Have you ever lay stomach down on the ground while a friend held your arms high in the air, waited, then slowly brought them down?  There’s a moment when it feels as if your arms are somehow passing through the ground and into a hole.  If it’s done just right, it seems like a hole with no end.

That’s me right now.  I have somehow ended up falling into a deep pit despite knowing that it is all just an illusion.  Mine has been a long, slow decent into this hole and has led to a squirming chaos that prevents me from knowing my own mind and heart.  I’m so hurt and uncomfortable sitting here with my feelings that I have to do something.  Anything.  So writing it is.

Here is a recap of my struggle so you might now how the decent started and why I’m here writing about it now:

• Girl is raised as an only child to a single mother (children of single mothers know what this entails).
• Girl becomes very observant and watches family members go through their struggles.
• Girl decides to wait for love and never, ever drink.
• At 25, girl meets boy she really likes.  She also learns not to be afraid of alcohol.
• Boy has sordid relationship past, sordid emotional past, and has a magical pull on girl.
• Girl ignores early warning signs and powers through tumultuous relationship with boy.
• Boy and girl go through difficult times and have poor communication but continue their relationship.
• Boy asks girl to marry her and girl says yes.
• Boy cannot handle girl being depressed after her aunt has died and becomes attracted to happy people, leaves her in a bar, and goes to the hotel to sleep.  Wedding is cancelled. Newly tailored wedding dress goes into mother’s closet.
• Boy is replete without girl and promises to get help and expects promises from her in return.  Girl bravely (stupidly?) goes back to boy.
• Things work between boy and girl and boy doesn’t understand why they aren’t just married.  Clearly they belong together.
• Boy and girl agree to get married again.  (New ring, same dress).
• Boy and girl do ok, still have communication problems, and are approximately happy.
• Boy and Girl decide it’s time to start a family.
• Girl has miscarriage and boy cannot tell her he loves her that night.  Girl cannot handle it and leaves.
• Boy comes next day for the last two hours of a ten hour emergency extravaganza because girl finally needs him more than she is angry at him.
• Tensions rise, communication problems at an all time high despite a second therapist to help.
• Boy un-invites girl to Christmas with his family and tells her he will not be going with her to her family’s Christmas Eve celebration (though later he felt very alone and didn’t want the un-invitation to stand).
• Boy and Girl go on a long vacation over break and still, tensions rise and nothing is resolved.
• Once home, Girl can no longer be in the same room with Boy.  She can say nothing without Boy telling her how it is wrong or disrespectful.  She takes her dog and leaves.
• Boy cannot handle his loss of control and takes almost all of the money from an account she added his name to so he could pay bills (which was decided to be for when Girl was no longer working because of baby and which only she deposited into) then he opens an account in his name with that money.  When Girl tells him she needs him to put it back…he refuses.  And continues to refuse for several weeks.
• Boy also changes the locks on their home so she can’t get in then lies about it and locks her dog in the car that he started to think was his so she can’t take him.  Good job, Boy.  Now Boy has all the control.
• Girl is done.  Girl is broken.  Girl is lost and crushed and diminished and still hormonal.  Girl moves out.
• Eventually Boy gives some of the money back and the dog back.  He does not want her to leave.  Boy says, so adamantly, “I took a vow up on that mountain and I’m not going to abandon them.”  Girl scoffs at this convenient timing.  Cherry picker, she thinks to herself.  He has said this before and nothing changed.  Don’t fall for it again.
• Boy remains adamant while girl struggles to forgive his actions.  Girl tells Boy that she doesn’t trust he’ll change anything unless he knows she is serious.  They talk about her filing papers and having six months to work out their issues during which time Girl can rescind the divorce process.
•  Girl e-mails him a long letter that explains much of her side of the experiences.  She asks for one in return and Boy says he will work on it.
• Girl reads Rising Strong and realizes how broken Boy must have been to do such crazy things.  How sad for him.  She finally can make peace with him.  She contacts him.
• Boy responds, “After having time to think, there has been too much damage to repair this marriage.  I wish you only the best.”
• Girl realizes this is a ridiculous way to end a five year relationship and would like a face-to-face meeting for maturity’s sake and for closure.
• Boy has met someone.  Boy does not want to fix the marriage.  Boy does not think he has lost integrity by seeing someone else before Girl has filed for divorce.
• Girl realizes it was all a lie.

