What would you do?

~ I understand Camille. Best Always, J.

I think you met someone else! Great strength is nowhere in my vocabulary.

I held it together there for a few hours there but drove all the way home in tears wishing this wasn't happening. It's so hard to come home to an empty house that he's not walking into, so hard to lay down at night and remember holding him and loving him for so long and not being able to do that anymore. Last night I thought about how nice it was to meet you and how much I appreciate what you did. I also thought about the talk, about how people process grief, about how much the speaker described the very things he was/is doing, they fit so well. I saw myself too. All I keep thinking is how everyone is greiving and reacting and nobody is being allowed to be with the person they really love for support and love.
All the focus is on his daughter and nothing/nobody else's feelings, loss, sacrifices or lives seem to matter. This can't be healthy for anyone.

My heart is still breaking. Today's a new day but like an alarm I still wake up about the time he'd be driving to work and calling me to say hi again. It's usually waking up from some dream about him too. My mind never stops processing this, trying to resolve it. I want to pick up the phone and call him but what can I say that hasn't been said? I love him, I'm here for him and please come back? If there was something I could say, something I could do to change all this, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I log on here and see the messages from everyone and while I'm happy to see people care, it's like a celebration of some kind. Yes, I'm grateful I met doglover and we spent the time together, but things back here in my life are still the same. All that didn't go away.

Wow.. This post has really touched me, at the beginning it was because I have that "one that got away" that I still think about everyday, even after 3 years. And your ability to be so open Camille, and so trusting... especially after what you have gone through is a testament to your strength and says alot about the kind of woman that you are.
and
DL.. you give me hope that there is still good in the world.. I think that is just.. absolutely amazing.. what a pure gesture.

First off, way to go, DL. :-D

And yeah, we're all big-time huggers. But I have cold hands (usually). So beware. :-D

Sending good vibes from Boston, with a shout out and a mental hug to the entire girl gang.

I have a feeling I'm still going to be thinking about it everyday of my life. I love him so much and miss him so much. How can I not think about him when I know what he's facing with his son and his daughter and am banished from his life during the worst time of his life? I've known about everything that ever happened to those kids for 20 years. It's not like they are strangers I didn't know anything about or hadn't ever seen or talked to. So many of the choices I made over the years were based on these kids and what would be best for them, or what would be best for their father because of them.

I was terrified the grief and pain would pull him back to his daughter, but I never ever in my life thought he wouldn't be in my life unless he died.
It's easier to have strength when you think there is hope. It's not easy now when life is so full of darkness and the future we planned and worked toward isn't there. In fact, I'm finding it impossible to be strong. I'm finding it impossible to do much of anything other than grieve.

I am so sorry to hear of your sadness Camille. However, it is wonderful to know that you DID go out and you DID spend some precious hours with DL! Keep taking those steps! We are here!

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I appreciate it.

Another bump in the road.....
I think I'm going to have to figure out something regarding where I'm living. My employer screwed up my leave and my paycheck today was a whopping $200. I keep trying to find a way to afford this house but keep running into brick walls. If I could make it until December I'd be ok because the payments drop about $300 a month but this house takes most of my paycheck for the mortgage and utilities alone. It's going to be even tighter when I go back to work and have the outrageous gas for the commute and parking fees.

I'm still considering moving cross country but had decided to hold off for at least 6-9 months to be sure it was something that wasn't just an emotional response. God knows I preached enough to him about making major decisions during high emotions. You can't run away from yourself. I should take my own advice. Just don't know if I can hold out financially that long.

Can you sell the house? I realize this is a big step and all, but you need cash. Even if you don't have a huge amount of equity, you may still be able to pull in some sort of a profit (plus cut your living expenses - no more property taxes) if the housing market is good and/or you've made a number of capital improvements.

There's also temping. Not great money, certainly (it kinda depends on what you do), but it's something and can fill up the time.

This happens today, on the day that would have been the official 20 year anniversary of when we decided to go forward with our relationship. It had started 5 months earlier but we weren't sure if we wanted to go forward and there was this period of walking on eggshells. Twenty years ago today after a retirement party for a co-worker ........ Twenty years together and always wanting to be together, working so hard to get there, and overnight......gone.........

I think you need to separate whether you will get back together from what you do about your finances.

I can even envision your getting on in life being more of a plus for your attractiveness to him. I speak outside my own view there, as you well know I think you need to move on emotionally. But never mind that, I am saying it is possible to functionally isolate the decisions.

