Elephant in the room

I’ve done fairly well overcoming a lot of my triggers the last seven months. I only have three major triggers that I haven’t been able to overcome (movies, lingerie, mall) but I’ll get past them eventually. As the old Virginia Slims ad used to say “You’ve come a long way, baby”. I think that’s what it was. I was just a kid when those ads were allowed to run.

Now I can look at pictures and not go right to “when we took this picture he was doing this ” and am back to seeing the memory for what it really was that day, or what I prefer it to be so I can continue to move forward and not stay focused on the past. If it was a picture of an actual event or time that was to painful, they’ve been conveniently destroyed. I can leave him be while he’s working on the computer and not worry or obsess about what he’s doing on the computer. The thought still flickers across my mind but I no longer have to count to ten to calm my nerves and stop myself from getting up to check on him and see what he’s doing. I can hear the click of a mouse button and not have my heart skip a beat and my mind fill with images of naked women across the computer screen. So many triggers, so many unexpected things that have caught me off guard on a daily basis. And, as the days keep rolling by, they are getting fewer and far between.

Until the last couple of days. Things that normally wouldn’t have bothered me, I found upset me to where I actually had to do some deep breathing to calm myself down. I found myself observing D’s behavior while he sat in front of his computer and I lay in bed waiting for him. Something he does every night while he tests his blood sugar. Why? He sent me a text message with an innocent flirty comment. I got offended and deleted it and thought of his acting out. Why? I stepped out of the shower and was drying off and he hugged me and grabbed my ass and I pulled away, it upsets him and I, in turn became offended. Why?

I knew something was in the recess of my brain but I just couldn’t figure out what it was. What the hell was messing with my subconscious making me hyper sensitive? I rolled around questions in my brain all day yesterday and couldn’t think of anything.

Then the elephant in the room made himself comfy at the dinner table. D started asking what I wanted to do about my birthday dinner on Thursday. The more he talked about it, the more upset I became, the more he added to it – we didn’t get to out for Mother’s Day because the boy’s were working; we didn’t go out for Father’s Day because they had worked then too; this was the last birthday my son would be home for me (he’s going away to college); and then BAM –

ELEPHANT sat the f*** down. Last year, was the last birthday I had when I was completely oblivious to what D had done to our marriage. I was totally clueless. We were in our reconciliation period then. We were making our marriage work, of course, I was also accepting porn into our marriage because I wanted to make our marriage really, really work. (DUH?? What was I thinking back then?) I had no idea he had any affairs. That wouldn’t come until the next month.

So, I ate my dinner and listened to R and D talk about how they wanted to go out and celebrate my birthday Thursday and I sat and nodded and was grateful my other two kids weren’t home. When we finished, I brought D into the bedroom and cried and cried and cried. I let him know that I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t celebrate like that. It was just to much for me mentally. I wanted to celebrate my birthday at home. I want a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I don’t want to cook. I don’t care if he brings me Burger King. Oh, and don’t bring me roses, because that’s what he brought me on our anniversary, the day after my last Dday. I hate roses now. I want to open one gift. Then, I want to sit my ass on the couch. That’s it. Just make it as minimal as possible.

What scares me is that if I’m feeling this crappy now, over a stupid birthday when it’s not even a Dday, how am I going to feel next month, when R leaves for college, Dday #1 antiversary, R’s birthday all within two weeks of each other. I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind!

How do you guys cope through the first year?