H just moved out, 13 months post-bomb

[Dawn of Hope]

Grace, thanks for posting to me. I really appreciate it! I think at this point I'm trying to stay off the ADs, although I have my bad days (like this week). Yes, I'm a member of the local chapter of NoKidding! (group for the childfree), although I've only been to a couple of events...the first one I went to was the weekend H met OW in person for the first time and spent 4 days in a hotel with her. I suppose I just have to go out and find friends instead of waiting for it to just happen naturally (which might be never, as little as I get out of the house).

I don't actually see a lot of good coming out of the "mediation." I think you're right about my friend's agenda, and have thought that from the start. I doubt H will agree to it anyway, but I figured that regardless, I should express willingness, because I'm quite sure that he is still looking for excuses to make everything my fault, and if I refused to agree to the mediation, it would just give him a reason to claim that I am sooooo hard to deal with, and I'm closing doors to him, and blah blah MLC blah. Does that make sense? So again, just like the concept of his moving out, I am leaving the decision up to him rather than forcing my own wishes on him. I am pretty tired of the mind games, but that's part of what DBing is all about, I think.

In other news, today I moved a lot of pictures and things which were hanging/sitting around the house to a part of the house I don't often have occasion to visit. I didn't feel that I could get them out of the house entirely, but they weren't making me feel good to see them every day, so I finally reshuffled. There are still a couple of wedding pictures up, but I bundled most of that stuff--wedding pictures, engagement pictures, pictures of his family, even some pictures just of me that were taken during happier times--into the basement.

The biggest item that got the boot was the main trigger for the whole reshuffling, which was a large fine-art piece I designed and created especially for H as a Christmas gift, which took me a good week of work and research and time and thoughtful effort. It focused on his mother, who had died recently (I think her death was the trigger for his MLC going into active mode--one of the few things he took when he moved out, other than his clothes and guitars, was a picture of his mother, and her rosary, although he left other pictures of her behind). This fine-art piece was completed and given to H only about six months before he started carrying on with OW. So...as much as I was proud of what I had created, I really didn't want to look at it every day any more. It hung right next to the piano, and I practice the piano regularly because I've been taking lessons for 10 years, and looking at that artwork made me sick every time I sat down at the piano bench. So it went into the basement, along with a slew of other stuff.

I'm doing better with my sleep schedule this week...although not tonight. Time to quit, and return to tilt at windmills on another day.

Peace,
Dawn