GALing and Boundaries with XH

[AntoniaB]

Thanks Beatrice, seeking, and AJ. Your posts were insightful and I'm glad for other "eyes" reading what transpired.

I feel very strongly suddenly that I can't live in my house. I am hoping that that is a reaction to seeing XH for so long here...and just a temporary thing.

I feel like I am reliving the first week after he left, with less intensity this time. I have resisted my parents' offer to go visit them, as that is what I did (rather I escaped for a week) to their home in June 2010 when XH dropped the bomb. I have a lot of stored memories of the "flight north" and the way I felt there as I was in constant panic attacks. I think if I go there now, under this stress, it will awaken more memories. So my mom came to stay with me til Friday. I know I'd be ok without her, but it's nice to have her here.

I feel like I need to "sweep my house" for reminders again...and I just spent 2 hours with her taking about 1/3 of my clothes out of a closet that I hadn't really opened SINCE HE LEFT and getting rid of them to give away. I completely lost it when I came across my honeymoon negligee/robe. I don't think I'd have had any reaction days ago.

But it's like there were things I left undone that I feel like I have to do now. Maybe I left them undone as I was seeing things "on hold." I HOPE that this means I am coming to more of an acceptance that things are truly finally over. I think that for me, with the attachment issues I have, I have GOT to end the hope that he will see the light and come back. I don't think living in hope, however small, that he will reconcile, is working for me anymore. I think some people can "move on" and keep that hope alive in a corner of their heart. I can't. I attach WAY too much feeling and emotion to that hope so that it blocks me from moving on emotionally.

This is likely the reason I've been afraid of just putting myself out there fully to date, or why I've been sending mixed signals.

People say "you'll be ready when you're ready to move on." For me, I think I've really been clinging to NOT wanting to move on, to pretend on the surface I have, but harboring deep inside that I have not.

I know I can't just eradicate my feelings for him. But I can make the choice to eradicate hope he'll return--or to at least stop putting so much mental emphasis on it.

As long as I hope he will return, I can't budge from this place.

One thing that really hit hard today was that this is the first time in my entire life that there is no masculine presence in my home. My boy cat was the last "masculine presence" as I really made him a substitute for my XH. I talked to him all the time even before XH left, but when XH left, I would say things like "we're going to get through this together" or "no matter what you'll help me make it." I spoke to him like he was a partner of sorts. He slept next to me every night, on the pillow with a blanket. He spooned me sometimes. He walked next to me all the time, sat next to me. We were inseparable. I made him fill the void XH left as much as I could. That sounds nuts, but I know a person not on the board in divorce woes doing this with her son. It lessens the pain of them not being there. In fact, when XH first left, this was the cat I took with me to my parents to be a calming presence till I stopped being suicidal.

To have him just die like that is like losing the security blanket I had constructed. Had I not had this cat, I do not know if I'd been able to live alone for the past 17 months. I really don't know. He got me through many sleepless nights.

I feel like my skin is stripped bare. This house has only females in it. I have always seen males as protectors. To have no protection but me is just a shock to the system. I literally felt that this little boy cat was my protector of sorts.

My father and brother are 2 1/2 hours away. I have male friends...who are married. I have male friends, single, who live far away. I feel naked and very vulnerable.

I know it's crazy...it was just a little 8.2 pound cat. But the "maleness" was just comforting.

I had 3 male protectors here...and 8 female protectors. First XH left, then the outdoor male cat (13 years old) who protected my yard, then this cat (14 years old) who protected my home. It's just the girls now.

What's crazy is that everything seems to "fit". I don't think I'd have made it through the worst without this cat. But I don't think I'd ever have budged from this spot if I hadn't lost him now. And I didn't budge yet, really, but the path has a light now, so to speak. This cat had a lymphoma and chronic renal disease only discovered yesterday. He had a sudden perforation and peritonitis and the straining killed him within hours. He had scattered symptoms in retrospect, but nothing that would EVER make a person take him to a vet to be checked out. He held it ALL together for SO long that this was in him; he woke me up that morning with meows and standing on my chest, and he ran to get his breakfast. NO SIGNS till it was 12 hours from the end.

I am sorry for rambling...just a lot of confusion and emotions. I have such an urge to get a boy dog ;-)