Thanks guys.
I just wanted to mark the anniversary of that moment somehow, and sharing the memories here seemed the best way to do it.
After that awful weekend, I started to read, read and read some more at this site. The stories and advice and tough love on this forum gave me the strength to realise that I deserved better. That it was as much a choice to stay, as a choice to go.
I looked at my life. I thought, if this is as good as it gets, is it enough?
The lights came on, and gradually the awful truth became too obvious to avoid any longer. Eventually I hit my bottom, and I've been living alone for 8 months now.
The road isn't easy, but at least I'm on the right track.
It took me a few months to join up as an SR member, and start to find a voice here. I'm still pretty shy around these parts, but I know that reading the thoughtful, kind and searing honesty of this board has seen me through so many lows and sleepless nights.
These days, life is pretty peaceful. It is lonely. But I'm taking my time to allow in what I value, and not rush into biting off more than I can chew.
Therapy is helping. I didn't find a good fit at al anon, but I'm making my own way in this new world.
I've learned more about myself in the last few months, than I ever could have done if I had chosen to stay.. All the energy I was pouring into making my marriage work, into helping my husband, into enabling and minimising and fixing. I might as well have poured it down the drain.
I'm slowly realising that I go for difficult people, to distract me from the pain inside myself. I distract myself with other people's problems, and try to seek my self worth in somewhere it doesn't exist. Bread at the hardware store. Textbook.
I still have pretty low lows, but I'm learning to embrace the feelings of loss, and am finding ways to nurture and soothe myself. My natural reaction to feeling upset is to get angry and frustrated to be debilitated by tears and emotions. My therapist is leading me towards the idea of inner parent / inner child conversations, and exploring this way of perceiving myself is actually helping! (Thank goodness!!). I'm beginning to understand that I need to treat myself as kindly as I sought to treat my A, all those other ex's, and everyone else in the world who's happiness and wellbeing a forced infront of my own. Self care is difficult to learn when my childhood taught me that if you're sad, maybe you should work harder to make yourself happy. Hurt? Better be quiet about it. Bullied? You probably did something to provoke or annoy the person mistreating you. Lots of things to understand and try different was of being..
This is pretty long now, but often people only post in crisis. I'm sure I have and will be one of them, but tonight, I'm feeling pretty stable, grateful, and thought maybe a bit of a progress update might be good.
Peace and serenity to all of you.. X