Sitting in My Shit

Action. Action is one of the things that helps me become me again. Being an active participant in my life and reintegrating who I am is how I'm beginning to heal on my end. When I was a young teenager, 15 I think, I had a boyfriend who broke my heart. Literally broke. my. heart. The first heartbreak might be the worst. And to think that no one loved me through it or helped me to heal through that. To think that my mother or my father or stepmother didn't hold me and rock me and tell me how much breakups hurt. To think that they didn't acknowledge my broken heart or even my tenuous punk rock al a Sid&Nancy type relationship, they just berated me for walking around mopey and gloomy. To think that they didn't tell me that I was perfect, whole and complete just the way I was and that his breaking up with me had nothing to do with me, that I was fine the way I was and that they loved me for me. No. I didn't get that. I was told that I had to change. That my feelings were not acceptable. I gloomed around for a year. Seriously, it was a year. A whole year too. When I think back to it, it feels like much more than a year, but a year for a 15 year old is like, forever. But things got better eventually and I got on with my life and started wearing colors, and let my hair grow and put on (non black) lipstick and things got better. After that happened, I made a rule for myself. When I am unhappy about something, I am allowed to "sit in my shit," for a specified amount of time. After that, I stand up, dust myself off, and persevere. Perseverance is something that I've always had. The crisis level of the situation is decreasing, the trauma is beginning to wear down, and I'm ready to pick myself up and go forward again. And I'm willing to try it out with husband. Don't get me wrong, I'm still totally angry at husband and I will be for a very long time, but I'm not stewing in my juices anymore. I'm coming back to me again.
Husband told me last night that one of the things that kept him in the acting out behaviors was the addiction to the validation. Like if he could get someone to talk to him, it gave him a sense of being validated or being okay. He feels so intensely not okay in so many different ways. Like me, he grew up in a pretty crappy family that gave him no validation. I can totally relate to needing to know that I'm okay. And hearing it from just me was not enough for him. That has nothing to do with me. That's all about his crappy self esteem and his sense of worthlessness. That's about his mother neglecting him and his father not protecting him from his mother's insanity. I can understand that. I have often felt not good enough and needed lots of external validation. I've done lots of shit for it. Not just having sex with people or trying to make people think I'm hot, but running a marathon, writing a novel, starting a business... things that will make my parents think I'm good enough. Getting skinny and having sex with men was to make men think that I'm good enough. But you know what? Good enough is good enough. I don't need people to tell me I'm good enough. I am fine. I am fine just the way I am. And I don't need to change because husband doesn't think he's good enough. Nothing I do to myself will make him change the way he feels about himself.
So, for now, it's all about being an advocate for me. Getting out into the world, enjoying my life, meditating in the morning, working on my 2nd book, learning to play an instrument, thinking about other things that make me happy. Husband has his own work to do that has nothing to do with me.