Too Tired To Fight

[JustStunned]

Val, the how will we split up the stuff is a difficult exercise if either of you let be difficult. You cannot control how she’ll act or react to the drama involved in this. You can refuse to participate in the destructive behaviors.

From my experience it helped me to realize 99.985% of this stuff is just stuff, easily replaced. Part of that came from speaking with a friend who lost everything but what was hastily packed during Katrina. Another part of that was convincing myself we were dividing the business of us. At the time I felt my life was out of control. I needed to separate the emotions of it from the mechanics of it and just execute the mechanics.

We had to provide a list to the L’s of what we were dividing and assign values to the items. The list did not need to be real granular, just contain the major items. To accomplish it we went from room to room with a clip board writing items and assigning a distribution to them. Afterwards I took the list put it in a spreadsheet, looked up values as if we were donating the items to charity. Sorting the list by distribution and totaling the assigned values compares how equitable the split is. So much for mechanics.

There were a few items we disagreed upon. With each I had to decide if this was a hill to die upon. There were a couple I fought for. There were a couple I let go of as graciously as possible. It is just stuff. Keeping myself calm, treating this as business to be dissolved, refusing to participate in the drama, refusing to permit myself to react when prodded, got me through that day. It was exhausting for me, but I think you can make it through with grace.

So much thought going into a single email. So much anxiety and stress. So much emotional chaos. I keep praying to God to give me the strength to handle this, but I'm stuck. Stuck in fear.

God has. You are permitting the drama to wrap you around this axle. Change the setup. I couldn’t visualize us doing this through email. We both needed to be present; I needed to be calm, confident and in control of myself to keep it from escalating; after resolving to be that, it became something to be executed.

I keep looking at the fire saying "I know I'll be free once I get to the other side" but the other part says "yeah.. but you're gonna get burned too and it's gonna hurt alot".

Who is stronger the Val who was, or the Val who is. My money is on the Val who is with us now. Resolve to make it through to the other side you will, and stronger for having been through the fire.