Ms-Marple

i take it ALL back….Kevin is God!

Oh , this is a fantastic idea…well done! I’m on Day 4 but had already done 2 weeks before i found this site. I go through so many emotions each day, it’s a bit tiring but I think that’s what’s great about this process.

So, for example, at the moment I am going thru a cross phase.. I wake up angry and upset, thinking about some incident or another. If I wasn’t on NC I would have phoned before now and left an angry message but the day before at approx 3.30 in the pm…I would have left a deeply sentimental weeping message ( drove past a restaurant we used to frequent) and the day before that…..you know what i mean.

If I called and said everything I’m feeling/thinking, it would only take a couple of calls for me to look like a complete nutter and we all know how great that feels!

NC removes the option of communication, even tho it can be really frustrating but it leaves me free to experience any emotion I have to without worrying how he receives it. Feeling the emotion is bad enough without cringily remembering my messages when the mood has passed. I feel as if I have regained space and,more importantly, emotional privacy.

In some ways I’m free to be more extreme emotionally, to get really mad, sad, bad because I’m not constantly trying to find an acceptable way to express myself to him. I think extreme is the wrong word, perhaps I mean pure or intense but I definitely mean private.

Once, I went on a 10 day silent meditation retreat, (my friends laughed as silence isn’t known as one of my qualities). During a 4 hour session, sitting, cross legged, absolutely still and silent, I became overwhelmed with sadness about the loss of my Dad.

Normally I might start really sobbing, fling myself down on my bed, ring one of my friends/sisters and cry and talk but I could do none of those things..I couldn’t even make a sound. I sat absolutely sad and was sad, purely and intensely. Tears flowed down my face until pools of them collected in the hollows of my collarbone. I properly experienced grief for my Dad in a way I had spent years avoiding.

I felt then that sometimes, paradoxically, the weeping and wailing can be a way of avoiding the strength of our emotions, avoiding really experiencing them. When I am sad about my ex, a wave of panic accompanies the sadness, a fear so overwhelming it must be almost atavistic. I want to call him to avoid feeling this fear, to stave it off, to avoid abandonment at all costs.

Without the option to call, I have to just ride it and wait til it subsides…. as it always does, life alone makes sure of that…a child wants a meal, someone calls, a job needs doing. ANd because I haven’t avoided the emotion, it’s not so overwhelming next time.

So that’s what I mean, NC is giving me time to feel things, the full range of 7 kinds of crazy. I am not sure if I want my ex back at the end of this..i don’t know where this process will lead me. But by the end of the 30 days, my emotions will belong to me again, straight and true, not twisted, alternately expressed or repressed to suit someone else. I’ll be able to make up my own mind cos I’ll have my own mind back!

So, it’s hard work but good for the soul, as hard work often is. So today’s emotion seems to be crossness, which is one step better then rage. But it’s my own crossness and he’s lost the right to share in anything of mine. This means I can be as unfair as I like….and I will be, for the next 10 mins and then I’ve got to get on, stuff to do, improvements to make.

I was single for a long time before I met my ex and I loved it, was very happy and fulfilled altho sometimes a little lonely for love, as is natural ( oops gone a bit Dolly Parton there… no bad thing.. it’s all wrong but it’s all right!) I am getting back to that place, the firm ground of emotional independence and that’s where I want to be when I make my decision.

Good Luck Ladies and Gents.