Cotton
I lack the vast wisdom and sense of most of the amazing women who have been there through this journey for you, but just had a few random things to say.
The first is that I went through similar ish to you a couple of months after you did and posted on here (NC since then) and you gave me great support and strenght. None of us are alone. It only takes the kindness of strangers on the internet to remind us of that.
Second of all, that in the midst of all the batterings, rejections and betrayals we lose sight of who we are and what is really going on. I don't know your xh, but I have read most of what you have posted and have also watched you and how you have grown, inspired others and approached all of this with courage and no bitterness. Whether you remember it or not evry minute of every day the facts of it all speak for themselves and where it truly matters you are a better quality human being than your XH. The person who has lost out is him, not you.
Third of all, I know how it feels when you feel like you are fighting your way forward but you are swimming upstream because of other problems. How nice it would be to be given the opportunity to grieve in peace without needing to manage the practicalities. Divorce, housing problems, family problems, work problems. When these thing come along all at once, in cobination of the emotional pain it does just make you feel fucking exhausted. I still have some away days, and they come and knock me down out of nowhere and when they do the words that go round and round my head are; "I'm so tired".
Fourth, my family are the same. they wonder how I am not fully over it, they think I am weak, they can't be fucked with it. But you know what - I read a quote that saying you have no right to be unhappy because someone has it worse is as moronic as telling someone not to be happy because someone has it better.
Fifth, pain demands to be felt. The most unhealthy people in the world find clever ways to push it to the side, to escape from it, to hide from it. You have been facing it day after day and you know already that this process has made you a better person. Deep down you know that, so keep up the fight. No matter how many times you get bashed down get up again. And put the bottle down. Put the bottle DOWN because you can do this. You can, and every time that bottle goes in your hand you are trying to block out that which demands to be felt. And it will find you, no matter what you do.
Sixth, everything you feel is normal, natural and the sign of a loving and loyal heart. The person who is abnormal in this story is not you.
I posted this on another thrad about grief the other day as it was a reminder to me that the way grief works is in these waves. Right now you are in a wave storm that WILL calm, and the waves will spac out further and get smaller again until eventually you find calm seas again - as a wiser, stronger and more loving and sensitive woman than you have ever been.
www.tickld.com/x/old-man-explains-death-and-life-to-grieving-young-man
I also loved this one:
www.rebellesociety.com/2014/11/13/all-this-fucking-time-and-i-still-feel-grief/
You have had so much to grieve dear cotton, but in the acts of suferring the insuferrable you are never wrong, never flawed, never
doing or thinking or feeling anything you should be ashamed of. Every minute of that pain comes from love you once felt and all the sahme belongs to someone else.
At th end of all of this you will get a fresh start, you really will, and you will find that prtnership and love again with someone more worthy and you will look back and be so glad you were relived of the burned of a lifetime with someone who was just never made of the same stuff as you!