A Time to Mourn, A Time to Dance

I've let myself wallow for a full two weeks. Every day I have let myself cry, not shower, and generally feel the misery and pain as much as I could. It has been a good thing. But I feel like I am getting tired of it--the isolation, the wishing things to be different than they are. Reality is sinking in, and this is my life, like it or not.

My heart is still broken, but I am beginning to see things differently. I've been listening to a lot of Tara Brach podcasts lately, and even though I thought her words of wisdom weren't sinking into my SCL-obsessed thought life, I think they really are. When I got back to my house yesterday, I said aloud to myself, "I did everything I could. I was more than enough, though I was not everything. And the failure of this relationship is not my doing." I said before that this pain feels so uniquely personal--but the truth is that much of this is about SCL, and I just happened to be the one who got caught up in the middle of it. Relationship collateral damage.

It has hurt me so much to think that SCL didn't love me--because I have been thinking it was my fault that he didn't. But really, it was about him. Damn, it's difficult not to take someone's lack of love as a personal affront, isn't it? It kills me to remember him saying how much he wanted to change, how dedicated he was to changing--and then deciding that he just couldn't do it. I never thought about him as weak, but I'm beginning to. I hope he'll eventually get to the place he wants to be. Otherwise I think he'll end up just like his parents--miserable, isolated, and negative.

So, now it's time to shift to focusing on me rather than what was lost. I won't lie--part of me just doesn't want to give SCL the satisfaction that I still care so much. That'll change over time, I think. But I do want to live my life again. These two weeks of moping have been necessary--and I know there will be dark times ahead--but I feel my attitude changing at times.

The process will still have its ups and downs, and there will be more days of moping and crying--but I do have a vision of a new life for myself and I won't let anything stand in the way of going for it.