Moving On

[cardinal]

Hi, may. I love your list. I am a list-maker too, always writing down thoughts, but I haven't laid everything out like this yet, and I think it might be helpful for me. This also gives you a document to revisit and change as needed.

Shall I set a deadline for myself on this? Last time, I set a six week deadline based on a work trip he had to her city-- if he didn't break it off with her by then, we were through. This time, I'm thinking the timeline needs to be more around my own processing and detaching to the point where the next step boundaries are authentic and I can enforce them, rather than an externally driven or arbitrary date.

What about setting a timeline, if it feels right, when you would simply make it a point to check in with this list? How your current boundaries are working (or not) and how you're feeling about the ones that you're only thinking about now. Even though you'll probably be evaluating all of this as you go, perhaps having a set date when you know you'll be allowing yourself to change course (or not--and not even necessarily with regards to D) would be helpful.

No R talks—good! Knowing what will help you (yoga, meditation) and then somehow resisting it—this is familiar to me too. I'm glad you had the class to bring you back to that space. I think there is this fine line between just jumping in and doing it even though you are resisting and also sitting with/in that resistance, recognizing it, and being okay with it. That's mindfulness too, right?

I still am also harboring another fantasy that this is a relapse and not a complete collapse and part of the process we had to go through.

For what it's worth, I don't think this is a complete fantasy. Would DnJ call it a wish or a hope? I think a hope. The future is still full of possibilities, no matter what happens in the next stretch, even if it feels like a collapse. Even if it looks like one, or is one. What you can do is ask yourself here, in this moment (not the next), do you feel like you're being true to yourself and your convictions? That's what I try to tell myself, anyway!