Guest Blogger: How Far I’ve Come
April 28, 2008 by susangpyp
I think this is a positive “how far I’ve come” post that I really liked when I first read it. Welcome GPYP’s first guest blogger: Jenny. Many of you know her from her and from the email group. WTG Jenny!!!
Remember when your mom would say, “Don’t scratch, you’ll leave a scar?”
I was never one to listen and would scratch regardless.
First the good news: I didn’t break no-contact. I am protecting myself from ever
knowing what he is doing so I refuse to look at any part of him now. BUT… I
had to go into my work email and clean out a bunch of files and found a few
years of our stored correspondence including the 3 months of breaking up.
Warning: Don’t try this! So I spent a few hours (yep - hours) marinating in what
was - my personal P.Chronicles. The good ones (pre break up) were easy to read
and move past but it was my emails to him last summer that tore me up.
The results of this experiment was I found I talked the talk but I didn’t walk
the walk for most of it. I ranted and cried and begged and told him I AM FINE!
and I don’t want him back and I have grown and learned and don’t need him
anymore and blah blah blah.
I knew the buzz words to say but I didn’t feel them like I do now. I didn’t realize how much on the surface my healing was during that time and how much more integrated in my life the beliefs are now.
Recovering from a painful break up is life changing. I feel like I have been
through an emotional war zone. Battle after battle, some with him, many with
myself, lots of scars, losses of all kinds, and a mountain uncertainty were all
part of the ordeal. Sometimes, I get tired of being strong and I lose my dignity
(reading all those emails). Sometimes, I still find myself shaking my head and
saying, ” I can’t believe you (he)did this.”
So, what did I learn reading all that stuff? I learned I bent over backwards and
did 3 flips in the air and went way overboard with patience and attention to him
our entire relationship. There must be a shortage of slack in the world because
I gave it all to him. I learned that when he said I wouldn’t take no for an
answer, he was the one encouraging me to spend the night.I also learned that I
did verbalized my concerns when he would want to start over again; I dropped the
ball when I didn’t really listen (scratching again!) to what he was saying only
what I wanted to hear. However, I am proud of the things I did tell him. Good or
bad - writing to him all that wartime stuff made him/it/me clearer in my head (
I know Susan, I just wasn’t supposed to send it.)
So I slept little last night and today I have some recycling going on.
Revisiting those emails validated my values and how much I have to give. They
also reminded me how far I have thankfully come from that war zone and that I
still have work to do. All and all, it was a painful lesson with a positive
result.
And, I didn’t reach out to HIM!
Thanks for the guest column Jenny. It sounds like you have come a long way. I don’t think there is PERFECTION in this journey but there is a good deal of growth and that is what your column shows. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing this Jenny. It was especially interesting to me because I deleted all relationship and pre-NC break-up correspondence from my last split in an hysterical moment some time ago, and I’ve often regretted doing so and wanted to go back and ‘pick’ at that.
Having read your story, warning and all, I still do regret it a bit though in a healthier way than previously. Less about wanting to submerge myself in him (torture), more about wanting to see my own words to him because I think doing so would provide such an obvious measure of my progress through the warzone and out to (at least the threshold of) the other side.
Like you I suspect I would see a fair bit of my saying the right buzzwords… but not feeling them yet. Sowing the seeds though - your level of healing then may have been superficial but it was something… and it grew and deepened.
I don’t see your reading those emails as a loss of dignity though I can imagine it was very painful. Like you say you have learned a great deal through revisiting and also found things to feel proud of.
Thank you
Thank you little wing and Rama:
I have let go of my relationship stuff a little at a time. It is odd how photos I come across don’t upset me but the emails sure did. For me, it helps to see people in the different phases of their recovery from a break up. We all yearn for that moment when it is a distant memory but we also know there are so many steps in between and there are no short cuts. When I see a new poster come on and the pain is frantic and raw, I feel for him/her. Like wise, when I see someone ready to enter a new relationship, I think, “one day, that will be me.”
I always thought that I never really suffered many losses in my life. But I was only thinking of losses related to death of which I have very little experience with. When I went through this last break up, all the losses (not from deaths) came tumbling back to be resolved. My ex was a pro – as much as a person can be a pro – at loss. He was faced with a lot of deaths in his life and while I now know that he never dealt with them completely, I believe that he came into my life so that I could learn how to grieve and most importantly – recover in a healthy manner.
I am grateful that I can see and feel progress. This site has made all the difference.
Take care and may your own story (your future) be everything you want it to be,
Jenny
Amazing. Me & my ex broke up 3-4 years ago (it was one of those long drawn-out awful proceedings). I’ve had a varied process over the last few years and am back in a “down swing”… but I JUST deleted all of our emails - around 6 years worth - right before logging on to this site and reading this post. I know that I should have done this years ago, but although it was a rather impulsive decision, I know that it is the right one. There is NO reason to keep those old emails hanging around - they only make me sad, upset, whatever, for various reasons.
I didn’t read through them all one last time, so I can’t analyze exactly how I’ve changed, where I was then vs now, etc… but it feels good to know that I can’t force myself into that misery again. It was a loving gesture to myself to get rid of those painful reminders (even if I barely read them, I always knew they were there, waiting to be read).
Thanks for your post! It is a real comfort to know that there are others in experiencing this same “battle”.