swimming with turtles and some guidance

[zig]

My W went full martyr, as well

that's when i got impatient and let it out last night - and pointed out to friend - couldn't she hear the martyr in that -
kd, i didn't have to wait for mlc or an ow for him to go martyr. i lived with martyr big time from the day after s and i moved here.

sad thing was - i didn't understand martyr - i'm not sure i do now, either. back then, it made me very impatient. couldn't understand the need for it. his was silent martyr - never complained, never admitted it - i just got to watch the stoic attitude and be totally agonized by it!!

she replaced my support (with house work, yard work, etc) from others...

a little bluntness here - was it easier to be hurt by that than to face the real hurt of replacing your presence?

or another perspective - maybe to her it was cake-eating to allow you to do those things, that you had always done for her, and she didn't feel she had the right to ask you to do them anymore?

i see that in my h - the things i did, which made his life go easier - like taking care of s so he could work or take off - it is very painful for him to ask me each time - that's why i offer. or the connection - which i can still see he craves so bad, with me - so he comes back once in a while to get a little bit of it, in conversations and then takes off again

here's the bizarre flip side of the doing things -

in the first months - i would ask others to help me with stuff around the house - not much, just a couple of times. h went ballistic. he still can't stand that someone else would come over - he wants to do it himself. he actually said how it hurt him!

i hate asking, or did - part of my own resistance. so now i let him - there's not much (well, there's a ton, including him gutting the bathroom in the basement last summer, which is still sitting like that - but hey, who's bringing that up!)

I like that :
from this day forward...


the other friend i was with last night - she suggested "cleansing" my house with a ceremony. she thought it would be a good way to move forward. she's going to help me stop smoking - can't wait. she's a counselor herself but uses unusual methods for helping people through stuff. last night we talked some about that - she said that EMDR is one of the most phenomenal methods that really stick for dealing with past traumas that are really-deep-seated. i've thought about it the last few months, and may give it a shot. have to look into how much it costs first though.

i said to them last night

let's get on with this - i can't wait to finish becoming this person that i've already become!

and audacious - in a wonderful, gentle, light-hearted way is the first adjective i want people associating with me!!!! GRIN

i'm getting my love for life back again - sitting out on the deck with my cup of tea - and i felt that old surge within me for a second as i wrote that last sentence - that rise of feeling, that oh life is really wonderful - i literally haven't felt that since the bomb - i'd forgotten it. so it's put a little smile on my face - the same smile that comes when i think of all of you here and my friends and how amazingly lucky i am.

i do believe it's audacious to be happy during something like this!!!!

zig