Three things that helped me get back on solid ground

(This post is kind of "Part 2" of the previous post. Read that first.)

Things were very rough, but they are better now. Things are not the same as before, which I expected, and feel is normal and right--I've landed on a different shore from the one I was flung from, but I do feel like I'm on solid ground again.

This morning, Fiance observed that this was probably one of the fastest recoveries he's ever seen me go through, which made me feel really good. It made me realize that the years of work on my mental health and happiness weren't all unraveling, and weren't undone. The way my brain is wired really is different now compared to where it was before.  The "default" state of my brain really is higher, and the moments of happiness aren't the temporary things anymore. The crisis moments, the depression moments, those are the things that my brain recognizes will pass.

This makes me happy.

When Fiance said those things to me, I realized that there were three key things that are different in my life right now that I think helped me get back on my feet.  And they showed up in the last few days in three key things that happened. The order I describe them in this blog post is not the order in which they happened though. In my mind they are all part of a kind of simultaneous experience of getting better. Yes, maybe the third in this list made the other two possible...chronology is a real thing... but I would not be as whole as I feel right now if it weren't for all three.

Thing one: did work that I love.

First, I went back to work yesterday, and this particular work that I do makes me feel fulfilled and capable and strong on levels that no other work or job I've ever had does. I walked out of the office that night feeling nearly whole. Feeling like I had expertise and control over something important and that I was helping other people have better lives...

Walking out of work that night reminded me that my future in-laws don't get to decide what's right for me in my life. Even if the judgments I felt like they passed on me through Fiance's second-hand retelling of their conversation was wrong, this experience helps remind me that no one, not even parents or in-laws or strangers on the internet can decide or judge me for the choices I've made in my life to be happy.  They don't know how much my work fulfills me, and fuck them if they think I should be working "more hours" or bringing home more of a paycheck. Fuck them for implying that my choices aren't "fair" or show "selfishness".

So the first thing that's different is I have work that makes me feel a lot of dignity and self-respect, and so I found myself on solid ground emotionally on at least one front more quickly than I thought I would. It helped reinforce to me that my choices were right for me, and I should fight tooth and nail to keep doing this kind of work.

Thing two: voiced my very last secret fear.

The second thing that happened is that during one of our emotional conversations, Fiance and I talked about the very very last hard thing that until now I've left completely unvoiced, and unstated.  I won't get into exactly what that difficult scary thing was, except to say that this scary thing felt like I'd been sitting on a nuke that could go off and destroy everything if I let it out. I felt like it was something I could only confide to a therapist... someone legally required to keep it secret, and who could then help me understand it in a safe environment.

Well, I told Fiance about it. And he listened, and we talked about it, and the end result was not the destruction of our marriage-before-it-started. The end result was a mutual commitment to each other, and a promise to him and from him that even if any part of my now-not-secret-fear were true, we still want to get married. He's still my foundation, and my life partner. His dad and stepmom don't get a say in whether or not we get married.

And suddenly I realized the nuke would never go off. That it hadn't been a nuke at all. Maybe it was just a big brick with the word "nuke" spray painted onto the side. Or maybe in some relationships, it would have been a nuke, but in this one, it's just a dud, and that fact... the fact that THIS context, THIS relationship makes it possible to transmute the most destructive secret I've kept from him into something more benign... it helped me understand how "forever" this relationship is.

There was more to our conversation, but it stemmed from voicing that fear and talking through it. And so this second thing that happened was that I landed back on solid ground in terms of my relationship with my primary partner, my Fiance, and I have no more secret fears. I have nothing else to fear, no more sources of anxiety regarding my relationship with my Fiance. And so I feel like I'm on solid ground again.

Thing three: polyamory.

The third thing that happened is a thing that makes me feel so very strongly that polyamory is a thing that needs to continue being a part of my life, and my marriage. My other romantic partner came over for lunch, and I cried and told him about the roughness and pain and fear and the massive emotionally violent breakdown I'd had after hearing how coming out to my in-laws went.  I cried, and I was vulnerable and broken, and then afterwards he helped put me back together again. There were kisses and snuggles, and I believe that these kisses and snuggles were so profoundly healing precisely because they came from someone who loves me and who is NOT involved in the thing that was hurting me.  He was an outside person who could just listen and be invested in my emotional state, and could love me and touch me when I was ready for that in a way that I simply couldn't have had if polyamory weren't a thing in my life. It was a profound kind of healing moment that I needed badly, and I don't think I could have gotten in any other way. 

I never felt like I was on shaky ground with regards to how I feel about polyamory being right for us, but this experience gave me a concrete example of exactly why it's so very right. So very healthy for my brain, and my health and my relationship with my Fiance. Because of that experience, I could be more open and vulnerable and brave and strong with my Fiance, and it was the very next morning and the very next day when Thing one, and Thing two happened, and so I can't help but credit this poly afternoon as the real turning point for me, even if I can only recognize it as the turning point in retrospect.  

I have the urge to re-tell some of this experience in terms of the allegory from my dream in my last post, but I don't think I could do it without diminishing this. Something about the dusk not being dusk at all, but actually being those moments before dawn. The sun rose. And while the sunlight didn't make the waters my adrift house was floating on less dangerous, it gave me more energy to rally, and keep things together while I figured out how to install a rudder and a sail. Or something. See? It sounds reductive. Diminished told that way... sorry about that.  

Things were very rough; they are better now.