Swimming with certain Turtles

[zig]

oh believe me - when i said earlier that i get [censored] scared when there are signs of him moving closer - it's not like i'm not aware of why i'm afraid.

the stronger i get, the more i see the things i don't want to live with

otoh, i don't want to be blind to what my own reactions and role were in this.

when i find myself thinking too much about what he did and how he was - i have to be careful that i am not falling into the trap of justifying for myself too much

so will things change?

of course - because they already have. the way i interact with him has become so completely utterly different that even he recognizes that we are getting along great. i'm not doing it in a fake way - i lost the part of me that used to be the way i was - and i can't even try to be that if i acted it.

he told me in the first months after the BD - i was so sure i was really gone - but you're not acting the way i expected you to, i wish you would so i could really be gone. now the way you are has made me really conflicted.

back then - i didn't know anything about DB - now i do. and also now i'm finally able to see what the vets mean when they say you can DB in every part of your life.

i don't expect to stop doing that, even if we reconcile, or i eventually move on to another relationship.

i can't say that i can see completely clearly what really happened. i am still untangling so much of what he said over the years - and trying to separate out what was really true as a fact and what was him projecting on to me or telling me that it was a certain way - because he wanted to view it that way to justify his own stuff

one of the nonstop themes was "zig, you are so messed up and f'ed up because of your childhood"

the thing was i didn't feel messed up or f'ed and i didn't LIVE it. i was totally functional.

i was messed up about stuff - but it was clear - i had to work through all these dramatic changes that had just happened. his view was - you don't really love me if you have to work through this stuff, and you aren't overnight just delighted in your new life.

i would have been, if i didn't see all this weird stuff that made me uneasy and then anxious. then it became a cycle - the more anxious i was the more he resisted and on and on until i got positively OCD. now when i look back - i think i had a vicious case of postpartum depression on top of it all that got left untreated and undiagnosed.

I'm different now - and i often think - well if he comes back and really works at it and there are certain things he is unable to change within himself, what will i do?

i find myself thinking that i have learned a different way of reacting to his stuff - what i didn't know before was how to talk with him (i was too confrontational), i didn't understand that i can be detached and loving and not get pulled in -and so it seems to me, that also accepting a person as they are is something to think about.

i believe that my h is a person that if he decides he wants to give our r a try, will see these things for himself

i'm not basing that on nothing - he has admitted a lot of this stuff to me over the months - most of it, i never ever expected him to even see, let alone acknowledge to me.

even though i give such a negative pic of h most of the time - because those are the things i am working through and focusing on, there is a ton of positive stuff - how we connect - how hard and crazy intense we worked together, how much we laughed while we did it, how he bent over backwards to satisfy any request i had (beside the point that he did it martyrishly, grin) - we had a ton of happy times.

he's admitted that recently - that night we spent together - "I was really happy" slipped out - then he realized he said that and got all funny !!!!

the negative stuff - was sort of alongside it - and needed to be dealt with - and i always trusted we could. i try to see this sitch as the time we are doing it.

wow - wonder why i need to write such long posts - working through stuff i suppose - the next layer. timely i think, because as i resolve this, it's time for a new thread and another step.....

thanks dear friends - for walking alongside me on this journey and being here to prop me up when i veer of course

zig