Still taking it a day at a time (2)

[Traveler]

Quiet updates are good sometimes! I love your focus on gratitude.

Thanks for the poem, May. I found a video of the author speaking it on YouTube.

[cardinal]

Thanks for sharing the beautiful poem, may. I feel grounded in this moment after reading it. You sound grounded in your update too--gratitude will do that sometimes, won't it? Tether you to the exact place and moment where you happen to be giving thanks. Yay for progress on vaccines! I know I'll feel lighter when my parents finally get theirs. It's exciting to hear you are open to the possibility of a change in your job. Good luck with the resume and cover letter writing!

[Gerda]

May, just doing my rounds before I leave the boards for Lent, checking on your update while listening to the impeachment hearings, so a strange juxtaposition. Sounds like you are grounded and clear-headed and focused on the Good, that's a great thing. And so good about the job! I always find it weird when I am out in the world to notice how I am seen, as a professional or an intelligent woman, etc., and how I have to kind of re-enter that skin after the brutality of the MLCer's take-down. It really helps build you up into remembering who you are out in the world!

(I teach business writing and one thing I learned from some of the articles I signed that I really love -- in your annotations, quantify and qualify your descriptions -- e.g, "responsible for community outreach" becomes, "worked with 30 clients per week to curate the services each would need, increasing access by 25%.")

Lots of love.

[wooba]

love the poem! Thanks for sharing it with us. Thinking of you often.

[Elbereth]

May, I finally got through reading about your sitch.

You are one strong woman with a very good heart. Your courage is an inspiration and I've learned so much from your honesty and your sharing. Thank you! One day at at time...glad things are going in a overall better direction this year. Love your poem too. Thanks for sharing that! ((((May))))

[may22]

Hi CW, Cardinal, Gerda, Wooba, Elbereth! You guys are the best and it is nice to hear from all of you. I'm glad you liked the poem. I've never been much of a poetry person but in the last year that has started to change. And of course Amanda Gorman hit me like a freight train on Inauguration Day and I'm still kind of reeling from that too. I've always been much more of a reader than a listener, but the power of her words really blew me away and has made me feel differently about the spoken word. Coupled with (on the other side) the damage that words can do as well... anyway, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about all of this. And will share more poems as I come across them if it seems like they'll resonate with my friends here.

Thanks for the encouragement on the cover letter writing! Gerda, I did take your advice on the resume. I had a first round interview last week and have my fingers crossed things work out. I've had a number of opportunities come my way over the past year, and either said I wasn't interested at the start or a couple of times pulled my name at the last minute. But now I feel ready and this is something I want. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay too. The whole consultant thing is still tickling the back of my head as well.

I'm feeling things change in my sitch. Like the tides are shifting at some deep, invisible level. Part of me is scared to write this here and name it. But I do sense that things are changing for both of us.

A couple of weeks ago, something shifted for H. He said that while he knew in his head that this was the right decision, that his gut hadn't always been there-- and now his gut has caught up. He feels love for me in the little moments and says it, smiles with his eyes, hugs me for no reason. The humility that needs to accompany the remorse that the vets talk about and I never saw in my H-- that has finally surfaced. He talked about the shame and guilt, named it, owned it, and apologized over and over without qualifications. Said he knows he doesn't deserve what I'm giving him. He even started reading the Shirley Glass book (!!).

For me... I've felt a shift internally too, a readiness to stop digging into past hurts. I think I've been doing this to remind myself of just how badly he hurt me, like I need a refresher so that I can keep my walls up and not get hurt again. And somehow over the past week, this need has broken down. Like I really don't need to do that to myself, right now. Maybe I will want to again in the future. But right now, today, it just doesn't serve me to spend a whole lot of time wallowing in past pain, picking at scabs to make them bleed and remind myself just how red the blood is. I'm okay with letting the past be in the past, right now. I still feel detached in the DnJ removal-of-the-decoupling-mechanism way. But it feels like we're driving in the same direction now and while it took me a while to poke and prod and disbelieve and honestly be a bit of a b!tch more than once to see if he veered off, I'm settling in and feel okay about where I am right now.

Will this last? Is it real? I don't know. But I honestly feel better, mentally healthier and stronger, more at peace than I have in a long while.

[SteveLW]

may, that is an awesome update! This bodes extremely well for the future success of you Ring and piecing. Needing a fully committed S is necessary for R to work. I know that in my case, we started to R before she was fully back and committed. I was like you and skeptical at first, but overtime she started to show signs that she was committed back.

So happy for you! That sense of peace is hard earned, ain't it?

[cardinal]

Wow! This is awesome news, may! It sounds like both of you are arriving in a new place together. I think it’s understandable to feel apprehensive about naming it. I wonder if writing it here has given you any more permission to trust the internal shift you’ve been sensing in yourself and in your H. To just be in this moment and take it all in, to believe it. I’m so happy for you. And good luck with potential job! I like your attitude—what’s meant to happen with it will happen. xoxo

[may22]

So, been a couple weeks since my last update and thought I'd go ahead and post even though there isn't really much to report.

