ratwheeling

I'm genuinely bored with my writing now. I'm stuck in an emotional ditch, not moving forwards or backwards. Nothing seems to be shifting, lifting, changing. I don't have anything interesting to say that doesn't make me sound pathetic and weak.

*sigh ... rat on a wheel. Maudlin, depressing, self-indulgent, self-pitying me.

probably good news?

I seem to have less to say about you and us at the moment. I made my decision to let you go at 6 months, and it's working, I'm truly moving on.

I'm not happy and I miss you as much today as always, but I can imagine that I might be happy one day soon (ish) and I might stop missing you eventually.

This is the first time I've really been able to imagine that - probably good news, right?

Fingers crossed.

wishing

"Never chase love. If it isn't given freely by another person, it's not worth having." D. M.

I've known this all along, I've just had awful trouble living it. I wish it had been different, easier.

foolish

I don't know what I was thinking, but I found myself looking through some of our photos and videos tonight, something I've avoided totally for the last six months. Maybe I was feeling brave. Silly, silly me.

You take my breath away.

You are without question the most gorgeous man I've ever known, inside and out.

I think this is what they call a relapse.

I can hardly believe that I can still love you this much, as completely and deeply and fully as I always have.  And that I still ache just to talk to you, every day {even when I'm trying to pretend to myself that I don't}.

I don't want this. It's honestly almost too much to bear some days. I would give just about anything to forget you ever existed right now.

And I thought I was doing so well ...

{really} good news

I've finally moved into my new home and I love it. I still think of you every day, and always every morning when I first wake up, but I've been so busy lately that they're just fleeting, painless thoughts.

I'm a long way from being happy, and at best I'd describe myself as comfortably numb, but I'll take that. That's a 1000% improvement on the intense, cavernous pain of recent months.

day one

I wrote to you yesterday to explain my promise to myself, and to assure you that you can have real confidence I'm now putting us behind me, and moving on.  You might not believe me, I've promised and failed before, but this time is different.

Today is day one of the rest of my life, looking forward, not back.

agonizing

I heard that word recently and realised it describes exactly what the past six months have been like. If someone had told me just a day before we broke up that I could feel as much pain as I have, that days could be agonizing to the point of just wanting to die, that loss and grief and confusion and shock could be relentless and devastating, I seriously doubt I would have believed them. I'm little_miss_optimistic, a go-getter, and adventurer, a liver of life and a believer that all will always be well. I make things happen for myself and the people I love, good things, and I live in gratitude and marvel at how lucky I am. And then this happened, and whoa, it sat me back on my ass and sucked the breath clean out of me.

I'm far from healed. Far from over you. A long, long way from being whole again. But I can look back now and see the path I've been walking for the past six months, reflect on it, be in awe of it, and feel the first hints of gratitude that I made it through.

I wonder what the next six months, and beyond, hold for me. At best I think I'm going to spend the next little while just rebuilding the bits of my life. We had a plan for a marvellous, happy, contented, loving family and future and now that's gone. I don't know what will fill the void. Probably not much for a while, probably it's just a matter of keeping on keeping on and staying open-minded and open-hearted to what life might bring.

There's a word, and I can't bring it to mind, that describes this period in my life. Cataclysmic seems close. I lost you, the love of my life. I lost our dream of creating a happy, loving family for your children. I lost them. I lost the hope we had (especially me) of expanding our family. I lost three of my closest friends, one after the other, each independently, because they didn't like the way I retreated. I don't think they saw my pain, how agonizing it was. I don't think they looked closely enough to see that I was hanging on with a thread and that there was a real danger of me collapsing into a nervous breakdown. I knew it then and was fighting with everything I had. But I don't think they saw that, and even if they did, I don't think they could be bothered with it.

I could be wrong about my friends, I completely understand that, and I'll probably never know. Either way I lost them too.

I lost my self-confidence and I came excruciatingly close to losing my self-respect (to be honest, that's still only hanging on by a thread. I really haven't handled things very gracefully).

I know that my survival instinct is powerful and that my capacity to rationalise and compartmentalise and explain and understand and put things in their place - to make sense of stuff - is highly developed. I can only assume that these things bubbled away in the background and held me together until I could consciously do that for myself.

So now it's time to consciously do it. Little by little, to rebuild, start putting the pieces of my life back together - starting fresh in a new place, maybe making some new friends (not easy when you're deeply private and solitary, but I'll give it a shot). And maybe one day when I'm ready, maybe I'll start putting the pieces of my heart back together.

milestone approaches

In two days it will be exactly six months since we broke up. A while back, when I realised I really wasn't coping and I didn't have a lot of control over how I was feeling or what I needed to do, I made myself a promise.

I promised myself I could fall apart as much as I needed to, and I decided to forgive myself if I did things I really wasn't proud of, like contacting you even though you'd told me not to. I also committed to consciously doing things to live my life as fully as I could - my holiday, buying my home, other things.

And I set a time limit - six months.

