It's just so tiring to me that he's taking this crazy, bitter, mean action on the one hand, and then carrying on as if we're friendly roommates on the other. It feels like it's one other thing slowly draining my energy in the background, even when I'm not actively thinking about it. I think it still takes extra mental work to exist in my reality and not his. My brain gets foggy sometimes as it tries to make sense of the interaction: I am talking to a friend; No, this person is friendly for the moment but is not my friend; I am talking to the person who used to be my H; This person is on the surface acknowledging me as a human with a shared history in this moment; but this person is also not treating me with respect in every other way; I am friendly in return not because we are sharing a moment or because this is my H but because I am a kind person etc, etc.
Does this make sense? It's like my brain is the spinning wheel of death on a computer screen, all the programs open are frozen, and then I have to reboot. I told my IC last time that I catch myself slipping back to my default trusting, hopeful nature, in which I subconsciously assume H is no longer angry and will act rationally, and then I have to check my expectations. I understand that he is living multiple lives, from multiple compartments, and sometimes I feel like I am having to do that too, pretending like no L stuff is happening while we live together day to day.
I echo PLC, this totally makes sense to me. But give yourself a lot of grace right now, Cardinal. It takes an huge amount of psychic energy to navigate all of this. There are no neat compartments right now. It's all messy and convoluted and blurry and just HARD.
I keep thinking about something a woo-woo healer person told me: relationships shouldn't be this hard. And if they are, you need to exorcise them from your life because too much talented energy is wasted in the process. Relationships can change, and exorcising a R from your life isn't black and white. At the moment, in my own process, I am trying to find my mental boundaries within myself. Nothing to do with H, but everything to do with what I will and will not take up my own psychic energy.
At the moment, you have so much good going for you: a new job, the future that it will enable for you, physical security, your health. Feel those things that H triggers in you and move on when you're ready to. Eventually, your expectations will catch up with reality (at least that is what I am hoping for myself!).
