My thread title is so out of date. I am now closing in on 6 years of his MLC. There is no more pain thankfully, but there is a lot of sadness and I suspect there always will be some. It’s not a sadness that drives my life in any meaningful way. I’m generally not aware of the sadness either until my mind revisits the years we had together, before MLC. The sadness is all about everything I lost,,, my marriage, my best friend, our home, many friends, total emotional security, my confidence,,,, for starters. His MLC did a real number on me. The consequences to me were staggering, mind boggling, even hideous. Just horrible. It’s not surprising that I still reel at times from the memory or that I am left with this sadness.
Most days I think I am fully healed. I go days without giving him a thought, I don’t miss him, I don’t want him back, my life is peaceful, happy and content. I have everything I need and most of what I want. I’m pretty sure I don’t want him back but then there is a small part of me that wonders if it would be possible to recover all that was lost. Could we actually reconcile one day? Then my mind shuts that thought down. Then it resurfaces again later on. I actually purchased two books at separate times related to marriage and reconciliation. Then when I cracked the books I found I just couldn’t continue. Both books went in the garbage. Reconciliation is definitely not for me. My mind recoils at the thought of reconciling. Then on some level of consciousness (or not), I review all the reasons why I do not ever want to reconcile. I’ve done this dozens of times over the years and I see it as some kind of ongoing processing of trauma and grief or remnants of it. I have mostly healed but not entirely or this processing would be done. Maybe when it is fully done the sadness will be gone.
My mother passed away 6 years ago, a few weeks before BD. There was a lot to do in the days following her death. It distracted me from my grief but when the dust finally settled I was able to feel her loss. Then the unthinkable happened. BD out of nowhere. That completely derailed grieving for my mother and became a nightmare of survival on levels I didn’t even know existed. I was no longer able to grieve for my mother,,,, until now. Close to 6 years after her death. Now that I have mostly recovered from my trauma, the grief I have suppressed for years has surfaced. My thoughts are frequently on her,,, my mother,, and I’m feeling her loss in full. I’m actually grateful for this time to grieve. It was unfair to her that I didn’t/couldn’t grieve until now. She deserved to be the centre of my thoughts after her death, and I needed to honour her memory properly. Instead my mind was obsessed with my own misery apart from her death. I think it’s a sign of my own recovery that I am finally grieving her.
What’s my MLCer doing these days? I don’t know and don’t much care. If he got run down by a bus tomorrow I would feel the same sadness and horror that his friends and family would feel but nothing more. Over the years he has remained in regular contact, almost entirely initiated by him. We have gone out for dinner or lunch a several times over the last year. Always at his initiative and it’s alway a pleasant time but not special either. He always has some reason to get together,,,to talk about something or another. It’s never just because he wants to spend time with me. Never. Despite my lack of interest I find this offensive somehow. That he just has to come up with some reason to get together. I suspect he does want to just spend time with me because the reasons are so flimsy and takes minutes and could easily be done on the phone or by email. I accept the invites not because I want to see him but because I’m a bit curious. I’ve observed changes in him over the years,,his slow progression through MLC and I do think one day he will finish his MLC. I’ll be happy to see him finally make it through and back to planet earth. But it won’t change my lack of interest in reconciling. That ship has truly sailed. I think that the sailing of this ship is the source of much of my sadness. That we didn’t survive this storm despite how good our marriage was and how much we loved each other. It is by far the sadness event in my life so I suppose it’s to be expected that I still feel it.