Time's up. It's time to let you go.

definitely stronger

Really, a LOT stronger. Smiling again. Kind of back to normal. Almost happy.

Scratch just a little under the surface though, and I miss you so much, So, so much.

one soul partner

A lovely friend told me a somewhat heart-breaking story tonight. Heart-breaking for me, anyway. She was visiting a naturopath for a treatment and they had a conversation about soulmates. The naturopath said we each have 49,000 soulmates (weird number, right?), but only one soul partner. That's it, just one soul partner in a whole lifetime.

What if you're my one and only soul partner and I let you slip through my fingers?

God, that doesn't bear thinking about.

for me

Today was big. I wrote to you a LOT. I sent a whole bunch of messages saying a whole bunch of things about where I'm at, why I'm having so much trouble letting go, how far I've come. It's the most healing thing I've done for myself in the past six months. One of the things I said was that writing to you is a bit like talking things through (though into thin air seeing as you don't respond), and that the talking is so important to me. It's what allows me to process, let go, move forward, heal.

It's what I need to do for me.

day 50

I just read a blog post about a teenager's heartbreak and realised that heartbreak's the same for everyone, no matter our age or circumstances. That big hole of lost love, missing passion, dashed hopes for the future, is par for the course.  This lovely teenager ended up with the love of her life 15 years later - magical.

I'm still trying to let go of the hope that we'll end up together one day.

Maybe another 50 days is all that I need.

http://viv-spot.blogspot.com/2009/04/that-torch-was-getting-really-heavy.html

finally

It's getting a little easier to not contact you. I still end up in tears most days, even if only for a split-second. I could collapse into sobs and curl up on the ground most days, but I can usually divert, distract, disconnect enough to avoid that. Only just, but just enough.

I keep imagining that one day you're going to call me. You say "Hi, it's me". And I can't speak. I'm ecstatic to hear from you. Shocked into silence. Frightened of somehow screwing up and causing you to hang up the phone. Paralysed, to be honest.

But I really hope you do. One day. Soon.

{I need to let go of that hope, too, right?}

"You must grant him freedom. It must be unfettered and it must be pure. Do not intrude on it."

http://www.mamamia.com.au/weblog/2011/02/when-a-break-up-is-the-best-thing-that-could-happen-to-you-by-zoe-foster.html

It's possible that this article saved my life today. It certainly saved my spirit.

hurting

Really hurting.
Crying.
So lonely.
Still shocked.
Lost.
Regretting.
Regretful.
Tender.
Heart sore.
Heart aching. Aching.
Broken.
Alone.

tonight ... again ...

I need some help. I need someone to put their arms around me and hold me while I sob until I have no tears left. I need you.

hardly breathing

Today it feels as though someone has reached into my chest, stretched their fingers and wrapped them around my fragile heart, and squeezed with all of their might.

I can hardly believe that this aching just doesn't go away. I can hardly breathe.

Just when I think I'm letting go, getting on with things, fretting less, feeling stronger, I crumble again.

I see you in the couple holding hands the way you used to hold mine. In the supermarket doorway, where you'd grab the grocery bags and insist I wasn't allowed to carry any of them. In the bus, which you hated. In a stranger's eyes, dark and soulful just like yours. I see you everywhere. In everything.

For a day or two my mind is in charge, telling me I should let go, I can let go, I have let go a little bit more and a little bit more.

Then my heart cries out and reminds me I'm kidding myself. I am devastated. I'm completely lost without you.

I love you and I don't think I'll ever, ever be happy again.

planning my goodbye

I have some things I'm going to send to you. I bought them recently, for the kids, when I was missing you all so much. I bought them on a whim. I asked you if it was OK to send them, but you were silent. Then I had second thoughts and so I asked you if you could understand that it's probably best if I don't send them afterall. You were silent. Now I don't really know what to do for the best, but in case you're expecting them, and because I love you with all my heart, I've decided to send them.

I'm going to wait a little while though. A few weeks, just to get a bit stronger and clearer. Because when I send these things I'm also going to say goodbye.

You deserve at least that much from me. A goodbye. To be let go. To be left alone.

a good sign?

I'm 40 days into my 100 days of heart break journal. I'm starting to forget that I have this blog, and that I have thoughts and feelings I_need_to_get_out! I'm not bursting as much. I'm not hurting quite as much.

I'm starting to stop hoping.

Maybe?

there is love in my life

You don't know but I haven't just lost you. I've also lost most of my friends and found myself at a profound crossroad, with everything that I used to know suddenly unknown, and everything that I used to believe now unbelievable.

I found that at the time I needed my close girlfriends the most, they weren't there. In fact they seemed to think I'd become hard work and too much trouble. Maybe I had. But maybe real friends are those that stick around when you're at your worst because that's when their friendship really counts. They didn't, so I said goodbye.

I've been in different states of shock for five months. Today I had the most delightful, heartfelt, honest, unexpected conversation with an old and dear friend. I remembered - there is love in my life.