Life Marches On...Thank Goodness.

I have been cleaning out my email inbox, thanks to an assignment given to me by a friend giving me some time-management/career organization coaching.  Let me tell you, I have so many emails.  Most of them read, but so many that I never did anything with.  Anyway...

I decided to start at the back end, where it would be easier to just delete in bulk for while, since I have emails sitting there from, I don't know, 2008.  Don't judge.  I was going along, happily deleting, when I came to the time period when C and I decided to get a divorce.  I started to read some of the emails from family around that time, and pretty soon had jumped down the rabbit hole of that time period, and all it meant.

Uuuuugggggghhhhhh.......

It was like I was looking at a train wreck, and I couldn't look away.  I started to read them because I wanted to remind myself of the absolute, unquestioning love and support I felt from my family at that time. I remembered, and was so grateful, all over again.  They are my rock.  A bunch of rocks.  My rocks.  (What?)

BUT.  I also read many of the emails I sent in return, and let me tell you, it was glaringly clear to me what a dark, unhealthy place I was in.  It was almost painful reading my part of a lot of the correspondence.  I was a different person.  A shell of myself.  Someone who believed the marriage unraveling had a lot to do with me and my shortcomings, and that I could STILL, somehow, shield C from the consequences of his actions.  I wanted to shield him.  I literally said, "I'm more worried about him than I am for myself."  I wanted to soften things for him so much that I was not paying any attention to how hurt I was. I wanted everyone to feel sorry and feel compassion for him, like I did. Or thought I did.  Actually, I was just in denial of what was really happening.

That's a Raging Codependent for you.

To be fair to myself, I will say that I knew, even back then, that I would survive and be OK someday.  I was not confident that C knew the same thing.  But still.  The things I said, I know now, came mostly from a place where I had a lot of self-blame, and cared so much about C's feelings and needs that I didn't respect my own nearly enough.  I needed to get out of that toxic environment, and I couldn't even see it.  In fact, I wanted to stay.  Amazing.

Today I am celebrating the growth I have had in my life, because I am looking back at the beginning of my journey out of my marriage, and really seeing who I was.  It was very sobering. I never want to go back there, and I don't have to.

And THAT is something to celebrate!

(Don't mind all the dramatic statements in this post.)  :-)