Move on to WHERE?

jkpeace,  
   I'm glad those suggestions were helpful to you; you were such a voice of reason and compassion when I arrived her in the fall of 2016, and your perspective so helpful to me I'm glad I could return a little of that favor. 
  I'm a year and a half from divorce, just over two years since moving out, and five years post trans bomb-drop. I, too, find that the anger resurfaces even though I'm doing well in my post-divorce single life.  To me, it seems as if there are so many stages to recovery, and I can only get to the next one by going through the previous one, and the one I've been feeling lately, too, is anger over all that I lost a chance to have because my now-ex was lying to me (how much he lied to himself I do not, and never will, know).  Sometimes I am very angry about that.  I also still get angry over the fact that he has continued on in his closeted life with few people the wiser, and those who do know, who were (and are) colleagues and friends, seemingly give him a pass.  Redirecting my attention is easier when there's something good to redirect it to. 
    A therapist I went to briefly at two different stages used to say, "Cut off all negative thoughts" as if simply saying that were enough for me to do it, until I finally said to her, "Don't you think if I knew how to do that I would?  Tell me HOW!"  She didn't really have a technique for that.  I have heard of some, like set a timer and give yourself that much time before you move on to some task that is fully absorbing, but I decided that being able to re-direct is just something that that comes with time and the overwriting of the past by the present life.  And when the present life is difficult--financially, say--that makes it doubly tough to do.  

I think it comes down to this:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”  (Eleanor Roosevelt)

You do the next thing, the thing you think you cannot do, because it has to be done, and you are the kind of person who does what has to be done.  Sometimes in order to do that next thing we have to review the past impossible things we had to do to get to the present impossible thing, and to reassure ourselves we are equal to it, or at least to trying to do it. 

And yes, it is hard.  Sometimes we just want to put down the burden, or have someone help us carry it, or at the least acknowledge that it's a heavy burden to carry, and to take it off our heads and comfort us with a hug.  Consider this your virtual, but sincere, hug.   

   It's not easy to be our own advocates.  I feel I've had to become my own mother, my own wife, and my own husband, to fulfill for myself all by myself all of what those other people normally provide us. 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (May 20, 2020 6:06 pm)