Drove home today. First several hours I spent listening to news radio and getting caught back up on the world, which seems pretty grim. But it felt good to occupy my mind again with impersonal stuff that required my attention.
After a while my mind wanted to start processing my stuff so I let it. Interesting observations:
1. My mother is outstanding at winding up my emotions to crazy pitch and terrible at helping me calm down to rational thought. Nor is she very rational herself. So, new goal: be mindful of when I might be leaning in to that tendency myself. I wanted to be a zen mom and I WAS a zen mom for the years before we moved west and I lost my awesome yoga instructor. Those were the years when my H says he liked me best (though we weren't close during a lot of it because of his school and work, so...?) so I'm going to cultivate zen. (I dug deep and managed it after 14 hours in the car with cranky D11... Win for the day!)
2. My mother is not very empathetic. She was angry with me for "allowing" H to hurt me -- as though the demise of an 18 year relationship is something you can choose to feel the pain of, or not. Every time the kids or I mentioned him it was like someone had cursed in her presence. When I reminded her I wanted to salvage a relationship with him and that I need her not to act like he's a bad person altogether she got mad at me. I realize I'm her little girl but it's not support if you exercise your own feelings to the detriment of the person asking for support.
3. I think she's impatient for me to get over him. She wants me to file for divorce now, sell the wedding china now, and put our house on the market now. As though doing those things will make it finished. "You can always marry him again later if you really want to," she says, all grumpy like I'm a little kid asking for dessert before breakfast. Or I could wait to do all those things, not add the pain and stress of them to the situation or my children, and potentially stay married. She makes no sense to me.
4. The idea of H dating really, really tore at me on the drive home. Like, to the point that I'm going to bring it up in IC. Then I got home and I just felt so tired to not have a partner help me get the kids settled from the trip. But somehow the idea of him dating seemed less important and a little less likely. It's the first time I've come home and not felt completely defeated. Maybe it's the new paint & furniture arrangements?
5. H sent me a text late last night (his time) saying he's taking kids to dinner this week and "would be happy to have you join." Second week of our separation he said he'd be happy to have me join them for lunch that day and I got a little frustrated and said "do you want me to join or not?" He said, well, I invited you. Now, to me an invitation is more direct -- "please join us for dinner". The other way sounds like "I don't mind if you tag along." Either way I'm not going to go. I get my hopes up too easily when I'm with him, I'm already too suspicious about why he took off his ring, and I can't be his "friend" without expectations.
So that's where I am right now. Que sera sera.
Last edited by Maybell; 08/11/1402:17 AM.
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
