Allowing It in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

Tonight, I decided to take the therapist’s advice and just accept the grieving emotions, let them pass through me, and embrace what thoughts were attached as opposed to trying to analyze each emotion as it came.

On the walk with the dog, I was filled with anger. Nancy likely considers herself getting the raw end of all if this. The money, the house, the security, the comfort. She has to go build a new life for herself while I get to stay here. BUT THAT ISN’T QUITE RIGHT, IS IT?! No, the truth is Nancy, by her own admission, never loved me and was thus simply using me for all of HER needs and desires while ignoring mine and actively brining me down at every turn. Besides you want to talk raw deals?! How’s this: Nancy spent 9 years putting herself first; and when I finally give up after all that effort? She immediately went out and found someone else to take care of her. So her world went from “Being Taken Care Of” to “Being Taken Care Of”. Meanwhile, what happened to me? 9 years of working my ass off, while not being loved. With Nancy moving out and my success at any and all dating being nothing but discovering I am “just friends sexually attractive”… MY world went from “Working your ass off and being unloved” to “Being alone and being unloved.” SO YEAH. She can be upset that she now has to get a job and operate without my family’s giant financial safety net… y’know, act like an adult.... but I kind of think I trump: I had a woman lie to me about loving me until I finally said Then Act Like It at which point she said, “Well, I never loved you.” Leaving me now at 36 in a small area of Iowa unloved.

As should be obvious from that kind of thinking, anger turned to depression. Because the honest truth as far as genuine practical understanding: there is every possibility that my current state is permanent. It may be that I never find someone to love me or to marry me ever again. That isn’t self-pity, merely an honest assessment and expression of statistical reality. And even though that is logical, it is depressing. I want to be loved. I don’t want what I was putting up with fir the last 15 years to be the only “love” I know. THAT would be the most depressing thing of all!

So… that’s where I am tonight. Angry that Nancy surely feels that she’s been wronged by being required to grow up (you’re 40, woman!) despite the fact that I genuinely feel far more unjustly dealt with. Turned to depression at the reality that… I may never have The Good Version of what I spent so long trying to keep going.