25years mlc 10 years pass I FILE #9 LAST LAP

[25yearsmlc]

Also
I went back to the personal growth workshop I've referred to before. ("Essential Experience" in Philadelphia). Thank GOD! I'm in such a better place than I was just last week.

Taking h's actions much less personally. If someone lies to you and you feel they've made a fool of you, try to reframe it. Their fooling you is not making YOU the fool...quite the contrary. Make sense?

Crappy things happen to all of us at some point. They vary greatly in how severely they affect us. But the point becomes moot along the way. We do all face loss. Seriously, we ALL will or have. Or are.

When we are ready to not let it define us or control how every day feels for us, we just have to say to ourselves, "yes, that wrong thing happened. You WERE betrayed. That really hurt..." Ideally we process that, and then in a spirit of hope and adventure, we ask 'what's next?"


Because we have to stop checking the rear view mirror. This past weekend I moved several steps forward by working on this and working through it, and feeling what I'd been telling myself in my head for months.

H mistreated me off and on for a long time. I avoided looking at that. I deflected and did not seem to realize how much anger and resentment he had developed (and cultivated) at ME. That's HIS bag of poop to carry around, not mine.

And then he really tried to screw me over in the divorce, and just behaved miserably towards me and our kids. Sure I wonder how he justifies himself. "Oh 25 charged her retainer on 'MY' credit card! She filed in CA b/c it was a 'better venue'" and other random inane justifications. I know this b/c he put it in his pleadings as if it meant something nefarious.

No matter. He can tell people AND he can believe I'm a purple lesbian dinosaur who eats babies, but his data is not real. It has to roll off my back and not even enter my realm of awareness.

What I KNOW is, he treated ME badly. He showed no signs of altering course in a good or consistent way. Quite the contrary.

So ^^^^ that's all that matters now, to me. That he's not the man I can live with the rest of my life.

For years I convinced myself, somehow, that he was as invested in the marriage and family as I was. DB beliefs enabled me to imagine his "shame is why he's repressed/quiet/angry".

But I was mistaken. I am not sure he felt shame, but if he did, it did not create change in his choices so, it matters NOT. And I will forgive myself for not realizing this sooner.

I do not fear that suddenly h will have a character transplant and be great for OW, that he'll be selfless instead of selfish. Certainly not over time.

But If somehow, if he magically becomes a better man with or for her, so be it. I will take that as a sign that he's learned something from losing his marriage and family b/c he sure wasn't around for us and did not show up for us, for a long time. Why? Because he did not want to.



it's like if h burned the house down, and I have to stop saying "But h would never light our house on fire...HE would Not do that. If he did, WHY??"

Yes he would do that. Yes he did. I will never know why or understand it. He has very different values than I do. Which I now know. If I'd known this is who he really is, I'd have cut him loose a decade ago.

The house is now in ashes. That's what he did to our m. It's gone. It's done.

And you know, far worse things have happened to others and they have said "yes, that was terrible. But it is done. Now what? What's next?" Reading about the Lost Boys of Sudan and that guy faced one terrible ordeal after another, and each time he persevered and was more or less saying "okay, that was painful. That's done. What is next?" He never gave up and he did not keep revisiting the injustices and cruelties he suffered. He kept going, and he carried hope with him along the way.

So to paraphrase what Sheryl Sandberg wrote in her book after her husband died suddenly,

"The life I had planned was Option A. Option A is Not an option anymore. So Let's kick a$$ with Option B."

I'm at peace with this^^^ more & more.
The workshop helped me process a lot of grief (first time my mother's death was faced in a way that allowed me to grieve that too). I gained clarity and this, ^^^ is what I knew in my head, before, but now is sinking into my heart.

I was heartbroken and in grief when I came here last year and shared what happened.

I am healing and steering myself forward more and more each week. For now, that's enough.