Hi all, just doing some journaling. I'm trying to be more open and communicative with my thoughts.
In addition to my NMMNG work, I'm also doing a course with Dr. Glover around a concept he calls the ruminating brain. Like a lot of other NMMNG concepts, this one too fits me like a T. I overanalyze, I rehash things, I go over past mistakes and beat myself up for them, and on and on. The key takeaway from the course so far is that people who have this brain type, their brain is wired to feed them distorted representations of things; the key is to simply be an observer of what your brain is telling you, but not necessarily a believer. So in my case when my brain is telling me that I'm a bad person for the mistakes I made, or that I'm broken and will forever be like this, it's on me to recognize that pattern, call it out, and simply observe it passing through without letting it internalize and be accepted as truth.
All of this is to say that I think this experience has been uniquely hard on me, one because of my negative self-image and tendency to ruminate and two because of the elongated and stunted way that things have been proceeding. On the former, I'm working on it but I have to work against 38 years of default behaviors, relying on external approval, avoiding conflict, and being my own harshest critic. On the latter, well, that train is coming into the station very soon.
At this point I'm mentally prepared for D to be the end result. There's nothing for me to point to otherwise. That doesn't mean I'm happy - if anything, it hurts me deeply - but I have to start to accept that it's the overwhelmingly likely outcome. We'll get to some place where we're agreed on how things split, and then that's that.
I've had a few friends tell me that the only way out is through - there's no way to shortcut it, you have to feel what you feel and grieve. For as much as I'm sure that I'll find love again, that I'm an attractive person with many good qualities, that I'm strong and brave for having the courage to accept my faults and work on them, it's still very hard for me to forgive myself for what happened to the M. To be honest, I'm not sure how anyone does it. It's fairly black and white to me; a woman loved me deeply, someone I was insanely attracted to and meant the world to me, and while I'm not 100% at fault, there is a litany of things I regret and feel shame about, and now she's gone. How does anyone ever get to peace with that?
When I got let go from my corporate job, it was painful but I also remember walking out of those doors excited too -- it meant that I could go ahead and start my next company. I had always wanted to, but didn't because we were a family unit and it was necessary for me to optimize for salary, benefits, and so on. But with the S and with this new freedom, I could finally do it. I'm hoping that once this door is finally closed, I'll have a similar reckoning: there are many other doors that are now open for me to walk through.
Day to day, it's hard. We live five minutes from each other, so even though we rarely run into each other, it's always possible when I go outside. Our finances are shared. I don't want to be surrounded by it, reminded constantly about it, but I am. That certainly doesn't help my ruminating brain. But again I also know that the only way out is through - running from it isn't going to help. When my Mom passed away when I was 23, my response was to upend my entire life and move to SF...where I just had the same problems, in a different town.
Anyway, no real requests for advice or help, just trying to work on my emotional vocabulary and speaking to how I'm feeling. I'm lonely, I'm scared, but I know I'm going to be OK and I know that I'm going to be someone's dream catch. It's just going to take time.
