PLEASE!!! Need help quick! Calling all vets!

[AntoniaB]

Tad, 25 years raises an excellent point about being in Stuckville and waiting to GAL. Know what pushed my butt out of the house to GAL? Eric. Eric made me promise once that in the next week I'd do something I had never done before that would get me out of the house to meet new people/start living again.

I ended up going to a poetry reading. Yes I teach college literature, but I've only ever gone to poetry readings that the college put on and it has been years since that has happened. This was a local poetry group that announced on FB that they were meeting at the library.

I went in, listened, and two things happened: I saw a woman read a poem on the 5th anniversary of her husband's death. She never read her poems to anyone before. We were all strangers. He died of cancer 5 years and a few hours and minutes prior to when she read (she told us the exact amount of time).

Watching her pain told me I didn't have it so bad.

Secondly, I decided to ask a question of one poet, and when I introduced myself, I heard myself say that I was a professor and that I'd published a book on fairy tale analysis, and because of that I was interested in the one poet's work with rewriting fairy tales in her poetry.

That did something else: for the first time ever, I realized that I was a legitimate author. Here I published a book in 2009 and because of what my XH put me through it never even had an impact on me. I never had congratulated myself for my accomplishments till that moment. I was an "expert" in a field in the eyes of all these strangers.

So I learned empathy and self-esteem all from going out and doing something different. It was a watershed moment.

You need to promise us that you'll do ONE THING you have never done this week to get out of the house and meet some new people. I'm telling you, Eric was right. It really works.