Get over your hill and see what you find there

[Treasur]

Repeat after me...Detach and GAL, M is dead. Detach and GAL, M is dead.

[Treasur]

Bad day here. Been thinking about fear.

I'm not suicidal. Been there last year and it was about feeling unable to live with the pain.

But I'm tired, really tired. My fear is about not being enough. I fix things because I think doing is what makes me enough. I'm ashamed that without my family to love me, I haven't found a way yet to feel enough just on my own. I'm ashamed I feel not enough. I'm ashamed that I'm still a mess. I'm ashamed that I can't find a reason to matter that matters enough to me. I'm ashamed of being so weak and tired that I want to give up. I'm frightened that I am not enough and that I can't find enough in me to do more than put one foot in front of the other. I'm just tired of all of this.

I want my life back and I can't seem to find it some days. Today is just one of those days.

[Citygrl]

Big hugs to you!!! Chock it up to just a really bad day. We've all had them before and sometimes they hit with no surprise. When it happens to me, I try to give into it and give myself a break. I know if I take a long walk or get out and go to a movie it helps but on days I can't manage that, I just crawl under the duvet and let myself wallow and feel sorry for myself. I know that it is not the conventional wisdom but it works for me. Also, since I am able to do it, I do. I know later I will be working and will have to get out there and put in my happy face.

I am surprised you are feeling that way. You have been amazing with all of your postings and processing recently. You have helped me so much in your postings. You are not alone in your circumstances. I know the weather where I am has been awful and that plays a huge role.

You help so many people. Just reading about you being a fixer, etc., again articulated a lot of how I feel. I think we have bad days because we spend a lot of energy trying to do the right thing and be a good person and then the anger and resentment bubbles up. I struggle with never having the opportunity to discuss or fix my marriage with my WAH/MLC. It just isn't fair. End of. I also don't believe in karma because I think that would mean I did something awful to deserve this. I know they will crash eventually but in the meantime, why do they appear so happy on the outside? Wish I could help more and I hope your day gets better. Sometimes that happens too.

[leahsue]

Hey sweet Treasur,
I hope today is a better day for you. It hurts to see you hurt like that, although it feels like a second skin (that thank goodness we DO eventually shed!)

My awful days were in the darkest days of January, which seems to be a hard month anyway. There were days I DID just crawl under the covers and cry. But being the women that we are, we can only do that for so long before even WE become sick of ourselves. The only thing to do is let those feelings come when you must, ride the waves of them, then walk out of the surf and get on the "sturdy quicksand"! Which is a joke.

YOU ARE ENOUGH. Repeat. I AM ENOUGH. You really are. Take a second and look around for someone who may need your smile today. Every single person we meet on the street, in the market, etc. is fighting a battle that we know nothing about. One of the things that helped me the most was signing up to drive for a program that delivers hot meals to elderly people. The work was easy for me, and I found that just getting out of the house on a regular basis (AND NO, I DID NOT feel like doing it- but once I signed up, I knew I had to go, so I did) was a help, but oh my, going into those homes each day around noon, some of the recipients not even able to walk to the door, but rather had to call from inside the house to come on in, some coming across to open the door in a slow, painstaking way in their own wheelchair, some creeping along on a walker, but the gratitude in their faces when they saw another human at the door..... it absolutely changed my mood and attitude every single time. And the crazy thing, almost every single one of the them wanted to give me a hug, and say GOD BLESS YOU FOR HELPING ME. You may not have access to a program like that right where you are, but you are a smart woman with so much love to give. A husband is not the only channel you can pour that love into. There are hurting people literally everywhere. You just have to be creative with how to find them! I know you know all this-no new information here. But sometimes we just need a little nudge to remind us that we have things to offer, that people around us are starving to receive. Now get out there and love some people! Just today. Don't worry about tomorrow until it gets here. Just do it one day at a time. It will carry you all the way home, like headlights on a car at night. You can only see a short distance, but each short distance brings you closer to home.

[Treasur]

Thanks, leah.... did the duvet big sleep last night. Am wandering around like a slightly mad woman muttering "i am enough, I am enough, i am enough". Will keep going unless I get arrested for looking like a lunatic by the sea!

[Treasur]

Here's what I'm struggling/stuck with...

This is NOT my life, but it is if you know what I mean. Losing my parents and H all within four months just kicked the s**t out of me. I think I just froze and I feel like Sleeping Beauty slowly waking up after 2 years! Plus dealing with the incomprehensible destruction of my H's Rollercoaster of Silent WTF Doom, emotionally and practically.

There are outside realities that I have to respond or adjust to. Selling our house and my mother's. A hideously complex legal process of dealing with my mother's affairs as her guardian. Visiting a mother with dementia who is either terrified or raging, and usually doesn't know me. A business in death throes because I haven't focused on it. Not enough money to survive on after December. Being divorced by someone I love with no reason given who mostly doesn't communicate at all, keeps throwing new WTF challenges into the mix and doesn't respond to L's letters much either. Having no family back up and some good friends who are also exhausted by supporting me emotionally, or live thousands of miles away. Being 53, living alone in a very nice rented house by the sea...with an affectionate elderly diabetic boy cat. These things are all real.

So my challenge is what I do with me and what I do with the cards I've been dealt.

Before life blew up, I was an optimistic extrovert with a business, a home and a partnership where I thought I was valued and safe. I didn't like where we were living and my business wasn't really pleasing me. I was a bit bored actually, but planning as a team. Then life made other plans!

There is nothing I can do about my mother's dementia or my H's behaviour. There is nothing I can do to stop or avoid being divorced and acting as my mother's legal guardian. I can only choose how much these things damage me more and how much mental space they use. I have no goals for my M, my communication with my H or my mother. I might need some for the D.

My goals:
1. I need to protect my mental and physical health and find the bit of me again that knows I'm really enough
2. I need to make safe financial ground to stand on for the next 6 months regardless of what is happening outside
3. I need to rebuild my working life so I feel productive and engaged in life outside my life/head
4. I need to see friends, make new ones and do new GAL things that make me feel good
5. I need a plan for the next 6 months and the discipline to just f**king do it regardless of what is happening outside

Today, I'm going to make a solution-focused plan. Small steps and experiments that lead to bigger steps just like DB. I'm going to f**king DB my own life because I've had enough of the life that other things and people are trying to make for me. F**k 'em.

[Citygrl]

Glad you have emerged from the duvet! Sounds like you have a good plan.

Still cannot believe how similar our situations are except you are living my dream in a house by the sea. I, too, have the husband who doesn't respond to lawyers but manages to throw up WTF things regularly. Spoke to my lawyer yesterday and are going to start taking the initiative, in a divorce in which I am still not totally clear why I am getting. Know my next step may freak him out and the financial taps could get switched off but I have no other choice. I can always run back to the States. A weak Plan B, I know. Hang in there.

[Treasur]

Are you in the UK, citygrl? If so, you're welcome to come visit me at the seaside!

[Citygrl]

Thank you. I am in the UK. Southwest trains is my service. Weather has been horrendous! I do struggle slightly with the driving thing when I don't know my way. Husband always drove distances. OMG. I sound like an old lady. Freaky. That is part of my GAL goal: driving to places I don't know. Weirdly, everyone says I am a good driver it is me that freaks out because I am always afraid I am going to revert back to US driving and enter a one way street or something. Add it to my list of problems and issues. Lol

[Treasur]

I'm on the East Coast, citygrl...trains from Liverpool St...you'd be welcome x

I used to live in another country too and remember one time when I'd just got back, jet lagged about 3am, suddenly realised I was driving the wrong way round a roundabout!