Over the Shock and GALing 6

[Thinker]

Journaling:

Mrs. Thinker is off with her family tonight - weddings and funerals, the only time we spread out families get together. Her cousins funeral is tomorrow morning.

It has been a rough couple of days for her - it's hitting her pretty hard. She has been distracted and distant - not wanting me to comfort her, not wanting to be hugged or touched.

Today I could tell she was really sad and torn about leaving - the boys were all in school and she was really torn up about missing them. I had arranged for her trip and as she went out the door looking unhappy I kissed her (first time in a while that she seemed to want to kiss me as she left) and told her "You go take care of your family, I'll take care of the boys and everything here"

So instead of going to Retrouvaille as planned, we are separate - but that's the way things were meant to be this weekend. The boys and I went to a neighborhood party that we weren't originally planning to attend. Tomorrow I think we'll go hiking, and then to the beach on Sunday to make the most of the weekend we got back.

I've been in a bit of a angry mood this week. I think it is a response to both the end of the summer (with it's attendant change in routine, the sudden change of plans and my w's withdrawal. The recent vacations and work travel had really disrupted my GAL routine, and I had been starting to mentally rely on Retro as a way forward. Suddenly both of them disappeared and my w withdrew (understandably when dealing with the death) and I found myself angry and alone.

I could really hear the WAS script running through my head: "It's no use." "She'll never be able to change anyway." "This R and this M haven't been good in so long that I am not sure why I am trying." "I'm done!" "I'm out-a-here!".

Negative thinking. All of it.

Fortunately, I didn't express or act on it.

I am focusing this weekend on getting my GAL routine back to where it was before all of the summer vacations - regular racquetball games, workout partners, guys nights out. Since I work from home and don't otherwise get out of the house, I REALLY need that. Otherwise (as I started to in the past week) I start relying on her for my social support - and God knows she is not there for me right now. Time to get independent again.

I have now rescheduled Retrovaille for 3 weeks from today. Fortunately there was another one - in a different town but also not unreasonably far away. We now each have to go through the interviews, etc again, but that shouldn't be too hard this time.