Healing feels perilous

[Depression = 72% of members]

It's been a month since I've been free, and I've recently started to feel like my head is coming out of the water at times. I actually felt driven to do something today, as if it would make me happy the way it used to. It was a good, but uneasy feeling. I felt so confident that I played around with the idea of her contacting me and me talking to her without any emotional vulnerability, just responding to her bullshyt from a position of security. But the fact that I started thinking it meant she was still right there in my thoughts. The last thing I want to do is start testing any progress I have. I want to just let it happen.

But it also feels like the higher up I go towards the light, the greater the risk and the farther the fall if I hear her voice again or see her beautiful smiling face on some new post (she's blocked, but I could see it somewhere else).

I feel like if I don't get completely out of the abyss before she tries to contact me, I'm at an enormous risk of falling all the way back down.

I guess there is no other option but to keep moving upwards, but after a while you start to notice how far you have come and how far down a regression could take you.

Plus it's obvious to me that I'm likely to fall back down into the darkness again at sometime in the near future regardless. That's almost guaranteed since I imagine I still have a lot more grief to process.

So while progress is enjoyable in that it brings life back to parts of my life, it also feels very uneasy to me. It's a very delicate and unsure sense of happiness.

[homefree]

It's been a month since I've been free, and I've recently started to feel like my head is coming out of the water at times. I actually felt driven to do something today, as if it would make me happy the way it used to. It was a good, but uneasy feeling. I felt so confident that I played around with the idea of her contacting me and me talking to her without any emotional vulnerability, just responding to her bullshyt from a position of security. But the fact that I started thinking it meant she was still right there in my thoughts. The last thing I want to do is start testing any progress I have. I want to just let it happen.

But it also feels like the higher up I go towards the light, the greater the risk and the farther the fall if I hear her voice again or see her beautiful smiling face on some new post (she's blocked, but I could see it somewhere else).

I feel like if I don't get completely out of the abyss before she tries to contact me, I'm at an enormous risk of falling all the way back down.

I guess there is no other option but to keep moving upwards, but after a while you start to notice how far you have come and how far down a regression could take you.

Plus it's obvious to me that I'm likely to fall back down into the darkness again at sometime in the near future regardless. That's almost guaranteed since I imagine I still have a lot more grief to process.

So while progress is enjoyable in that it brings life back to parts of my life, it also feels very uneasy to me. It's a very delicate and unsure sense of happiness.

[AwakenedOne]

Hi homefree, attempting to have a deeper understanding of why you are now feeling happy and driven might be a good next step.

[homefree]

That's a good point.

I've been trying to work on myself.

I've spent time with friends I haven't normally made the effort with.

I've reached out to improve my pool of friends.

I've taken up a hobby I've meant to for years.

I went to audition for a play on a whim and feel very happy with my attempt (don't know yet if I will be cast)

I've gone to therapy twice.

I've been reading books on codependancy, loving myself, and love addiction.

I've been on this board basically every day for community and understanding.

I cut out the remaining connections I had with her, i'm in a NC blackout, which has helped enormously since.

And of course, time has passed. I've allowed myself to really feel the wrenching agony when it comes, but it is now going away faster than it did.

I just realized that I woke up this morning and didn't feel like a switch came on after I realized we weren't together any more. I've thought about her since then, but it wasn't about facing this new nightmare world that I've suddenly been forced to live in. I'm literally surprised right now having realized this.

I'm still trying to find my way, and I know I have a long way to go, but I guess I have made some good steps.

Anyway, thanks. Maybe in time I can view my recovery in a secure light and use that to steady myself against the darkness.

[blackbirdsong]

I've gone to therapy twice.

You mean like two sets of sessions (if, yes - how many sessions are we talking about?) or two sessions?

[homefree]

One therapist, I've gone twice. It's pretty early, but I've felt positively after each one.

[thisworld]

Homefree,

Your original post took me to an extraordinary place in my mind - I didn't expect to think about this here tonight. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Only, I thought, here is an Orpheus who knows that Eurydice is not coming. That is painful, a version of grieving. But knowledge can seldom be deleted.

And I thought of the classical question they ask in some mythology lessons? Why did Orpheus look back? Was he excited, was it an impulse? Or was it an issue of trust and did he doubt Eurydice?

I believe grieving changes depending on the answer. 

[homefree]

That's very interesting.

It kind of brings to light that in this journey, it's just for me to escape Hades. I'm not rescuing her. And if I look back, SHE will pull me back down to the underworld.

I did not know that myth before now. It's actually pretty instructive for me. I'm on this journey, and the focus should be on me to do what is necessary to reach the light, no matter how tempted I am to look behind me.

[thisworld]

I think so for myself, too. It's simply neither possible nor worth it. Plato even argues that she was an apparition. (That should be the mirroring stage I'd rather learn how to play the lyre or something. At least I'll have a hobby:))