Steve-- thank you... and yes, it is hard-earned. And not altogether rock-solid. I feel secure and peaceful in that H is in this with me together. I'm not scared that AP is going to show back up again or anything like that. He has been spending some good time working on why he made the choices that he made beyond the "I was open to it because of the SSM," and thinking about the kinds of situations he put himself in that were really dumb, and linked to his own insecurities and need to be liked/desired. Positive stuff and not like there is any resolution, yet, or magic fix. But I do think promising.

Cardinal--thinking of you, my dear!! We have a red cardinal that's been bopping around lately (usually we only see the red-headed ones) and the girls named it "Reddy" and its mate "Set" (we are oh so creative here with names). Reddy was singing outside this morning and H was talking about how this particular cardinal's song totally puts him back into childhood, growing up and running around in his backyard with (apparently) tons of cardinals. While I thought of you Hope you are doing well.

I have a semi-final interview for this position on Sunday. It is a CEO position, a big job and a big step. The exec recruiter is someone I know decently well and I think he was surprised when I said I'd throw my hat in the ring. He said, you know, I've been bringing positions to you for the last couple of years, things I thought would interest you, and here we finally are-- what's changed? Why now? Partially, of course, I think my day-to-day was so overwhelmed with my M problems that I couldn't even imagine taking on a big work challenge. But also, maybe, having gone through this whole wringer, the things that would have stopped me before just aren't issues in the same way. And whereas before I think I was nervous to be in that bucks-stops-here role, maybe focusing more on the potential negatives, I'm really excited about the idea of being able to set the tone for an entire organization, to build a culture of trust and engagement and respect at work for everyone. Anyway, we will see. I still feel like if I'm the right fit, great, and if I'm not, that's okay too. I'm actually grateful to be excited about the idea itself, if that makes sense.

In my M, I am still feeling like we have the same goal in mind and I guess I would call it piecing. It is certainly not a straight line, though. I still feel angry towards him, sometimes, about all that he's done and I am probably still spending too much time and energy self-validating my own anger rather than acknowledging what is happening today and his efforts in piecing. He is really trying. That doesn't always make up for the hurt I still hold, though. And we certainly aren't like deeply in love all over again-- no sweeping me into his arms a la WF's H. it is all very very slow.

The humility I have finally seen also isn't like a constant theme underpinning his every action or word-- it is more like I got a good dose of it and then will see flashes here and there, mostly coming out when i get angry and he is sorry (though I know he is also frustrated in that he feels I'm letting the past poison the present).

For those of you with experience in this-- any thoughts? For whatever reason, my impression was that for the couples that make it, the former WS lives and breathes humility and remorse, like it should come across in every word and action that they're totally aware of what a jack@ss they have been and will continue to do whatever it might take to make it up to their spouse.

As I write that I think maybe that is not totally realistic. I think a big part of me wanted the fairy-tale reconciliation and to feel more in the driver's seat. This is less comfortable. Neither of us are in the driver's seat. It feels more like we are driving next to each other but not always at the same speed or on the exact same route. We're both trying and blundering and maybe making things worse some days and maybe better other days. And while I'm not scared of AP anymore, I used to think that once she was firmly out of the picture it would be smooth sailing. That the two of us could do absolutely anything we set our minds to and of course we'd get to blissful M2.0 in the end.

Now, I can't see the end of this story as clearly as I thought I could before. I simply don't know if M2.0 is out there for us. Or if the best we'll get is companionable we-do-fine but never really forge that emotional intimacy again. Flashes of M1.0 hit me, sometimes, where I feel resentful and act on it and we slide back into the M1.0 space of bickering and competition over who is right. I guess at least I can recognize it when it starts to happen, now. I think he can too, and he is better than I am at controlling his own behavior in these moments. But it is all too easy for me to sit in that space of anger and resentment-- some of the same triggers from before, plus of course the A-- and feel some of the same feelings towards him that led to the SSM in the first place. We can talk about it when it happens, at least, though, so that is positive. But it isn't fun.

I don't want it to come across like things are bad generally-- 80-90 percent of the time, things are positive. He goes out of his way to do nice things for me, he tells me he loves me, he makes eye contact and smiles, he touches my back or my side whenever he's near. But then something reminds me of the A and the anger returns. And while we are getting much better at dealing with these situations than we did a few months ago, again, it doesn't erase what happened. I feel like he wants to work on our R, and I want to root out all the hurt and anger of the A first.

Hmm, there ended up being a lot more to say than I thought! I would appreciate any thoughts especially from those of you who have walked this path before. We're looking into a new MC which I think will be helpful, I think we both feel ready for that step. His parents are coming next week for a couple of weeks also now that they're both vaccinated. Which could add a whole layer of tension between us, possibly. Or not. The last time they were here was that awful, awful time right after he told me the full story of the A and I was interviewing D attorneys and we started seeing the discernment counselor... so all of that gets stirred up a bit as well.

Anyway, sorry for the long post! Thinking of my friends here. The sun has finally come out after a couple days of rain and feels amazing. Happy Friday!

[OnlyBent]

One question that jumped out at me May...is all the work that you have done and all the pain and hurt that you have felt, and continue to feel, worth it only to have a M that lacks the emotional intimacy that you desire?