Hi guys, Just been reading Bklyn's thread and wanted to chime in with another post about how it is possible, with time, to feel better.
I know how hard it is at this time of year.
But it's the sense of achievement you feel, like Bklyn says, when you do things for yourself that you never thought you'd be able to do. Small things - like hooking up a DVD player or, in my case, fixing all the door handles that had fallen off around the house because the screw holes had gotten too big to hold the screws.
Like pruning all the fruit trees in our yard and now that it's summer, harvesting all the wonderful fruit that's coming in. Doing it myself, up a tall ladder and climbing up the trees. Getting much more fruit than we ever did when it was was stbx's job to pick it - he always picked a bucket or two half-heartedly and then told me there was no fruit left on the tree worth picking.
Putting up the 10-foot Xmas tree all by ourselves, and all the Xmas lights. Never realising we could do it until now...
All the stuff that I made 'his job' to do before. He didn't do it well, because it wasn't his choice to do it. I made things his job to do - because he was taller, stronger, the 'man'. And then I criticised when he didn't do things to my standards.
I must have orchestrated just about his whole life like this.
Important insight.
And, on another good note, last night, I passed the Love Actually test.
Watched the movie on TV. All the stuff about family, real love, unrequited love, betrayal, infidelity.
Last year, I sobbed my heart out and couldn't watch it through - too heart-breaking.
This year, just watched it in a sort of detached fashion and thought - yeah, know how she/he feels; that's a good portrayal of how you feel in that sort of situation (when your husband betrays you, when you lose the love of your life, when you love someone who prefers someone else, of the love you have for your kids/siblings, etc).
And I took solace from the message of the film. That we can survive, and that there is a life/love out there for us when we decide that it's time to take our 'wasted' hearts and go out and get it.
It's taken a long time for me to get there, but I think I'm ready to say, like the unrequited-love guy in the movie, "Enough... enough now".
A bit cheesy, I know - but hey, it's that time of year...