Well, that’s slightly dramatic and became way more detailed toward the end.  The closer truth to “it was all a lie” is that it seems as though I loved a person that didn’t really exist.  How much of our relationship was built on the potential I saw in who he could be and how much was me making him out to be more than he actually was?

Those last two things are the heart stompers I haven’t been able to wrestle successfully.  This is what has been occupying my days, squirming in my chest and polluting my ability to feel emotionally healthy.  It is my first thought when I wake up and it is my last thought before I fall asleep.  Random thoughts, memories, and fake conversations accost me constantly throughout the day making it hard to concentrate for very long.

What hurts the most is the rejection.  I know that we could have worked it out…does that mean we should have?  Of course not.  “Making it work” for us would have meant grueling and excruciating self reflections and a mad style of Ghandi-like forgiveness.  Part of the problem, I suppose, is that I was never 100% sure I didn’t want it to work out.  I was only 99% sure.  We do stuff all the time with less sureties than that.  So now I’m stuck with betrayal, rejection, anger, injustice, physical pain, and bitter blame.  Blame for him and blame for my choosing him…more than once.

My plan, of course, is to make that stop.  But how to make these feelings stop in a healthy way?  That’s the real question.

Here are some things I’m trying out to see if they help:

Because I’m so flippin’ tired of my last thoughts being awful and about someone who doesn’t love me and maybe never really loved me, I decided I needed my last focus to be on something I’m grateful for instead.  (I’m grateful Home Depot had exactly what I was wanting for this endeavor).  If I find my thoughts go back to the negative I get back up out of bed to my board and really think about why this isn’t so bad after all.  Upon waking I rush to the board and add some things to the list before snuggling my big puppy (who’s four years old and loves me and life like I can only dream of).

Here’s my progress so far:

The next thing I’ve been trying out is an affirmation board.  I used some guidelines from Susan Elliott’s Getting Past your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing that Ever Happened to You. Inner me can sometimes be a jerk and immediately threw out, “Because I am a sad adult, I eat chocolate whenever I want.”  Worst first affirmation ever, am I right?  Other inner me rolled her eyes and went with something a little more serious.

I have room for more but I’ve been really ruminating about what I want my affirmations to be.  I could wrap them around who I want to be or goals that I want to accomplish.  I want to choose them wisely, though so I’m trying not to rush in my effort to heal, like, yesterday.

Some minutes, I am standing in place and the squirming pressure in my chest and stomach lifts away.  It seems to only happen in moments of connection to other people and oddly, to myself.  Maybe it isn’t odd, though.  Maybe in trying to make it work with the Boy I compromised myself and slowly began embracing and acting in a way that wasn’t true to who I am or who I want to be.  I have forgiven much of what the Boy did, but I don’t even know where to begin to forgive myself for choosing that situation when it was hurting me.  If something stabs me and is sticking out of my body I don’t just walk around with it and try to live my life around it.

It’s so much easier to understand the physical than the emotional.  I found myself getting really  upset that there’s no outward, physical display of emotional pain.  If a woman goes to work battered and bruised people are going to feel for her and they’re going to be way more understanding about how she’s acting.  But no one can see your deep emotional pain.  They can only listen to it and, if you’re lucky, empathize with it.

I guess I’ll end this long first post on a positive introspection.  Brene Brown talks a great deal about how, often, it’s easier for us to give than to receive.  I could give anyone else in my situation tons of empathy for their choices.  I would have no problem not judging them so I just need to keep in mind that I should extend that same kindness to myself.  I also need to tell self:

“Self.  You need to be vulnerable enough and brave enough to accept your own forgiveness.”

-Self