life, what life?

You have to re adjust.
I bet in days gone by when you were doing anything from parties to weddings you just lived for the moment but never questioned why you were actually there. Were you there dragged along by your ex or was it a duty to be there.
Whatever the reason you just accepted that you were there and moved onto the next point in life the next day.
I. like you got to the point of wondering what was the point of life at all. Days drifted into days without a reaon for living.

I realised that life was ticking by and I really had nothing going on especially as my x had destroyed every bit of my social life.
The only person I could trust was my daughter and even then I was not sure.

I set myself a challenge. OMG I didn''t do it by half !! I walked into a travel agent and booked a holiday for 10 days so far away that I knew that if I paniced there was no way of getting home. I told nobody except my daughter. I didn''t know the language. I didn''t know the currency. I didn''t know the customs. The only thing I had was money and a credit card, a taxi booked from airport to hotel and the hotel room.

I couldn''t pour my problems out on anyone else. I knew that I was really on my own and there was only one thing to do. Get on with it. WOW did I have a great time !!
I found people helpfull. problems vanished. Nobody knew that I was in turmoil inside .

That was the step into my new life. i could do what I wanted , when i wanted and realised that there are good people in this world.

Did it take guts to book the holiday? No just plain stupidity !!! For once I had nobody to rely on. Nobody to give me sympathy. Nobody who cared whether I was having a good time. Nobody I had to worry about either !!

It was on this trip that I learned one thing. What was I doing here ?

I was here because this is where I was meant to be at this point in my life.

I have lived by this ever since and if I found myself at 7 in the morning leaving a nightclub...at my age !!! It fitted.
In hospital having an operation...it fitted.

It takes a lot to say the old life is finished and you have to venture away from that and build a new life. I may have been extreme but it sure as hell showed me there was a different life out there that I would never have experienced had I been married. its basically stepping out of that comfort zone and challenging yourself to try something different. I could give you a list of activities you have never tried that can be found on the bargain sites like wowcher or groupon for mere pounds. Ever driven a segway, flown in a helicopter, done zorbing, white water rafting. Paintballing ?
I became a big kid again ! Reliving my youth..mispent youth !! and becoming the fun person I was before I met my x .

And on every adventure ..trip...situation that I have found myself in that same phrase fits the bill.

What am I doing here? Its where I am meant to be at this point in my life !!

Oh and I''m driving to Switzerland in 2 weeks to go skiing . Why ? ..another challenge !! (and I bet I am older than you !!)

Polar

Hi sherarra,

Firstly, I must say Polar, WOW, what an inspiration!

Sherarra, it takes time to rebuild, as they say Rome was not built in a day. There will come a point in time when you will say, enough is enough and be ready for change, but in order for this to happen, polar is right, you have to be ready to step out of your comfort zone, you will know yourself when the time comes, when it feels right for change.

I know myself and I am roughly 5 years down the line, that allowing yourself a mourning period is essential, mourning for our losses however perfect or not so perfect they were, is an essential part of the healing process, it really is. But, there comes a time when the reality of "you only live once" hits us. Last year a good, wise older friend of mine said FoS, you have let this man take enough of your life, do not allow him to take anymore, he was right. The truth that I had spent 4 years of fighting via Solicitors, through Courts, him dragging out the divorce and the list goes on and on and on, made me wake up and smell the coffee, it was time to step out of my cocoon and try living again. It worked, my friend''s honesty hit home of how much I had lost in terms of time, I just had to start rebuilding connections and a social life, having lost the majority of my ''so called'' friends when my X and I split.

I have moved on in so many ways and again polar confirmed that all things do happen for a reason, they do, I can see now just how toxic my marriage was, for both of us. Don''t get me wrong, I still have good days as well as bad but stepping out of my box was worth it!

Don''t be hard on yourself, rebuilding is tough, but necessary in order to move on in a healthy way.

Take care for now FoS x

sherrara wrote:

finding it so hard. after all these years being part of a couple I now find myself lonely and broken. although the marriage and the relationship was not ideal in the past eight years, I tried to fix it, alone, didn''t work. I need to find myself again, I need to live again.

