when the dam of emotions seem to burst come the holidays

[icarus27]

For a lot of you about to start your leave soon, this might not have happened yet. I've started my holidays early, even got the chance to escape the European winter to south Asia to visit family.

 

It's just that in the dead of night, I can't sleep for hours (and it's not even jet lag). All the emotions from the break-up, and the subsequent year of online dating in search of new directions, comes back and keeps me awae. Everything from rage to betrayal to (I hate to admit this) revenge fantasies against the people who've treated me cruelly. Hopelessness of a kind that used to happen in the early days after the break-up when I stared into an inky black void of a future where I realise I am not meant to find anyone new, try as I might, and as well as I train myself to think positively.

 

Where I am, except for this short break in a cafe, I'm also cut off from TV and most of the outside world. It's a bit like living in a monastery, a self-imposed fast where you take a break from the rest of the world. It doesn't help I don't actually liuke my family members - for a whole number of reasons I have written about many times before on ENA.

 

Most of all, I look back at the year and weep without tears at just how hard it has felt. And I just want to give up the fight. I'm trying to be kind to myself and take it easy on myself.

[tiredofvampires]

I know how you feel, I really do. It's kind of a hellhole and self-designed prison.

 

I've been that way much of the past year. It's hard to see the year coming to an end, and think "What was this year about, really?"

 

All I can say is, it was a "transitional" year. I cried with tears. I cried without tears. I swung from despair to confidence in thinking about my ex, and back again. It really was a year of patience and healing. Of tending to myself and not trying to get over anything, but to just let the sitation unfold. ENA has helped me a lot, seeing myself in others as well as defining what I really believe about love.

 

I think one big mistake people make is to try to talk, date, and otherwise trick themselves out of their pain. If there is one thing I can take away from this year, it is seeing that there is a very high truth that cannot be violated by anyone: it's going to take as long as it takes. And, if I just have faith that my feelings will change over time, the pain WILL subside. Everything else is a frantic effort to make the wounds heal faster then they can. It's like taking a broken bone, fitting the edges and yelling, "KNIT FASTER, YOU DAMN BONE!!!!" Just doesn't work, does it?

 

So you say in this past year, you've both broken up and been doing the dating circuit. Dating and getting out, but with grief, revenge fantasies, and deep bitterness unresolved all behind the backdrop. This is not the way to go, imho. I think that maybe you should deliberately take the next 4 months off (that is NOT much in the whole scheme of things) to simply be with yourself. When we try to plug the hole with someone new, it always backfires. And, it kicks back even harder just because now, we feel failed at trying to find love again. Do not set yourself up to fail, and thus create even more fodder for a vicious cycle. STOP TRYING TO DATE, and allow yourself downtime so that when you do start dating again, you and the women you are seeing have a fresh you. A you that is open to them, not just taping a bandage over the last one.

 

The holidays are tough. Hang in there.

[icarus27]

It happened in the end: an outburst at a family member that was in response to an outburst from her first, but made me feel very ashamed nonetheless.

 

It's not that the year spent trying to get 'out there' was a salve to put on a wound, I was well aware of that recovery of a kind is needed after a train wreck happens in your life. For me it was 4 months after the breakj-up that I even thought of looking. Too soon some may say, but then if I was tpo wait until I was 'fully healed', hell I don't think we're ever fully healed. That's one of the sad facts about it all.

 

I do take your point about just calling 'time out' and making a conscious positive choice to stay away from the scene i.e. actively seeking any new contacts, for a while. Seems to be what my heart is saying too.