fml23

After a huge crisis late last summer with my AH, I haven't posted much. I'm far down the divorce process and its been bumpy and tiresome and I put my therapy and recovery to the back burner dealing with day to day struggles. Today I have some truly rare alone time with my daughter on a camping trip for two days. I was feeling very grief stricken and decided to get up and mop the floor. I hate mopping. Like more than any other household task. But today I had deep meditative thoughts that left me in tears. I feel like I just lifted 200 lbs of weight off my shoulders. I immediately journaled and suddenly thought to share my musing here. I hope they help someone in crisis to know it does get better. Recovery comes bits by bits and then in waves all at once. Anyway here are my thoughts:

And all at once, I had the kind of earth shattering epiphany that fills you with nostalgia and longing. The kind of epiphany that splits your mind and heart open like a sprouted seed; new growth rising, rising, rising breaking through its protective shell. It was the kind of epiphany that takes your breath away, that clears the fog, that centers the focus right back to the self, back here and now, and releases you, with grief, from the past that binds you to the pain and darkness you have long since forgotten your carried. It’s the kind of epiphany that accepts apologies that aren’t coming, and forgives the self for its sins against others. It’s the kind of epiphany that expands you into adulthood and lets go of whatever foolish judgements were left from the spoilt child within. And, so in the middle of mopping the floor it hit me: I was as guilty as he of addiction. My addiction was to the possibility of recovery, or perfection, my attachment to the idea of the future we might have had. The one that had only been just out of reach. The ‘if only’s and the ‘next times’. I was unable to unchain myself from the pain he was causing me. Unable to accept my own powerlessness. Unable to let go of the possibilities. Too afraid of the pain of ending a relationship that had become intolerable, because I was terrified that I couldn’t cope with the next chapter. Never allowing myself to count more than his self. Never wanting to be ungrateful, unkind. Never wanting to let go. That’s it. That’s the epiphany. That’s my rock bottom. I made difficult choices. I can build the stairs to climb out of this darkness. I don’t have to live this, to carry this anymore. All along I thought the weight was chained to me, like an anchor pulling me into the depths of his ocean of alcoholism. But all at once, I realized, the weight is a backpack, and I can take it off. I can set down the weight. It wasn’t mine. It was someone else’s bag to unpack. Life is full or hard things. I accept that. That some people are addicts who won’t get help. Or addicts who get help but still don’t make good partners for me. Some people that you love are not investments for the future. Sometimes they are best loved from afar. And now I can grieve the wonderful man I married, the best friend I lost to alcoholism, and the father my daughter didn’t get. And, for the first time in years, I know I will be ok.