I want to make a positive thread for a change, because I feel like it! This is going to be a pretty long post, sorry in advance, but I feel like I need to express this today
A small summary for people that haven't followed my story: was in a relationship with a girl for 4,5 years, last year we lived together (in a house that is thankfully on my name so that I could keep it - guess I already saw the writing on the wall when I bought the house). She is undiagnosed but had a lot of the hallmarks, but at any rate the relationship was very toxic. Recycled 10 times, honeymoon phases were fantastic and made me feel like mr. perfect, devaluation kicked in and I could only do wrong. Rinse and repeat. Lost a lot of friends, my self-respect and most importantly, my identity. I was so busy with making the r/s work that I wasn't able to work on myself.
We broke up for the last time in november 2014, she got a replacement a month after. I kept working and doing normal stuff but I became seriously depressed, had a lot of thoughts on suicide. Not only because I missed her, but because I missed myself! I lost myself, I didn't know who I was without her anymore. Finally, in february this year, I couldn't go on anymore and I stopped going to work and got into therapy. Got a few anti-depressives and spend the last five weeks at home trying to get better. Ex got into contact with me 3 weeks ago with some stupid excuse but ignored the attempt. She's still with the replacement.
But now, the reason for starting this topic: I look back at the past 4 months and see what a mess I was. Actually, I look back at the past 4,5 years and see what a mess I was! And now I truly see the gift that this relationship has given me.
The gift this toxic relationship and the BPD ex gave me, is that it has given me the opportunity to truly find myself again.My brain is constantly working trying to identify what I stand for, what I like and don't like, what I want out of this life. I feel it constantly. I'm learning to think for myself again, instead of trying to please someone else or being dependent on what someone else wants. I am not here to please someone else, I am here to please myself, to make my life worth living and more enjoyable.
I watch the shows and movies I want to see, I play the videogames I want to play when I want to play them, I hang out with friends when I want to, I keep my house the way I want it to be, I eat and drink what I want to, and best of all, I'm not walking on eggshells every day.
I truly have the feeling I am finding myself again. For instance, I got my drivers license when I was 18. I'm 30 now. In 12 years time, I haven't used my license because I got kinda phobic from driving. The past couple of weeks, however, I've been using my parents car and I just said ___ it, I'm going to drive. And I find tremendous joy in it. I'm driving around constantly, enjoying the feeling of freedom it gives me, as well as the advantage that it has no connection whatsoever with my previous relationship. It's new, and it's MINE. So now I'm looking for my own car!
This is the key. Find new things to do that identify yourself, that make you what you are, that have no connections to this horrible toxic relationship you were in. I need to find more of these things! Maybe pick up a cooking class... .I'm also playing football (soccer) with friends a few times a week now. I don't need it because I also go to the fitness, but I didn't play soccer when I was with my ex, so it is new, it has no connection to the relationship.
After 5 weeks of not going to work (and thankfully having a very kind manager and colleages that all support me and want me to get better), I'm also starting to work a few days again next week, slowly building it up again.
Do I have bad days? Of course, and its especially difficult when i wake up. Every day I need to get used to the feeling of being alone, not being part of a couple. It usually takes me a few hours to feel better again. She haunts my dreams almost every night still.
But then I think about where I would have been if I would have stayed in this relationship. I would have lived to serve her, to try and keep her happy (which would have never worked in the long run - she would be happy for a short while if she got her way, but there would always be a new thing that she had to get to stay happy). Meanwhile, I would have tried to live the life I wanted to live between my day and nightjob of keeping her happy. Almost like sneaking around to do things that make me happy. I would have lost the last pieces of what makes me, ME. I almost lost it. Maybe I have lost it. But now that I'm out, I am at least finding myself back, or finding a new, improved version of myself back. If I stayed with her, I would have now be engaged to her and we would have to start make children next year (she gave me a deadline), and after that we would probably split up anyway and things would be even more difficult. Now she's someone else's problem, now the poor guy she's with will slowly have his personality eroded away, and he won't even notice it until its too late, when the honeymoon phase is over in half a year or so.
So to conclude, I find power in positive thinking, I know that being apart from my ex is making me a better person, maybe a bit more egocentric, but that's what I've earned after living for someone else for 4,5 years.
Here's to ourselves - let us find ourselves again and never lose us in someone else anymore!
