Yesterday...what a day! Three meetings in different places, with different people, to do with three totally different projects. All incredibly positive.
And then some freelance work, where one of my colleagues said: 'I wish everyone was like you' and 'you make people feel special'. That really blew me away. All the hard work I've put into seeing the positive side of things and being on that positive and grateful wavelength is really paying off big time.
I think it comes down to hope. I really need to feel the hope that the future is going to be better than 2007-2015. I also really need to feel that I have the capacity to shape the future, my future, into what I want (and increasingly feel and know, into what I deserve).
It was a beautiful, sunny day, so I walked everywhere.
Talking finances, I think I did enough groundwork in the first part of the year to have enough work to get through to the end of the year. It's varied work, good for my CV and well paid (as far as my world goes).
So I will also be able to live a little too, and not just have to go with the very basics in life. And it means I can have the headspace to focus on my own creative work as well, now that I'm sure that I have things in the pipeline which will give me chunks of money at set times.
I'm feeling a lot more secure in the working world now. These are all contacts and work that came after BD and after XH left, so they are all new for me. None of them know about my past life. Well, I'm sure one of them would know my XH if I mentioned his name to them, but I don't need to. I got this far (which is almost at the point of an offer of work and a contract for this work) without his name coming into the conversation.
I'm also really enjoying making new friends without having XH's shadow hanging over things.
I am **constantly** meeting people in this field of work who know him, knew of our M, knew me as his XW. But now I really feel like I'm starting to be able to stand on my own two feet in this industry. The feedback I've had from people when I've shown them my CV has been so incredibly validating and ago boosting, I can hardly believe it.
I always felt like I was standing on my own two feet in this industry. But I'm so low key and quietly spoken about it and what I've achieved that I don't think anyone in the industry really noticed or paid me much attention in that regard. Maybe only really the people that I was working with?
This industry is full of larger than life people with big egos (and matching insecurities), and it's not my style to be like that, so I guess I was treated in the way I presented myself?
I've really understood, to the very core of my being, in this whole process, that I have worth and value. I think for the first time ever in my life that I feel very solid inside, in the core of my being.
I always knew that was there, like the tiniest fragment of steel, but I guess I never gave that the chance to grow and get bigger and stronger, and I just didn't put up a boundary when someone disrespected me (not just XH, but I remember a few conversations with XMIL that were a little lacking in respect on her part). I would **say** and call someone's words/behaviour out, for sure, but I guess I didn't follow those words up with actions?
I think it's probably been everything that I've done that brought me to this point: sorting my house, finding new friends, trying new things, taking control of my finances and capacity to earn money, planning my future work more, upping my work life in XH's industry and in my own creative work, going out on dates, changing my clothes, exploring what works best for me in terms of mindsets and ways of thinking...
It's all very much a work in progress, and I can see that I must never stop the forward momentum of all of this, as it's taking me places and giving me back so much more than the effort I'm putting in. It's not been easy and it still isn't easy. I'm absolutely exhausted from the effort of it most of the time.
Yes, I guess there is some fear there. Fear of finding myself in the black hole that I was 2007-2015. Of that diminishing me again and eating away at the potential to live my life and to carry to on enjoying life. I never want to find myself in that place again, ever.
External circumstances triggered it, and it was perpetuated and compounded to the most awful degree. I'll say it was my fear and inability to communicate and share what I was going through, and XH's inability to deal with it and reaction to it. Which meant it dragged on for years and years. And instead of being a glitch (albeit a pretty major one) that could have been overcome with support and compassion, and something that we both could have come out the other side from stronger and more loving towards each other, it became even more destructive.
In the end, I feel betrayed. Not by the OW (plural), but by the person that should have been there to love and support me, and who wasn't. They promised to be there to love and support me in times of hardship when we M, and I believed that promise, wholeheartedly. But when it came down to it, they didn't honour that. Their actions were lacking.
How immature. Because that's life, my friends. S***t happens. It happens to you and to the people you love and care about. And what do you do? Withdraw, and go and try and get your ego boosted in all the ways you can.
