Thinking a lot about fear today. Most of the time I am okay but when I start to think about the future, my stomach starts to knot up and the anxiety starts. It’s strange when you think about it. My future now is no less uncertain than it was before BD but it was only a future I had assumed would happen. I guess we’re all guilty of that. It’s only when our world gets turned upside down that we realize just how tenuous life is. Today has been tough. Not sure why. It isn’t that much different than other days have been. I am not a fan of weekends. My kids are independent enough that they keep themselves pretty occupied but not so independent that I can just take off. The daytime is okay but it is the nights when my mind starts to wander. And when I feel most alone. This, in itself, is maddening because I’ve been alone a lot in the last four years. I guess what is different is now I know my H is somewhere else by choice instead of due to circumstances beyond his control. That is a different kind of lonely.
I am still on the DB path but am struggling to detach in a healthy way. I want to do it with love and leave the door open for reconciliation but there is still a part of me that feels that in order to really detach, I need to dislike him for period of time. It wouldn’t be that tough to do. There is not a whole lot he has done in that past four years that has been remotely admirable. He’s been a wolf in sheep’s clothing...pretending to be a good husband and father who is being taken away from his family by a chronic illness when really he was just a coward who decided EVERY DAY to go off on his own and leave all of life’s other problems for his wife to deal with. It was masterful, really. He got to do whatever he wanted and whenever I got a bit unhappy about it, I would beat myself up for being so selfish cause at least I was home with my kids whereas he was in some hospital going through treatments. I am still having a hard time wrapping my brain around that. I could never lie like that - not to anyone. So why do I even want him in my life? I am pretty clear that I don’t want THAT guy but my assumption is that he is only that guy because of this crisis. What if he just IS that guy and I’m only just figuring it out?
So... just had a long conversation with his daughter since I wrote the other two paragraphs. She was feeling guilty about something and wanted to talk to me. Apparently she asked him a week ago if we were getting a divorce...a week after he told her we were “on a temporary break”... and he told her “yes” and that he just “doesn’t think he can do this anymore.” This? What this? Hide out and pretend to be someone you are not? And six weeks ago he wanted to come home. He has never said the D word to me...he won’t even call his living somewhere else a separation. Not gonna lie...that was tough to hear outloud but at the same time, I would have guessed that is where he is at. Hard to hear it from my stepdaughter before I hear it from him.
He’s going to be here tomorrow morning to get the kids. I think I am going to have to really try to put some distance between us. Things have been too friendly lately. I’ve been too friendly. I need to take a step back and get my head on straight.