At the least you don't know how long the denouement of the situation will take to happen for others involved in it. Your counting on things to flip back your way soon seems pretty risky financially, and they very well may not. I, more than many of my longtime friends, have spent years financial riskriding, and I understand the underlying expectation to be somehow saved. Even looking at it from your still hopeful point of view, putting myself there thinking that way, I can't see how he will suddenly react to save you financially on his own. Jespah made suggestions earlier, that I gather you are nowhere near going towards, and I have to say she may be very sharp in those comments. I am in my own financial situation in part because I didn't make some moves I have a legal right to, and I must say the consideration involved wanes with time. You might well listen to her advice.

Short of that, you should stop grieving for some minutes at a time and deal with your situation.
This sounds mean, but grief isn't really protective.

Are you going to wait til the bank takes over? Can you refinance? A little hard if you are not working, but I am not sure you can't.

I recently refinanced without argument with the company that holds my mortgage - it is a consideration they give people who hold mortgages with them; consider looking up their site online and seeing if they have a simple refinance routine going.

In any case, I urge you to look at ways out of your financial and emotional morass. Maybe you don't need a therapist, maybe you need a financial advisor (I say, she who is a financial fool - but that is why I can say this to you). Really, you need to get in gear here.

As to the day this is happening, the twentieth anniversary of the party..

I am impatient about this. Do you have any clue how many people whose leaps to the future together have foundered on life's rocks? Adulthood involves, if not always, much bitter.

Please swack yourself out of selfgrief (yes, I do know you grieve for you all) for some time to make some practical decisions.

I see I am the bad cop here.

I've been around divorce groups and grief workshops/books enough to know that anniversaries of special dates are triggers for at least the first year. This is the first such date that has come around in 6 weeks and it was special for us.

Really, Camille, I don't mean that this date is not or should not be special, no matter what groups think - I know you will always remember this anniversary.

I am just hoping to nudge you to thinking practically fairly soon.

As to this and other anniversaries, I would hope you talk to a close counseller. My own take is that one makes new anniversaries, and I know that is not your view. Most of us don't forget our life's anniversaries, formal or not, even if we don't have the day in mind at the time. As one gets older the calendar is more piquant.

What, my main wish for you is some perspective.

I've snipped this up a bit so I'll answer the parts I have quoted in sections-

1) I've been away all day because I was on the phone with work most of the day trying to figure out what happened on the paycheck and how to correct it. Before I made the phone calls, I took a little time to ask God to help me handle the situation. I guess He was listening because after talking to four people, 5 of us knew what should have happened and one person screwed it all up. They have advanced the money from the next pay so the immediate crisis is over. Thank you God. I didn't expect him to bail me out and he knows nothing.

2) I agree 100% about attractiveness. There is nothing attractive about a needy, clingy, scared, neurotic woman. The hard part is not grieving or expressing that grief to another human being. I don't think that's healthy or it will come out somewhere, sometime in some way that is negative. The harder part is forgiving myself for becoming that fearful, needy, clingy, scared, demanding, neurotic woman before the breakup. I know I wasn't the person he fell in love with and loved all these years before this happened, and knowing now about his daughter, he couldn't handle me and her dying, his new job and night classes required for it, and had to get away from me. I also know I have to find strength to not only fix me, but to set boundaries on what conditions I would want to go back to in our relationship. I'd want what we had for most of the 20 years and for his past (i.e. marriage) to be finally in the past and to be an open part of his life with his family. Those boundaries are something that are kind of fuzzy right now because I know I would never turn him away while he is going through this horrible time, grieving and needing comfort.

3) I am not counting on the situation to turn around and save the day for my finances. I'm on my own now and I have to sink or swim. I haven't had financial problems since I was in my 20's until I was forced to file bankruptcy a few years ago because of all the expenses and debt I got into with this house. I was never rich, but I was able to pay my bills. If I hadn't been suffering with depression from all the other losses in my life I may have been able to get a part time job and make extra money but when you have real clinical depression you are exhausted all the time. Bankruptcy stays on your record for 7 years and that keeps you from many options like re-financing at any decent rate.

4) I'm not counting on the situation to turn around to decide whether or not I want to move cross country or sell the house. The first few days I wanted to get in the car with the dogs and keep going and never look back on the house or anything in it. That would have been pretty stupid.
Moving without really thinking through where I would go, what I would do for income, or whether I really want to live in certain cities isn't real smart either. I'm afraid making a decision right now I would move to the wrong place for all the wrong reasons. It's another point I've learned in divorce and grief workshops/books. Never make major decisions unless you are forced to while you are grieving.

