I feel like there is a choice ahead of me...what kind of person will I be, how will I continue to react to all of this.
(The movie As Good as it Gets keeps playing in my head)
Do I suck it all up and "make nice," fake it till I make it? Let go of the past and move forward, let it roll off my back, "make space" for friendship? Is this the healthier way...is this grace? Is this what DB is steering us towards, therefore allowing the other person to see all that they are missing and giving up, too?
Or do I continue to be withdrawn, "dark," protect myself from it all and avoid all necessary contact? Wish that he would just go away...
Do I love him enough to be around him on his terms, friends? If I love him, is it better to not be around him at all?
I feel selfish in my all-or-nothing, my-way-or-no-way thinking. I know that the pain is coming from inside me, and I don't know where to go with it.
I also don't want to revisit crazyville again anytime soon.
Maybe I'm just not strong enough, and that is the final nail in the coffin (you would think that a year+ divorce would have been the nail, right? I wish...). I feel like my failings at DB killed any chances. Who knows if there would have been a chance - right now, he seems to have been one of the unmoveables. He never showed even the slightest hint of looking back or regrets.
WHY does it still hurt like this? Why do I continue to think about it, dream of him at night? I have a very good life with a long list of things I am grateful for. Friends, family, kids, church, house, career, pets, activities just for me, strides in self-improvement. There is just this black hole that threatens to swallow all of it up.
I want the directions of this "letting go" and "getting on with your life," "get over it" stuff. Cause I am going through all the motions, and not too much is moving internally, in my heart. Is it just time? Been 3 years since the bomb. Back when my baby was starting 2nd grade. She is a 5th grader, now! I re-read the awful things he did and said...and my poor, stupid brain tries to forget them still, or find excuses for them. Hard to overwrite 20 years with three, maybe.
When my son was little, he developed a stutter. I would watch him actually push on the sides of his face, trying to force the words out. Overthinking it. He needed a completely different approach to his speech therapy, one where they didn't focus on the sounds and mistake as much, but to slow down his thoughts and words. Maybe that has been my same mistake, too - trying too hard to push through all of this. Overthinking.
But damn, I want the pain to stop. Those "gotcha" moments when the most unexpected thing sets me off again... the thing that got me in church?
Two pews ahead of me: A man with his family, leaning over to kiss his daughter on the forehead while his arm was wrapped behind his wife and his son climbed on his lap. And he had the same hair as my ex...
My IC told me a long time ago that no one was asking me to stop loving him. But, what do I do with it?
