miss mess

midlife implosions
2022-01-04 20:57:19 (UTC)

where to start

i am sitewing and mulling things over in my head in regards of where to begin making change in my marriage. its not as easy as just suddenly "being different". we have made NO types of loving or romantic advances toward each other in years. when i went into my depression, i was unreachable, and he gave up. when i came out of my depression, and tried to approach him....he was unreachable. the distance between us is pretty vast. we have a "functioning" relationship...we run our home fine together, we enjoy our grandchildren and family together. we go out once a week for drinking and dancing, and we are able to have fun together, but all these things involve other people. i guess you can say that we put on some pretty "fronts" for others. when it's just "us"...there is nothing. barely even conversation. certainly no interaction.

our decline is a sad thing. we had a good relationship before my depression. but my depression was hell. i mean....HELL. sometimes i don't even believe i'm still here...alive. when i entered therapy, it helped some things, but it made some things harder too. it was rough to be dug into, laid bare, scraped of feelings and things that i'd hidden for so long in other areas of my life. i was raw. i cried all the time. i couldn't connect to ANYONE...and that includes my own children. as with many people who suffer depression...i sunk into an aloneness, avoiding everyone i loved, because they couldn't understand me, and that made me feel more alone. i knew that all they wanted was for me to be okay, to be normal, to go back to what i was before the depression. but i couldn't give them that....and the guilt for the pain i saw in their eyes, pushed me further away. and i never felt they WANTED to understand. i honestly felt that they just wanted me to be normal again, because my pain made them uncomfortable. it was a lonliness unlike any other i've ever suffered. and when i came out of my depression...the damage caused by it all...was big. i had alot of repair work to do with my children, and we are good now. i have good relationships with my daughters. i'm their mom again.

but when it came to my husband...i've just never been able to get my heart back into the game. of course...cam happened during the depression. he was my escape from the pain. with him...if forgot everything and felt good. i never intended that escape to turn into love or to last all the years that it lasted. but it did. and so...even coming out of the depression...there was still cam, and as long as he was part of my life....i just couldn't focus on my husband or my marriage. cam understood me in ways that my husband never has, and i clung to that. when he and i had our breakdown....our ending, i spent six months absorbing that loss. honestly....i was a mess. losing him was awful. but we knew from the start that we had an expiration date. we knew it would never be a matter of maybe i'd leave my marriage and be with him. there were too many underlying factors....the major one being that cam wanted a family. he's never been married or had children. my children are raised. i could never give him what he wanted. and he deserved to have that. so we knew....always...that we couldn't last forever.

i've fought my way thru that loss, by the skin of my fingers. do you know how hard it is to be in deep pain, and you can't let anyone around you see it? but....finally....i found my way thru to acceptance. it's done. it's over. it was beautiful, but it's no more, and that's how we knew it had to be.

and now i'm in a place where i'm not riddled with the pain of loss every day anymore. i miss cam, and i'll take that love to my grave. but...i'm still here...breathing...without him. and both he and i need to get our lives moving again, now that we aren't living within the oasis we created with each other to hide from the rest of the world. in a way it feels like i've been on a long voyage, and now i've been dropped right back into the life i left, which is a mess. now it's time to clean it up. figure out what works and what doesn't. repair what can be repaired....or decide endings. but the starting place? after all this distance between us for so long...is very hard to figure out.




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