Living with groundlessness

[AntoniaB]

Oh wow, I'm sorry you lost your mother too in this mess. Gosh once you hit 40 loss just seems to be everywhere. I swear I lived in fantasyland till 40. Nothing ever went "wrong" or if it did go wrong, it was such small potatoes.

I'm actually worried about my BIL as he lost his mom last week and also his sister 2 years ago, and his rel. with my sister has always been strained as he is much like my XH as far as depression or low self-esteem that he refuses to really get help for. I worry about him descending into MLC, although obviously if he does I can help her.

Interestingly both my sisters have said that soon "my time" in this dark place will be over and that "they know" I will need to help them, because they know something is coming for them, they don't know what it is, but what happened to me shattered this illusion my parents worked SO hard to build around us that if we just worked hard enough at everything we did, we'd never ever fail and life would always be wonderful.

So I guess it's not just me dealing with the shattering of my belief system or the old illusions, it's my whole family, but I'm the only one getting "help" for it while they are all just walking around shell-shocked and in disbelief.

The reason I meantion new rel. being helpful is that I feel like I have a lot of self-confidence in my work/brain/abilities, and when I focus on those things, I very much feel "over" the loss of XH and like I've moved on and accepted I am better off without him. HOWEVER, the worth as a woman "sexually" was only ever validated by XH, and so I feel like until a man who I find acceptable gives me that type of validation, I will always revert in my mind to "needing" XH to approve me in that way. And a few friends have also said that if I just had a successful date where someone expressed desire for me, whether I acted on it or rejected it, that that would be the one thing to get me "over" XH and accepting that there were other fish in the sea.

It's like I believe I can do most anything I set my mind to, but if you ask me "Antonia can you attract another man now that XH is gone, a man you yourself would find interesting and smart and attractive", my answer would be a resounding "No, I cannot."

Does that make sense?