I wanted to talk to you about analysis paralysis. I had that. I had to keep rethinking everything, going over and over things again and again to see what I could have done differently and if I did things differently would there have been changes. I got stuck in analysis paralysis for over 7 years. It was like I had a one-track mind and nothing there was how I felt about anything, it was all about how I could control another person to change back to the person they were when I met them. Needless to say, this didn't work, no matter how much I tried to change myself to be the person he wanted me to be. You see, anything I changed to be the person that he wanted, well, he decided that was wrong also.
I became a basket case. Never in my life did I work so hard for a relationship, just to be told that everything I did was wrong. I was keeping a list of things that were wrong with me, by the time I gave that up, I think there were about 137 or 147 things wrong with me. Can't remember the number of things, I no longer have the list, my lawyer does. I can just remember looking at the list and there were things on there, like I cook too much, then later on, he would say I don't cook, or I clean too much, then it was that I didn't clean. Looking at that list, I knew that whatever I would do, would not be good enough.
About 3 months before I left, I remember sitting in the den. I don't think that I have ever felt so lower then I did that day. My ex use to abandon me all the time. At first it was for a few days, then weeks, then months at a time. I would be at home and I had this hope in me that things would get better.
Well this day sitting in the den, I had the TV on, there was a patio door directly across the room from me, and I didn't hear a sound and I saw nothing outside the patio door. My world just went black and I could feel myself falling into an abyss. I finally hit rock bottom. I sat at the bottom of this abyss for a really long time, possibly 3 or 4 hours, just staring into nothingness, and just hurting. Then some part of my brain must have started to work, and I looked at the walls that enslaved me, and they were closing me in.
My mind cleared up, the walls that were enslaving me were walls that I was building, the hope that I had, was a hope to change another person. Well dang, I tried that for over 20 years and that wasn't going to happen. So I cried, it was a good cry. I then gave up all the hope that I had for all of those years, and I felt relief. I still felt lonely, but I felt a calmness come over me that I haven't felt for decades. There was a ladder in the abyss, and even though I felt so horrible and so lonely, I climbed that ladder one rung at a time. Sometimes I fell back a few steps, but I never stopped climbing till I got out. See, the hope that I had was the wrong hope. Hope to change someone else, well that's just control. The only control that I have is to change me. I developed a new Hope that day. It was hope for me, and me making the changes to my life, so that my life would be happy.
There was a song that I was listening to then, perhaps not the whole song, maybe just 2 or more lines from it.
Ain't going down, no more to the well
and sometimes it seems, I'm going to hell.......... (Van Morrison)
Well, you do sound a bit better today, but I do know how fast you can fall down the rungs of a ladder. BTDT.
(((((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))
amy