The point of telling you that is this: Thank god I didn't write a blog post yesterday! It's bad enough that I was Twittering. (New rule: No Twittering while hysterical.) If I had blogged yesterday, I would have written a diatribe about my ex and his evil-doing ways. At best, I might have said some funny things. I'm sure I would have said things that a few of you can relate to. But really, it would have been whining. And who wants to read a whiny blog post? Not me.
Truth is, I was feeling sorry for myself. Poor me, I have a mean husband. So what. Everyone has problems - problems a lot worse than mine. I'm the one that stayed married to him all these years. I'm the one that put up with that crap and didn't respect myself enough to put a stop to it. I've been painting myself as a victim for way too long. The long-suffering wife who stays in a crap marriage "for the kids." Isn't she heroic? Nope. Not by a long shot.
Epiphany of the day: I felt safe as a victim. I didn't have to take any responsibility for my unhappiness. And therefore I didn't have to take any responsibility for making myself happy. I was just going through the motions of my life, waiting for something to happen to make me change course. I'm damn lucky that my wake up call was losing my job. I could have gotten cancer or been in a horrible accident or worse.
I spent hours at Border's Book Store today (that is one of my favorite things to do). I walked around picking up books, reading dust jackets and random pages. I ended up reading 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace
by Wayne Dyer. I read the entire book standing in front of the Bargain Books table (it's a pretty quick read). If you've ever read books by Dr. Dyer, you know that he writes from a very spiritual point of view. You manifest the things you think and stuff like that. I'm not really religious and I'm still undecided about whether it's really possible manifest an open parking spot in downtown Chicago just by being one with the Universe. But this book really struck a chord with me. That's when I realized that I was attached to my victim identity. That I was acting like a victim and therefore bringing victimization on myself.* According to Dr. Dyer, I need to start behaving like I already have the life I want. I don't want to be a victim of physical and emotional abuse so I need to stop acting like one. I want to be a loving and loved member of my community. So now I need to start acting like I am. Hence my new Blogging Rule Number 1: No whining. No more acting like a victim. No more "poor me" crap. (At least not in writing).*This is not to absolve my ex, in any way, of responsibility for his actions. He decided to be abusive and he owns that. I decided to allow it to continue and I own that.
The trick for me is finding balance. I can't expect myself to manifest rainbows and sunshine every day. The way things are now, I'm bouncy and happy one day and the next I'm a wretched lump of sadness and depression. Especially during this transition time in my life, I will experience a wide range of feelings. And all of them are ok - as long as I don't wallow in the negative or expect to much from the positive. I'll continue to write about the range of emotions but I'm going to try very hard not to whine when things are sucky.
