Hi VV, Dudess and Coach, Thanks so much for your support. It has been a tough year, and I know that I'm not alone in saying that...I look back at the year behind me and just cringe at the number of tombstones inscribed with memories.
VV, I do hope that you're right - that I'll have the strength to pull through all of this. I'm trying - I keep getting up in the mornings - and reminding myself that, despite all appearances and despite just how much I've lost over the last year of my life, I still have a very rich life - full of love from and for my children - and also full of potential.
Dudess - Anticipatory pain - that's just what it feels like - and I'm doing my best to acknowledge the sadness I see coming - but still stay in the present so that I can enjoy all these days until I drop my S12 off at the airport on August 18. Goodness, just writing that made my heart ache and my eyes water...this is going to be hard...already feels much harder than the day after B moved out - probably since I was so relieved to have her move out after having been through so much pain and abuse for so many months....I look back now and realize that, in an odd sense, the DB techniques tended to fuel her fires - and tended to allow her to believe that she was right in anything and everything she said about me/us. I guess that was the important part of wearing that raincoat - and reminding me that it wasn't about me...but when she started threatening to call the police and claim that I had hit hurt...then I knew it wasn't about protecting myself emotionally - it was about protecting myself in very real terms - and, in turn, protecting my children.
And thank you for reminding me that I have made some good choices over the past year - it's been hard to come to some of my decisions - but they've definitely been for the better.
Thanks for your perspective, Coach. And you are right, I will survive, grow, laugh, love, cry, thrive and persevere - I have to. I know that I'll see my S12 during the school year - and will still have him with me for holidays and vacations - it will just be tricky juggling everything to make sure that we get to spend time with S2 as well - since their relationship is so important to me (and to them).
It has been a roller coaster of late - and I'm just hoping that I get one of those climbs again soon - as I've had so much of the scary descents lately...it just wears me out sometimes...
To be quite honest, and I know this sounds kind of arrogant...part of the reason this is all so horribly difficult for me is because I've not really failed at anything before...and right now, I feel like I can look back - and even just look at my current financial situation - and see many signs of having failed - and I truly don't know how to manage it well. In the academic world - where I was more at home - and kind of at peace - things just kind of came easily to me - and while I had to work hard - it was never with a fear of failure - it was always with a passion for knowing more...these days, I suddenly find myself having to work hard with this fear of failure - and I'm trying to make more sense of it.
A good friend of mine suggested that part of the problem might be my very relationship to failure - and that I have to accept it more as part of what I'm going through - as part of my process...and I'm trying to do that - trying to let go of the expectations that lead me toward judging myself a failure - but it's hard - particularly when I think about the simple, practical matters of having to support my children and myself...
It's odd how intertwined it all was for me - unhealthy marriage, unhealthy sense of self and partner, unhealthy work, neglect of my own passions and drives...and once the marriage was taken out of it - and the specious security of love was unveiled, so much came tumbling down...faulty foundation at its core. I suppose that's what I'm working on - like so many of us here, I'm figuring out how to build on a better foundation - since what had supported me for so many years had proven to be unreliable...
