An old mindset for Burned. This is thread 8.

[burned]

You have to fall inlove with yourself first. You are the most important person in your life. YOU! And you have to heal first.

The healing is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. I was warned, I know, but living it makes it so real. Still a ton of fear about the future.

Did you go back and prepare the list of goals for yourself? How are you doing on those? ... Are you holding yourself accountable to yourself?

Not doing great there. I wish I had the time or the energy, or the desire maybe, to focus on those. I'm barely accomplishing necessary daily tasks. It's sort of like sleepwalking through this pain. I'm avoiding, which has always been my favorite defense mechanism.

I do my gratitude/happiness journal almost daily. It's mildly helpful. And I'm starting to get my act together at work, so that reduces stress to some extent. Two medical appointments next week, first to check on this ankle which isn't healing, and then for my yearly checkup plus maybe seeing about increase in antidepressant dose.

From yesterday:

Like you are still protecting yourself from W or some thing. Or saving that other half in case she comes racing back.

That pretty much sums it up. It's like I don't want to think about creating a life for myself without her, because then I won't be able to go back. Like, once I've really moved on, then I've really lost her. It doesn't really make sense.

It hurts to think about her, but my obsessive mind can't stop doing it. Everything is a reminder. But when that happens I try to think positive relative to the R, like, this will be OK, she will be back, all of this will have served a purpose, we will have the best R ever. But that kind of denial is getting harder and harder. So then I think about myself. And at this point, much as I know it's not true, I have this feeling that ahead of me is a long, hard road full of more rejection, more pain, more fear, and no guaranteed success in terms of being in another R. I think I just have to keep crawling through this sewage. Because complaining about it doesn't help and is just so unattractive.