Its really hard is all I can say. When you have been part of an US and now your a ME, you feel all eyes upon you. I remember clearly the 1st night I went out as a ME. Down to my then local and sat there nursing a pint and pretending to text no one and receive messages from no one.

But your still looking to the past. Comparing then to now. Thats like comparing a pea with a bottle of red top milk. Nothing like the same. And it wont work this comparison.

Thinking things like, "it was imperfect. It was a no good life. But at least it was a life". Sister, it was no life. Bashing your head against a brick wall trying to effect change is just going to get you battered. Saying these negative things induce negative feelings which induce more negative thoughts and so on and so on. Round and round and round. Until you are wishing that your back in that poisonous world. You are deluding and fooling yourself. You cant recover if you have one foot in the past and one foot in the now. You have to be able to let go of the past and take that foot out of it. But have one foot in the now and the other one in the future. What is gone is gone. You cant change one little tiny part of it. But you can change whats next and you can only do that if you let go of the past. Think on that one if you will.

But by the sounds of it, your still deeply mired in what happened to you. And you really need to able to step past that event to become you again. And once you do get past this, you can start to recover. But until you conquer your demons, you will be stuck here.

But every journey starts with a first step. You have made that 1st step now by coming here and saying what you just said. And you have to plan your next step. What that is I cant tell you. Only you can decide that. But try and make the second step have all the desires built into it that you will climb up that hill and that you will one day walk out into the sunshine.

Which reminds me of something... I was on a course recently and a chap described to the class the recent trip to some mountain range to climb it. The whole point of what he said was that the journey taught him a lot about himself and how that nourished him. I am not saying go to your nearest hill and climb it. But saying that your journey is like a mountain climb. So why not use this journey that your on to climb out of this mire and learn about yourself at the same time. Bit like a cleansing spa visit!!! Often, the solutions to a problem are within our grasp. Look at what you are facing and make this your self discovery journey.

Lastly a lot of people that I meet and speak to want quick fix solutions to their problems. I see it a lot in my job. Rapid deployments. Rapid application building and so on. Rapid rapid rapid. A now world. But us. Our lives. There are no rapid anything. You as a canvas are a life''s work. You will spend your whole life developing your own rapid development app. So take the time. Invest in you. As all personal development has a pay back and nothing you do for yourself is wasted. If that means hiking to the shops or Kilimanjaro then so be it. Its still a journey. Its your journey. Pick things that nourish you. Avoid words and thoughts that poison you like negativity. Make sound investments. Like friends and family. Not things that have a money angle. Things that are worth something. And you will find that your life will tag on behind. And your sunshine moment will come. Marshy.

Wow Polar you are an inspiration!
Just wanted to add for Sherrara, it''s so early for you, please don''t think it''s silly for you to be grieving this marriage and the life you had, even if you are mad at your husband and determined to make a better life for yourself.
It is so hard after being a couple to get out alone at first, I felt so raw and exposed and rejected. Functions with predominantly couples are still a challenge for me 2 years later, and maybe always will be a bit awkward.
Good advice I have got from Wikis was to stick with trusted friends / family early on and just do what you feel like. Some nights all I could manage was going to see a movie with an understanding friend, and not talk much at all. With time your confidence will grow and you will be able to start testing the waters going out alone or joining meet ups, but that doesn''t have to happen yet.

What a mixed up world we are creating.
Humans are one of the few animals that mate for life (ha ha) and nurture their children for a long period. Other animals with similar traits tend to remain in family groups so several generations live together.
(I know some generalisations here.)

Add to this the mobility of humans and family units defragment with brothers and sister and grandparents living far away.

As a result the family unit centres around bringing up the offspring in a family unit. If we add to this the fact that both parents tend to work these days and we can farm responsibilities for childcare out to nurseries and schools many of the ''norms of the family unit become blurred.

Parents tend to centre their lives around their children and family and live through them. All of us want to do the best for our kids and hope that they will do better than we did. As the ''''mother'''' in our relationship (I had flexible work) I was responsible for looking after my youngster and when she went to school my life suddenly became empty . Another wrench also came when she went to uni and moved away . That day I was distraught as it was as if she didn''t need me any more.

