Today I was to meet with my therapist to discuss how I'm getting along. My son however, really wanted to speak to her too, so I let him go in first thinking he would take 30 mins then I would take 30 mins. I drug my daughter along too, despite her fervent notions that she would NEVER talk to a therapist. I didn't care about that tonight, as I was sure once she saw that her brother was not harmed for life for wanting to talk, she would eventually go in on her own.

He is about to head out on his own soon, and this chaos is not helping him mentally prepare for his new life. I won't ask what he talks about because he wants to keep it private, but my Therapist did say he had more pain then anger. He is hurting. He loves his parents very much, and to see us going after each other, has got to be hurting him deeply. He has been a support to me through this all, having seen both parents fall on their noses, but watched as I have tried to get the help to make the changes needed to be a better wife and mother. For that I am grateful. If nothing else comes out of this, I hope I have set an example that we don't have to go through life alone when we are crying out in pain. Good help is out there.

He talked for a full hour with her and wanted to make another appointment to come in again. Needless to say, I didn't get my time and had to to reschedule. It was okay. My son needed to to talk to someone that wasn't emotionally involved with it all and I need him to open up to someone that is trained to help guide him. the self-destructive cycle has to stop.

My youngest is watching and already has gotten positive feedback from him. The most important thing is that they have to know they can talk freely and alone. I know they are afraid of hurting me and their dad more, but if they can get it out and worked through in a healthy manner, then please God, let them say what they need to say.

I love them too much to let them become "just like me" or their dad.

Three words that for a person like me, if I don't hear them I get panic attacks.

I would walk around while alone and just blurt out, "I love you ____" fill in the name of who I loved, and they wouldn't even be there to hear it. I do it without thinking, because I have to say the words, and hope to hear the reply, "I love you too."

The reply never comes because, well, I'm alone. So I decided to try something new as part of my re-wiring process. I now purposely put my own name at the end. If I must say "I love you," then let it at least be about me. "Fake it till you make it." has been a favorite saying of mine. By verbalizing to myself that I love me, eventually my head will get it and start to believe it.

Even if things can work out between myself and my husband, I never want to be dependent on him or anyone again for my happiness. This doesn't mean I don't want relationships, but I want healthy ones, and why I think I will never find that with him. I know if he wants to change he is capable of changing, but sometimes the things that have to happen can't happen together.

I'm beginning the process today of separating my life from his financially. I hate every minute of it, but it has to be done. Every nightmare has to end sooner or later. This will end someday too and I'll be okay.

Tonight I got home from spending a weekend with my son on a college audition trip. It was a bittersweet weekend. I am so proud of him and what he is doing for himself, yet I see him yanking and pulling to get away. It is bad enough to feel abandonment from your life partner, but to add the fact that soon your first born will be running out the door is like lighting the fuse on the powder keg.

I fear being alone.

There you have it.

That one flaw in my character is what has led me through a life of accepting the worse that others give because I don't want to be alone. Even now, I'm clinging to a hope that is slim to non-existent that my husband will change his heart and change the things in his own emotional wiring that is causing all this grief. Now, I have a son that despite his love for us both, can't wait to get away from us. The stress and chaos of living with too unhealthy parents has taken its toll on him and all he wants is to get out.

So what do you do when you realize what the fear is, but can't seem to master it?

I have been told over and over that "I need to be my own best friend." That's simple enough it seems, and intellectually that would be fine, except the heart has nothing to do with intellect. Feelings master intellect more then we all like to admit. That is why a person that can master himself can master anything.

I am a determined and stubborn person. I often joke that I am an over-achiever, but the one area of what I do that I can't seem to achieve in is mastering this one fear of being alone. Being abandoned and worse, thinking that no one can or would love me holds me back from fully seeing my true worth and talent.

Tonight I listened to Defying Gravity from the Broadway musical Wicked.

I want to "defy gravity."

I want to love and be my own best friend.

I know what I want. I know what is in the way. Now I just have to take the leaps of faith that I need to achieve it. This is one time, being an over-achiever is truly a wonderful thing.

Hello and welcome to my first blog post. It's not really a first blog, as I have blogged under other names in the past, but this blog is different for me. I use to write about a time when I was hiding in online worlds as a virtual me. My virtual self lived a whole life of adventure and new experiences that plain old real me didn't do. Then two-years ago, my husband shattered my world with talk of divorce and I woke up from a near 6 year coma. I said goodbye to my virtual self and began the painful road back to being just, myself.

It is a road that I am still on today. I held on to my husband a few short years more thinking we had turned the tide only to be crushed again with his final announcement that he definitely wants a divorce. Unlike last time though, I'm not so helpless and I'm definitely not in a coma. I have had a lot of positive change in my life. This blog is my journal. I publish it on the Internet, because right now, someone else is out there who just woke up from a coma of their own, or maybe you have been doing all the right things you thought like I did these last two-years and it wasn't enough. I'm not a therapist, but I am someone in recovery. I am recovering from the need to be loved so much that the fear of abandonment let me accept behavior that should not have been accepted and kept me from raising children that were secure. I loved them, and I fed them and I was there for all the "stuff" that parents are suppose to be there for, but I failed them just the same. I put the wants and needs of everyone else ahead of mine for fear they would reject me if I didn't.

I married a man that has his own issues with love, only his are those of avoidance. This blog isn't about him, nor do I intend to use it as a way to "punch back." He is responsible for himself, and I have no effect on what he does. We are still married, we live in the same house for financial reasons, but we are emotionally and to a point physically separated. For how many months, I don't know.

So why do I thank George Strait? About a year ago, I heard his song, "She Let Herself Go" on the radio, and I thought of my situation. I liked the thought of the song of a woman who had been left by her middle age husband. Instead of being bitter, the woman let go of her hurt and past and did the things she never did married to a man that had no appreciation for her and she enjoyed herself.

I want to be like that woman in the song. I want to have the strength to accept the things I can't change and change the things I can.

I don't want a divorce and I love my husband, but there comes a time you have to love yourself too and do what is right not just for others, but for yourself as well.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

I just have to let myself go.