Still Learning...

[may22]

(((sage)))

I heart you, I see you, I want to be there for you so much right now.

A few thoughts:

You are living in a totally impossible horrific situation with a person who ripped out your heart, stomped on it while forcing you to watch and then began demanding that you make him feel better for having had to rip and stomp and make you watch. He undermined everything your love and marriage and family and business stood for, and demanded that you understand why he must do that.

This hit me too, Sage. Hard. I remember back in the summer that someone called my H an emotional vampire that was going to suck me dry. This really stuck with me. At the moment (and this was when, IIRC, he was demanding that I listen and understand to just how much he loved AP and so how difficult that made it for him, etc.) I didn't totally get it. I thought, I'm validating. We're supposed to do that, right? And I want to know what is going on. But so many of my friends here were saying stop, may, this is wrong, this is NOT OKAY that I really did take notice and set up my boundaries around not listening to him talk about AP any more, and have kept that with me ever since.

When I read this from Gerda to you, it seemed so crystal clear to me to fit your relationship and what your H is doing. And it made me think of my own. So I went back and read my own posts from the summer. Ouch. Now I see what you guys were all talking about. It makes me want to vomit to read about the things he would tell me, and even more so to remember it happening.

Your H and mine are quite similar, I think, in many ways. My H wanted so so badly for me to give him my blessing on what he was doing. To say, it's okay. I understand. Go and we'll still be best friends. I couldn't do that. In hindsight I think it was sick he was asking me to give that to him at all.

I feel like your H is doing the same thing to you. He wants you to make it all better as you always have. He knows he's done-- is doing-- this terrible thing but if you agree it was the right thing to do, if you can just make him believe it was OK then he thinks he'll be better. it is heartbreaking, really... but NOT YOUR MONKEYS, right?

Can you drop that bow and arrow on the ground? Just turn your face away from the target and direct all that beautiful energy into yourself?

It so so resonates with me to be the supermom, super everything. But it was always a mirage, anyway. I don't know how different it is, truly, for us than it was for the 50s housewife who put on lipstick and greeted her H with a cocktail when he came home from work. We've all been sold a bill of goods. (Probably the men too, though the ones who have been gallivanting around on their work trips with OW don't take up a lot of my sympathy space.) The thing for you, though, is-- your kids are GREAT. They are so emotionally mature and perceptive and creative and resilient. They have each other (knitting and ornament making, I can't stand it) and you know they are going to be okay. Hold that in your heart. You've done good. They're great kids. You're a great mom. you've got this.

Elf on the shelf-- just in case, I have forgotten to move the dang elf many a night. Sometimes, the elf just needs to stay because he wanted to check something out, nothing must have been going on at the north pole, whatever. Kids usually come up with an explanation if you are quiet. Not that you will forget but just in case and remember if you do, you're still a good mom. (My kids said today.... mommy, his eyes are really DUSTY. And he has had this drop of water (I have no idea what they're talking about) on his face for DAYS. And it look like his hands are SEWN TOGETHER. I said, wow. I wonder why? And they took if from there. But I cleaned his poor face tonight.)

(((sage)))