that the worse I feel, the more I am compelled to journal/post, so my writing may reflect a more uniformly pessimistic mindset than what is actually true of me in the long run, although the way I write is reflective of how I feel at that moment.

I have now reached the point at which I am sick of "listening" to myself, which tells me it's definitely time to quit writing. I hope I have something more positive to say next time. Thank you all for reading and supporting and advising me.

Peace,
Dawn