Everything looks the same on the surface, yet all the meanings have changed.
I have experienced this before. When I let myself remember all my childhood, this was what life felt like. I felt very blessed to have a partner who supported me through the strangeness, and kept telling myself that. What I couldn't let myself see was that the same patterns were playing out in different ways in the very relationship I was depending on to get me through the pain of losing my family to denial.
There was another level of denial. I could not let myself see that my marriage had all the fault lines that split my family of origin apart. Denial had kept me alive through childhood; it kept a rickety marriage running until one day, that fell apart, too.
My faith in God was pretty flimsy all along: in the language of recovery, I had made another person my Higher Power. Now, the only thing left to trust is the idea that there is a God who can help me change, and the steadfast love of dogs. Sadly, it looks as though I will have to leave them behind for awhile.
Spouse and I have agreed, with the help of our therapist, to take a 90-day separation to work on our own issues and then take some time to figure out whether we can start a new relationship. More on that in future posts.
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