WE PROCEEDED ON II

[gunny]

Hello all, just wanted to pop in to get up to date. Today it is one year since my stbxw dropped the bomb on me as we finished our daily run down at the canal. Hard to believe it has been one year.

During this year, I have learned many things about myself, some that I knew, and some that I probably knew but didnt like to acknowledge.

Many times people have said that there was a reason for what happened, and that I am supposed to learn something from it. I am still trying to figure out what the lesson was. I think I am a more compassionate person than I was a year ago(and I have always been a compassionate person), but I am also (understandably), much less trusting, and more cynical about life in general. Not much, if anything, really surprises me anymore. I have found a whole micropopulation of divorced, or separated people who feel the same way. Many of these people say they have become better people for the experience, but I often find myself wondering if they are saying this in the hopes of convincing themselves. Don't know.

I do know that I am in a much better place one year later than I was. For almost 7 months I literally did not have one moment of joy in my life. Today, I find myself almost content at times, but then, like a slap of AQUA VELVA in the morning, I come back to reality and remember "oh yeah, I'm in the process of a divorce" About 7 months into the ordeal I made the difficult decision(for me) of taking an anti-depressent. I had always been deadset against taking any prescriptin drugs, esp anti-depressants, but I got to the point where I felt I had no choice. I started out at 10 mg of lexapro. Today, I am down to 5mg and take it only twice a week. In 30 days I will have weaned myself off, but I am doing it slowly, under my doctors supervision.

Taking the ad enabled me to regroup, and get myself back on an even keel. That, along with joining a couple of divorce support groups, adult children of alcoholics group. seeing a therapist(initially once a week, but now down to once a month), taking some classes at the local community college, going back to church, and generally making an effort to reach out and meet new people(not always the easiest thing for me to do)has helped me to cope with a pretty crappy sitch(like all of us here)

Would I rather not have had to do all this, and would I like to have my old life back. A RESOUNDING HELL YES!!I miss my old life. I was very, very happy. I will always miss what I had. But, we have no choice but to play with the cards we were dealt with(read that somewhere on here), so I make do.

I am not going to blow sand and say I am glad I have gone through this, because truthfully, I am not. Many days I am doing the best I can to get by. But, I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE ON HERE WHO OVER THE LAST YEAR HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO POST HERE TO ENCOURAGE ME. IT HAS REALLY MEANT ALOT. YOU HAVE ALL BEEN TREMENDOUSLY HELPFUL, AND I THANK YOU ALL.!!

For those of you who are new to this site, keeping coming back, it does get better, there is hope. I look forward to reading all of your sitchs, and hope to find some more success stories as we go forward. Semper Fidelis all. OOHRAH!!