I am sure that anyone who has been through either these 2 scenarios will know what I mean.

The point I am trying to make is that we live our lives through other people to some extent. We are proud of our kids and their success. Proud that we have a marriage that is working. Happy that our friends like us.

Then suddenly we are thrown into a maelstrom of divorce. The family unit as we know it is broken up and in a similar way to handing our kids over to a school of the first day we lose control and our reason for living.

Of course on spitting up you can add a thousand and one other problems now they all come at once. You become lost.

Few other species have this family unit..elephants and swans come to mind.
A mother cat on the other hand has her kittens taken away but just finds another mate and has another litter.

Being very social creatures we are lost when the kids leave home and a marriage breaks up. Life becomes empty. The purpose of bringing the next generation up vanishes. The one person that we rely on to share our loads in life vanishes and we find ourselves totally on our own.

Thats the difficult bit. We have relied on our partner and kids to much to create our happiness. Add to this your social group suddenly vanishing and we have this massive void in our lives.

Most of us at the rough end of divorce have also been told that we are useless and have no value so our self esteme vanishes. There is no purpose to our lives any more.

This is the most difficult time and being at Absolute base we have to somehow build ourselves up. We have to acknowledge that we are not useless. We can survive ourselves and learn to accept that we can no longer rely on others to make ourselves happy.
That is the hard bit especially with all the moving/selling/finance/ and other cr*p that tends to be thrown at us.

That becomes rebuild time and there are various point of view on recovery time but as a general rule of thumb it is one month per year of relationship.

Initally everyone clucks around like mother hens giving you sympathy but they have problems of their own to deal with.
So you are thrown onto the ''single again'' scene again which is why like attracts like and you tend to mix with people in a similar situation.

Getting confidence back is soooo difficult but your confidence did not go away. Think about the days you run on autopilot. You still manage to use your skills to do things daily without recognising that you are surviving.

The first thing you have to recognise is that just because one person wrecked your dreams does not mean every other person in the world feels the same about you.

We all hear the advice to join clubs etc but are to scared to take that first step.
Every club/group etc that I joined was only to glad that I joined their interests and welcomed me . Only to glad that I was interested in their ''''subject'''' however cranky.
Some worked for me some didn''t but every one I joined introduced me to new circles.
80% of the people I associate with now were not known to me when I was with my x !!!

One bit of advice I took was never refuse an invitation. It gives you a reason for making the effort to smarten up !!

It all starts with believing in ourselves.

Mirror mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest one of all. I AM because if I do not believe that I am the best thing since sliced bread then nobody else will!!!.
You have to realise that nobody at all can actually help you to get back on your feet.
You have to do it all by yourself.
One of the reasons I vanished for 10 days was to rediscover who I was without the endless advice from other people. To stand in a place where my ''''survival'''' depended upon me making the right decisions. If I made the wrong one nobody knew and I learnt another lesson. That is I am not 100% perfect !!

One question I always ask. ''''Were you the same feeble wimpy person you are now before you met your x ? ''''

I doubt it so rediscover the person you were then . Hope for the future even if it makes you as my daughter described me...an aged hippy !!

Polar
That''s a great post, there''s some stuff in there that I have paid a cbt therapist a lot of money to hear.And welcome back, you had been quiet for a while on wiki so its nice to have you back in the last few days:)

Thanks Beatie
I''m going to be quiet again soon as I''m off skiing again...probably the last time as the bones are creaking.
Its going to be a challenge but thats what life is about.
Enjoying yourself because time can pass so quickly . Its no use putting things off until tomorrow as circumstances can change for the worse. Thats why I now live day by day and see what else is around. For example Sunday is Chinese New Year celebrations in our market square. Following Friday tthere is a historical club showing 2 films of the old town with a fish and chip supper..open to all. In fact over the next 13 days 8 already have 8 booked ''activities'' of some sort. Thus proving if you get out there regardless of inner turmoil the new opportunities are endless.
Many events are on council websites and even if I go to one and its horrible at least I am not looking at 4 walls or being fed that usual cr*p on tv including the totally depressing news that has no revevance to my life.
Now where is that holiday brochure ?

Polar