This undoing of my life has become something of a constant lesson...Right now, I'm in a situation I've never known before - in that work has just about dried up for me, and I am running low on resources...Months ago, well, last May, when this process of self-development began in earnest, I reacted by giving it everything I could - emotionally, physically, financially. I threw money at the problems with my STBX, hoping that paying for a highly-recommended (i.e. expensive) MC would help get us back on track...I then started going to a T of my own - all the while holding back and not saying anything when my STBX went on her sudden spending sprees.
I watched for the little signs, the baby steps that were supposed to help me hold out hope, and when I would see them, I would believe that I was doing the right thing - that I could be patient, keep on my raincoat, and protect myself from the anger, insults and revisions of our past - and I just kept throwing money at the problem...even once I believed that the best thing for us was to get out of the same house - I continued to pay the full rent on our house - while she moved into a place where she could just continue to pay the same amount she had contributed to our rent...these were my mistakes...these were parts of my acts of desperation - and my hopes to let her go and win her back by just allowing myself to cover the cost of everything...
And now it's biting me in the a$$...But here's the difference...a year ago, if I had found myself in this position, I probably would have allowed my stress/tension to grow into impatience and even some anger....but I'm not there now...instead...I find myself looking at my situation as somehow necessary - as somehow part of the process I have to go through in order to purge myself of still more remnants of unhealthy thinking - of unhealthy loving - and so I look at my dwindling bank account...and think...what's the opportunity there? What is it that I am missing, that I could be more open to?
I've never had to look for work before - just didn't have to do it - but now, with the economy as it's been, my freelance work has just withered away - and some of the companies I used to get regular work from just aren’t calling...
It's a situation that's making me very aware of my long-term goals - but also very attuned to my short-term concerns....and it's got me looking around my apartment and zeroing in on these dozens of rare books I had collected over the years...and suddenly I am seeing them as objects, possessions, even as little investments - and not as the small trophies of gradual success that I thought they were before...
Which is to say...that my perspective is changing a lot in terms of how I see material things. Not that I'm much of a materialist - I just have a fondness for books - perhaps it even approaches what one author refers to as that gentle madness of book collecting....but this change in my life, this end of my marriage, is changing even how I look at these fine little objects...and I'm wondering, just wondering, what will happen next...and I try to remain open to it as much as I can, while also remembering that change in life doesn't come just from accepting one's situation, but from taking action based on that acceptance.
