Checking in - hit the 1 yr mark

[Educated_Guess]

Hi all!  I'm so glad to be able to get on this board again.  I finally got a new computer and it let's me do things like go to webpages and type (all the things my old computer did not do).

I've been doing well lately.  I'm reading a lot more.  I painted the house.  I've picked up my guitar again.  I listen to music most of the day (something I love and something I could not do while in relationship).  I laugh a lot throughout the day; good thing I'm funny enough to entertain myself.  I find joy and beauty in all kinds of random things, sometimes even in myself.

I feel emotions at a deeper level now.  I went off my anti-depressant a couple of months ago and I think that has made a difference.  Something will strike me, like a line in a song or a book, and suddenly I'm crying.  I've never been a person who cries about much of anything.  It's not that desperate kind of crying either.  Sometimes I cry because I become aware of how much pain there is in the world and that so much of it is because people cannot handle their own pain and have to pass it off to others.  I cry because I realize the healing, redemption and compassion that can grow from that pain if we allow it to happen.  Sometimes I cry because I see so much beauty in the world that I become overwhelmed.

I recently passed the 1 yr anniversary of the breakup.  I was aware of it throughout the day but it did not trouble me really.  I paused during the day and consciously sent out love to the people that my upwBPD ex and I were on that terrible day.  I don't know if it is possible to send out healing and love to people in the past but I wasn't striving for theoretical accuracy or anything.  I just know that we were both people acting out of pain and fear and that we were both people deserving of love in that moment so I took a moment to do just that.

A mutual friend of ours came over for dinner that night.  During the conversation, I mentioned that it was the anniversary of the breakup.  I had never told him any details before and he asked what happened.  I gave him a brief version of the events before, during and after the breakup.  Mostly, I focused the conversation on what I have learned because of all of this.  He told me that he was proud of me.

He told me that my upwBPD ex contacted him a few months after the breakup and interrogated him on why he stopped liking her posts on FB.  He told me that got tired of seeing all her political posts and had hidden her on his newsfeed long before.  She apparently assumed that this change in behavior was because I had been trash talking her.  She started telling him that the story I told him was not really the way it went down and she was going to tell him the truth about it.  He shut it down pretty quickly, told her it was none of his business and he didn't know anything about it anyway.  Eventually he had to unfriend her.

My first response to this story was, "Well, people believe that others will do what they would do themselves."  She had been trash talking me to anyone who would listen (this was usually coupled with trying to get them to give her money to live on).  By contrast, I did not trash talk her and it took awhile for it to sink in to me that she was on a full blown smear campaign against me.  It just did not seem like something she would do.  I think what I was seeing was myself mirrored in her.  I don't trash talk so she must be a person who doesn't trash talk.

My second reaction to this was just to laugh about it.  At what point did "I'm going to prove to you that I'm not the crazy one in that relationship by interrogating you and lashing out at you" seem like a winning tactic?  All I could do was laugh about it and say a "Bless her heart".

Which brings me to my sarcasm.  It is something of a weakness for me.  I still get sarcastic about the whole situation.  When I hear that her life situation isn't great, that eyebrow of mine (which speaks its own language of sarcasm)  pops up and I think, "Yeah, girl, what did you think you're life was going to be like?"  I can even get to the point of being spiteful about it.

I think this comes from the part of me that is still wounded.  It is a way of defending that wound and letting out a little bit of aggression (but at least it is funny aggression).  The thing about it is that when I am thinking like that, I cannot see her as a person deserving compassion.  As long as I cannot have compassion, I am stuck where I am.  I've been focusing more of my energy on tending to that wound in me that still feels it needs to be defended.  I know that as long as I am acting out of that wound, I will draw more negativity to me and I ain't about that anymore.

Compassion is the key for me.  It's what helps me transition to a better way of being.  I recognize that the childhood experiences we both had cultivated us to be fearful and fractured people.  A lot of it was because our families could not deal with their own pain and passed it on to us before we were old enough to know that the world could be anything other than all that pain.  We acted out that fear on each other.  We didn't even realize how we were doing that until it was too late.  But we are still both people deserving of love and compassion.

So there's the snapshot of where I am right now, the good and the bad.  I'll end this with a line from a song that made me tear up just today:

"As I abide in peace
So will my delight increase"

[Turkish]

It must have felt good to tell your story, and maybe a lot more helpful after you had time to heal and process things on your own.   

[Educated_Guess]

Turkish, it was good to tell my story but even better to laugh about it.  My friend is very expressive and hilarious.  It was like being a participant in a stand-up improv show.