Less lonely, not scared..low on patience

[JBolt]

What the h@ll is going on…
Anyone who has somehow read through my threads up to this point (had a pants-load of free time if you did) may recall I said I was going to hold off posting until something happened. I’m not really sure what it is, but something has changed. But before I talk about that, to my shame, I must relate this.

W and I went to our first mediation for D a few weeks ago. It was ugly and all my fault. I used it as an opportunity to attack her. I wanted to teach W a lesson about demanding something and not giving two thoughts to the consequences or lifting a finger to make it happen. I wanted to make it clear she might get the house, but she couldn’t really afford it, among other things. I wanted to punish her for the previous two weeks of absolute silence and 5.5 months of indifference and pain.

What I did was teach me instead. I learned that I did not have my children’s best interest in mind first and for most going into the mediation. I learned that I can be the bully and control freak she has accuses me to being. I learned that you cannot and should not try to teach an adult a lesson. It’s not my place, it’s disrespectful, it was horrible to sit there and ‘watch’ myself doing it but unable to stop. I got some sense of what W might be going through.

As W cried and began to say how she knew I would do this, how she should have gotten a lawyer like everyone had suggested, how all she wanted was to keep the kids in the house and a little help getting financially stable (I believe this and have absolutely no reason to think otherwise); my soul just crumbled. A pit of anger, despair, and self-pity had opened in my chest and I felt almost exactly like the weeks following BD all over again, maybe worse.

The next 5 days are a blur, the worst I’ve had so far. I felt endless self-loathing and pity, I drugged myself into a stupor for a few days, I contemplated sleeping forever to end the pain, I broke down in front of and badly scared the children, I started fantasizing about running away and disappearing. It’s been a full week since the worst of it, but I can’t let this happen again. I had to get control of myself and I slowly started to think. I mean really, REALLY think about why I did what I did at the mediation and about how much I felt like I needed her and how unhealthy it was for both of us. I’m still working on this, but I started to think maybe she is right. We are bad for each other on some fundamental level, or have become so. I’m not saying it’s always been that way or was nearly as bad as she has felt it was last year or feels at the moment, but I have to think it is a factor in all this and something I need to change no matter what happens with W or it will be back.

I called W and apologized, told her I am not very proud of myself and will be respectful during our next mediation in a week. That I had a lot to think about.
Cont…