5) The last thing I want to do is hasten his daughter's death and there is no way to know whether they would stay together for a while and be immobile in grief as I have been, or if the stress of the situation will force the inevitable end of the "marriage" sooner. I put it in quotes because the marriage has been certifiably dead for years. The kids were the only common bond. With one in PVS for the rest of his life and the other dying of terminal cancer, there will be no common bonds eventually. Nothing will ever be the same for them. Death changes your whole perspective on little things and big things. Just like they can't recreate the time when the kids were little and the future was bright, they won't be able to recreate the happy times with the kids when both are gone and there is nothing to unite them- kids, dying requests, grief. Eventually life will continue. We can either die with them, or decide to live the little time we have left based on our own needs, not everyone else's or someone else's guilt trips. In the end if you aren't being true to yourself, you betray yourself more than anyone else ever could betray you. Everyone involved is going through grief and loss and a myriad of emotions. There are no "winners". I'm trying very hard to put this in God's hands as well. I pray every day that God will somehow find peace for everyone on His terms, not mine.

6) I'm finding out that you can't help anyone else if you can't help yourself and it's hard for anyone to love you if you don't love yourself. I have a long, hard road ahead trying to figure out how to do that again.

I'm taking "baby steps" as I am able. Please don't beat me up because I am still grieving for not only what I am feeling but for everyone involved, or because an anniversary brings memories of what was and what might still be. I miss him and I love him and I have a feeling no matter what happens, I will always love him.

Little by little I'm trying to sort through things and start concentrating on the necessities of life- i.e.- supporting myself financially and developing some local friends. I am making a conscious effort to get out of the house and doing some things instead of sitting here thinking. Tonight I went to a presentation at the library on Labyrinths rather than staying here or calling him to let him know how much I was thinking about him and us. They always intrigued me and I finally walked one about 4 weeks ago. Who knows, maybe I'll build one in the backyard.

I don't mean to beat you up, you know I care, Camille. But I seem to have assumed the role of thumper.

I am not all so sure that people who don't run right away aren't right, but never mind. I look now at the panoply of life and want some people outta where they are stuck. Not in quite those icky terms, but moving on as themselves.

I see easily that you, uh, don't seem to have a sense of yourself in space without him. I think you need to get that, with or without him. Whether you take it as a possible attractant or as therapy or as a quiet journey, I think you could make some explorations there.

but money first. Really, get a grip quick, says MoneyDribblesOsso, please don't delay in making sense of finances.

Hey Camille...it's a new day! The anniversary date is past now. You get a fresh start.

Glad to hear you are taking those "baby steps." Good going. I knew you could. ((((HUG))))

Camille--

I don't think this is going to sound too good, and I don't want to hurt you, so I'll do my best. I'm very poor at wording things.

You said this--
5) The last thing I want to do is hasten his daughter's death and there is no way to know whether they would stay together for a while and be immobile in grief as I have been, or if the stress of the situation will force the inevitable end of the "marriage" sooner...
-------
It gave me shivers.

If he called right now and asked you to go back to being his hidden mistress, I have a feeling you would. I also bet he is fully aware that you would.

It hurts me for you that you may be holding out for the daughter's death, thinking you will get him back. On many levels that is disconcerting, but the biggest one is: He could have you now in whatever level of relationship he wants (I assume), yet he hasn't contacted you. You seem to think it is all honor and guilt on his part--you don't seem to consider that he chooses his wife.

I wish you wouldn't put your life on hold for this man. I wish you would decide to recover. It is a decision. You haven't made it yet.

Lots of talk about the end of the relationship and not a lot about money (again, I'm the bull in the china shop). Your finances are none of my business and I am not asking for specifics, all I'm suggesting is that financial survival become your main concern right now. I know you're feeling bad, I know, I know, but the bills won't wait.

So either you have to make money (a job or selling items, like in a yard sale, or getting a grant or winning a lawsuit) or save money (even coupons, or getting rid of beyond-basic cable, or the like). Every bit helps. Think of your future. Whatever the future holds, you will need to be financially self-sufficient. Time to look in your checkbook and decide what's a necessary expense, what's an unnecessary expense, and what you need but can cut back on.

You will find that doing this will help you. It will get your mind off the breakup and will give you confidence. You need to start taking control of the cash, and control over other things will start to come, too.

<<<hugs>>>