I haven't been posting, one because I'm in overwhelm mode - D isn't sleeping, I needed an entire new wardrobe, I'm going out of town next week, work is crazy, and with ExBF on top of that, it's like WOAH.
But I'm also not posting much b/c every day it changes with ExBF. We have better and better conversations and time spent together and I am starting to realize things that if I wrote about them previously I would have contradicted myself.
Basically, as many of you know, exBF and I came into this relationship pretty fast and with a history of therapy and issues, though thinking we'd "done our work" we had a baby (both of us secretly literally terrified of marriage b/c of what each of us had seen in our own families' marriages) ...
I got PPD, he went into major depression and withdrawl mode. Both of us had super poor coping skills. I raged and felt terrified of everything. He withdrew and felt terriefied of everything. We tried MC, but we were way too insane to even benefit from it.
We really tried. Deep down we just wanted to trust each other, love each other, and be a family, but we were freakshows.
And neither of us could sustain calmness long enough for the other to get it together. We were both in need and desparate.
On top of that, he had some other issues, and I did too. Wow. Fun, right?
The separation for a year (which I previously thought would be permanent) proved to help us a lot. The freakshow of PPD is mostly over for me. I am a different person. I am calmer, more accepting, more tolerant, more realistic, less fearful, less codependent, more independent, more grown up and I know what I want.
I have not been able to say all the same for him b/c I hear him talk, but I haven't seen the behavior, and yet I'm seeing it more and more - yes, he talks a lot and has plans for us and they are all more wonderful than I can say - all my dreams come true - but I am not getting too attached b/c I want to see him in therapy and us really communicating and maintaining closeness and connection, which we seem to be doing pretty well.
We both made time for each other yesterday and went for a walk, which is something I love to do and he came with me. We held hands and talked nonstop the whole time, and just both felt really close and good. He left last night after putting D to bed feeling good. And I put up a few boundaries around my time that he respected. He's been generally open with me - when he used to be moody, open-closed, etc.
What really helped me yesterday was telling someone I know who knew both of us. I thought she was going to be upset when I told her (she's known everything over the past year and all my frustrations, etc. and knew him before we split) and she said, "When you walked in today, I can see excitement on your face and I didn't know why. Now I do." She was happy for us. She said that I need to be strong for him (which is what my own intuition has told me). At least so that he can safely attach to me. If I'm fearful, demanding, needy (like I sometimes feel!) I think it'll scare him and make things tough. She said she observed we were both two people who constantly fed off each other's skittish-ness and fears and but she has hope for us.
She told me to just be calm and reminded me of all my tools, and I felt SOOOOO much better.
After that, I had my own realization that the reason maybe I haven't even been able to see or know or explain how I'm feeling was b/c I was really numb the past week and a half. I was honestly in shock about all this - it's something I really wanted, but maybe wouldn't even admit to myself (was I in denial about wanting it?) and here it is and I think I got so scared of getting hurt, losing it again, being rejected or putting myself out there, I just froze up.
This is my own work - allowing myself to soften, be me, trust, have faith, be vulnerable, feel the love I do for my ex and the hope I have for us and the desire I have for us to be together and let that be okay. It's awfully frightening for me. So right now, I'm just trying to stay focused on allowing that...
