Babe Gets Real

[Treasur]

I really think my reluctance is bc I am just not at all sure yet what I want my life to look like in the next few years. Perhaps as EMDR is helping me come out of my own 'fog'. There really is almost nothing left of the life I used to have. The 'gift' of that is an almost clean slate and very few obligations to anyone or anything but myself. So I'm really not sure. And tbh, I associate cats with a feeling of 'home' and I don't know what home is anymore. Or even if I want one. I have a house but no feeling of home. Well, other than my allotment strangely which has become my new safe place I think. I will let time and instinct do its job...

Quite a while ago, to manage the boundaries of my own sanity, I had a mental trick called the 'No F'ing Idea' Box. It let me throw things in that either I just couldn't know yet or when I didn't have enough info. A way to train myself to stop mind-reading the incomprehensible or trying to fix the unfixable or stuff I didn't own. The box got quite full after a while lol. I suspect I am just beginning to unpack that box for myself now in planning what next.

As I am farther away from the truly WTF times and also my connection to the h I used to know (or think I did), part of working out my own story is chewing lightly on alternatives. Balancing facts and bits that don't add up. Probably hunting a simpler story to pack away maybe. I truly don't know what happened mostly. My h had a depressive breakdown - I saw that and it was professionally documented - and then he stopped behaving like the person I knew and stopped behaving like a sane decent adult. Or at least towards me. He chose to shrug off his old life and to make a new one without me. And behaved consistently as if my thoughts, feelings and even my life were now completely irrelevant to him. As Acorn says, I was a chair...perhaps less, a memory of an old chair lol. If I play devil's advocate, could all that have just come from wanting to be with another woman and not liking the practical consequences of it much? Maybe. I only know that he didn't behave like a reasonable decent person, that he was under psychiatric care and that I could not have treated him as he treated me after almost 20 years and that none who knew him before could recognise the new him either.  So, with regard to my xh, there is still quite a lot in the box and bc he refused to talk to me and has burned every bridge that might allow that in the future, I shall probably never know. The simple fact is that my h decided to change his life and that I deserved no voice, vote or concern. Brutal way to treat another human being imho, and I have no idea what caused him to do so or how that choice will work out for him.

But, with time, it has got easier to accept the presence of the NFI Box and to just pull out the bits that matter to me and my choices and my solo recovery from what was an almost unbearable season of my life. Which feels like a pretty good sane constructive place to be.

[UrsaMajor]

I really think my reluctance is bc I am just not at all sure yet what I want my life to look like in the next few years. Perhaps as EMDR is helping me come out of my own 'fog'. There really is almost nothing left of the life I used to have. The 'gift' of that is an almost clean slate and very few obligations to anyone or anything but myself. So I'm really not sure. And tbh, I associate cats with a feeling of 'home' and I don't know what home is anymore. Or even if I want one. I have a house but no feeling of home. Well, other than my allotment strangely which has become my new safe place I think. I will let time and instinct do its job...

You just managed to put your finger RIGHT into the place that I have been trying to figure out for the last 3 years now....

Yes, I have my apartment and it is the way I want it. I have made it what I want (although now I am having to do a Marie Kondo action) but first, it is NOT "mine" as I am renting and second, it just doesn't "feel" like "home" to me.  I don't know what is missing exactly  and that is bothering me a bit.   My kids (or at least S) is regularly there, I have my dog, it is comfortable but there is still something missing.... I guess once I figure THAT out (what that "missing" thing is) then I can say I have truly moved on ...   

I wonder if and when that will ever happen?

Now, now, children! 
UM is both, perhaps.  I’m waiting for someone to tell ME off now.

Acorn, BEHAVE! 

Incredibly hairy I am not.....

[Treasur]

Ah, but bears are lovely UM...maybe I need a bear by the sea 

So reassuring to hear that you feel that same sense of 'ok but not quite' feeling and on about the same timeline. Doesn't it help to know we are not alone? Or loopy with company perhaps?    Don't get me wrong - and I suspect you feel the same - I am really grateful to no longer be reeling in the insane s&itstorm or trying to run round repairing what someone else is blowing to pieces or waiting for the next WTF thing to turn up. It is like I have my skin back on now, just a bit thinner and feeling slightly unfamiliar still.

There is a lot to be appreciated in 'ok' and 'comfortable' and 'peace'...but yup, still feels like a path to somewhere rather than a destination. If you find it first, UM, promise you'll tell me? 

[Anjae]

I really think my reluctance is bc I am just not at all sure yet what I want my life to look like in the next few years. Perhaps as EMDR is helping me come out of my own 'fog'. There really is almost nothing left of the life I used to have. The 'gift' of that is an almost clean slate and very few obligations to anyone or anything but myself. So I'm really not sure. And tbh, I associate cats with a feeling of 'home' and I don't know what home is anymore. Or even if I want one. I have a house but no feeling of home. Well, other than my allotment strangely which has become my new safe place I think. I will let time and instinct do its job...

I understand. I like being on my own and even if I more or less know where I want to go, given I spend nearly a decade looking after grandmother, I am now open to new things/what come my away. Will keep what I like.´

It is funny how often the LBS ends up with less responsability than before MLC and even with less responsability than the MLCer. You, I and all the other childless LBS are only responsible for ourselves - unless we have a relative to look after. The MLCer is usually with OW/OM, etc.

