Who Have I Become?

*I know very few people are going to care about this journey I’m on, but it’s one I have to travel. Since I don’t journal this will probably be cathartic for me. Hopefully I will come out the other side in a better place than I am right now.

This week has really been an emotional week.

After my meeting with my estranged husband on Wednesday I pretty much spent all of Thursday having anxiety attacks at work. I hadn’t dealt with those since we first separated 4 yrs ago.

Today at work I made a mistake and it could’ve become a big issue, but thankfully the store manager decided to let it slide this time.

It was an honest mistake, and it wasn’t even a big deal, but I took it really hard.

I couldn’t shake it. For hours.

I just mulled it around in my head over and over. I could’ve done this, I could’ve done that. How long is my manager going to be pissed, because I did piss him off.

I came up with all of my defenses in case he brought it up at a different time. I had a lot of “reasons” why I did what I did. They seemed logical to me, and still do. I was ready to defend my choice if it came down to it.

Then as we were closing the store, the manager I’d managed to avoid for the rest of the night walked by the aisle I was in and just smiled at me and kept walking. Not one of those snotty smiles. Just a good ol’ smile like nothing was wrong.

What in the world? Had he not thought about this for the rest of the night, too? Did he just let the situation go? Over and done?

I nearly burst into tears at the amount of time I’d spent trying to come up with my defense to protect myself.

All of a sudden I realized why I had wasted so much time emotionally and mentally.

This is what I’d spent my entire marriage doing. Defending myself. I never seemed to do anything right. Every time I was “wrong” I had to defend myself. Then I would defend and defend and defend until I couldn’t come up with one more thing or reword it in a different way.

Eight years of always having to justify a thought, an action, or whatever. I guess it won’t be easy to stop reacting to certain situations easily.

Since my husband has been out of my home, I haven’t really been in a position of having to “defend” myself. After tonight I realize I have a lot of years to unravel.

There is a lot to recover of the person I used to be. I’ll be forever changed by these past 12 yrs and won’t be the same person I was before I met him. I will have to figure out how to get rid of this, and other, bad habits. If not, I won’t ever be “me” again.