Tuesday, March 1, 2011

We Aren't Going to Go There

Went to the marriage T tonight.  I am ambivalent about the experience, but after a sleep, I expect to be all cool with it.  The MT went through all the systems and processes for how he runs his deal, and it all made real sense.  It is based on the IMAGO approach from some guy who wrote some book about getting the love you need.  It broke down into the same lizard brain versus the frontal cortex discussion that I've focused my depression T on and my mindfulness approach to doing 3 little things every day.  So I was all cool.  Then he said that we weren't going to get into the betrayal at this first session as it is too charged with emotion.  I thought, cool that makes sense, and lines up with my trying to approach things with the antithesis of my usual approach to charge headlong and aggressively into everything I "go after".  

So, near the end, we started doing one of the exercises, and what do we end up talking about?  My infidelity.  I felt crushingly shamed sitting here talking to some guy I just met about the singularly most shameful acts of my existence, in front of someone who is still very hurt and angry about my actions.  It kicked my ass a bit, to be totally honest and I am feeling incredibly emotionally fucked up.  I am living with a weight of shame and remorse, and I don't feel terribly much like adding to that burden while I am also trying desperately to lift my head out of a major depression.  I am not trying to make a cope out or excuses, because I am responsible for what I've done, I am just trying to find a pace of healing that lets me survive this.  Yes, these are my actions, based on compulsions I can't understand or quantify, to self-mutilate in search of something, something I know not totally what I was looking for.  I do know that I damn near destroyed myself in the process, and hurt my SO so greatly that I am still at risk of losing her.  

I know I need to make amends, but I can't do it if it will destroy me in the process.  It is clear to me that I need to take time and place with this, even at the risk of hurting her a little bit more, because I want to survive this to make it through.  It sounds dramatic, and overwrought, but anyone who's been to the darkness knows that you don't compound your exit from it with more horror.  I need a beachhead of safety and relative personal sanity, and I am getting there.  This is not a rip the bandaid off moment, that's my usual self-mutilating stupidity. 

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