[Treasur]

So true, Anjae, although ironic too that it is bc responsibilities we chose and valued were taken rather than given up.

I do feel sad that someone who shared my life for almost two decades behaved as if I was nothing more than an object to be discarded. I feel even more sad actually that my h became someone who could do that to me. Losing people you love, for me at least, reminds me of how special each one of us is as an individual human. I know I am neither worthless or an object. But I also accept that apparently that was how my h saw/sees me. Which is weird and sad and incomprehensible, but also Real as far as I can see. Good reason though for not letting that kind of perspective pollute my life any more than it has done...perhaps it just means some caution in picking up any new responsibilities bc they are important to honour....onwards 

[Treasur]

Read a sentence on an old DB post about abuse and MLC that really struck me so wanted to log it here.

That an abusers actions are about control but in MLC they are about a twist for freedom.
So, as I read this, a person with a systematic history of abuse will show a pattern of compulsion to control other people as an end goal. Regardless of why, that is who they were, are and probably will be with others. There is a pattern of escalation and a history.
A person in crisis/depression may look similar but it is situational. Control is a ticket but not the end goal which is more about escape and avoid while they are in crisis. And the abusive behaviour ends if they come out of crisis.

Why does this matter imho?

Bc all MLC situations have some level of abuse. Sometimes overt Monster, sometimes covert Gaslighting Avoider.
Most LBS then try to figure out two things; what should I reasonably do to safeguard myself, and am I deluding myself about what my marriage to this person was really like?
So thinking about abuse is part of the LBS process and part of getting Real as opposed to Mindf**ked.

And we will reach different conclusions individually. And those conclusions will shape our choices and what we need to do to heal.

In my situation fwiw - and it only matters now in terms of my own Real healing - I honestly see no pattern of controlling abuse in my h as we was before whatever happened, happened. And bc I need Real to heal I have looked very hard for it. The closest I can get is that he was a bit of a people pleasing nice guy and given to avoiding direct conflict so sometimes a bit passive-aggressive...but all within the normal bell curve of imperfect humans...no different than my tendency to overthink a bit and be a bit of a controlling fixer sometimes. My h was not an abuser, he was not driven by a need to control me and my m was not an abusive one. I did not imagine the peace and truth in our house.

AND it is also true that he became very abusive, mostly in covert ways, since 2015.

The good news for my PTSD and Reality Fix is that this means to me that I only have 3 years of being abused to make peace/sense of rather than 22! For my xh, I guess it means that he will continue to behave abusively towards others until he no longer needs to escape from whatever it was/is that he's escaping from.

On an even more useful note, my little Valentines gift to myself just arrived! Yay!

[Thunder]

Well now this is crazy.
Treasur and UM, you both touched on something that is interesting (American interesting)  because I never really thought about it.

I, like you Anjae, live alone and I'm quite fine with that. 

But I also don't have that "home" feeling either.
I love my place, it's spacious, in a beautiful neighborhood, decorated just the way I wanted, yet there is something missing.

It's not my X, it wasn't my dog, it's something I can't quite put my finger on.

UM, it may be not owning it.  But then when I've gone over to the marital home where my X still lives, that doesn't have that "home" feeling either.

It's like I lost "home" somewhere down the line and didn't realize it until you two brought it up.  I found myself just nodding along.

I wonder how many other people here feel this way. 
It's not an unhappy feeling, just an odd one.

[Treasur]

Anyone else have that 'not home' feeling?
Anyone find ways to move on to a 'home' feeling again? Or did it stop mattering?

[Maleficent]

Treasur,

I am still in my house, and hope not to leave for the same reasons you have articulated.  I am all alone here, but the house strangely has become a part of my family.  The memories, the furniture, the funny little things I look at every day.  I say goodbye to the house in the morning when I leave.  Without the house, I would not have anything rooting or grounding me each day (the way your roses do you).  So, I can imagine the opposite.  Maleficent

[Treasur]

Linked to the idea of 'home', was half watching one of those Marie Kondo programmes and I realised that I deserve a compassionate pat on the back for clearing and selling two homes all on my own. Two homes, three people's lives plus mine, almost 200 combined years between my parents, my h and me. And I was the last woman standing; there was no one else there to do it.

And by God, it was exhausting physically and emotionally. I'd forgotten how hard it was, how much it made me feel more alone, how unfair it seemed that my then h had run away from even packing his own things let alone ours, how often I sobbed as I did it. I'm actually grateful that I was pretty numb...don't think I could have done it otherwise. But that was the story of late 2016/early 2017...so much stuff, full of emotional triggers and when my brain couldn't decide its way out of a paper bag, when I wasn't sleeping much or eating much. Meanwhile my h was busy playing p/t house with ow just 30 mins away unbeknownst to me then and having some nice beach holidays to show off his new tattoos. Wouldn't even answer an email about any of this practical stuff then. Thinking about it now makes me a) want to hug that poor broken little me and b) punch my xh hard in the face.

But I do appreciate now my progress and how much easier it is now to do the final bits of winnowing the things I could not do then. That I can find the things that give me joy now when then all I could do is try to avoid more pain.

No wonder a sense of 'home' got lost in the churn of those days.