To start with, it is a daily struggle for me to allow myself to have good days. I know I should have good days and welcome them, but it's still hard. It doesn't feel right after what I did.
When I do have several good days in a row, they are quickly drowned out by negative thoughts. I will see something or remember something or think about things I did, and I start falling into a dark hole. I feel my attitude quickly drop and become sad. Everything around me kind of blurs out, and my body gets really heavy. If I'm alone, then I let the tears roll down. Eventually, the awful heavy feeling goes away, but the good day is gone.
Grieving your marriage is natural. Understanding that your actions in part were the reason can be debilitating. At the same time, the healing that we talk about here has to do with embracing yourself, changing your self talk. It might be a bit before you feel strong enough to work towards that. But, understanding the goal is to learn to love yourself and building a life you can be excited about can help guide you. Of course right now there are days where you won't feel like you can muster any step in any direction. Just do not stay stuck in that place. You are a person who is worthy of love...from yourself, from your daughter, and eventually expanding that through friendships and maybe one day even romantic love again. But, right now, start with yourself.
Maybe during one of your stronger periods write down some of the things you are proud of yourself about. Revisit that list when you are down.
Today started good then quickly went away. I was in a store texting N about something regarding our daughter. He took what I asked the wrong way and thought I was questioning his dad abilities. I explained why I asked the question, but felt awful. I felt awful for making him think that I didn't think he could do something.
I know that it's hard, but you need to get to the place where you learn you are responsible for what you say and not how others react to it. You are taking responsibility for N's reactions...those are not yours to be responsible for. He is responsible for managing his own anger and reactions. He is responsible for his own insecurities that likely spawned that anger. I had to work on that, and not see everyone's disappointment or anger or own issues as a reflection of who I am or anything I did. Some people are committed to misunderstanding you.
On the other hand, when you are wrong, and you see "I intentionally questioned N's parenting skills" then that is what you work on. You are not responsible for his feelings. You are responsible only for you.
I quickly left the store and started crying while walking to the next store. I picked up what I needed, but everything was blurred out and that heavy feeling was there. Eventually it went away, and the rest of the afternoon was fine. I took care of some chores once I got home and went for a run. I was all ready to start painting when the depressed feeling came back. Now I'm sitting here typing this up.
You did the right things for yourself - you did chores and went for a run. Those are really good steps because it allows you to shake out some of the anxiety and have feelings of accomplishment. You then later had time on your hands to ruminate on what had happened earlier. This is just a place where you flip your internal script. You either have to decide not to overthink it and change the channel (really hard, I know - I struggle with that too sometimes) or you can think "What will I do differently next time?"
Not everything we think is true. Our emotions are based on our thoughts, which might be based in untruths.
You are overall doing awesome, this is all a work in progress that will not happen overnight.
