Here's a quick (yeah, right!) update...... - 09/19/00 01:30 PM
But I really, really am gonna TRY to make it quick, I promise.<P>Trying to keep a promise to update every month since recovery started. I'm a little late here....7 months has passed and we're working on 8. 21 (approximately) months since affair began, 15 months since d-day. Almost 8 since he came home. Boy, I can hardly believe how much time has passed and how much has happened in these last 2 years!<P>Oh, yeah, the update! Well, #1, a biggie for me....I'm quitting smoking! I've hated it for some time now, been my crutch. Robert REALLY hates it! I haven't had the strength to quit. (Sounds kinda stupid after all we've had to have the strength FOR, doesn't it?) Well, GYN informed me he will no longer fill my prescription for BC pills if I smoke. If THAT'S not motivation, nothing is!!! So, he gave me a prescription for Zyban and off I went.<P>Didn't like the Zyban. Had to take it a week b/f quitting and I started crying on day 2. I never have been good at meds at all. I got so blessed DEPRESSED! Everyone asked me what was wrong with me. I'm thinking "This is supposed to make me feel BETTER?" I kept taking it and I stopped smoking last Tuesday, but I cried ALL THE TIME, even before I quit smoking! Ran out of money to refill the prescription and didn't take it Thursday, Friday, Sat. Robert looked at me at the breakfast table..."Damn!" HUH? "You LAUGHED! I haven't heard you laugh in a more than a week since you started taking that medicine! It sure sounds good!" He was right. So, no more Zyban for me. So now, I'm grumpy, testy, short-tempered and climbing the walls, BUT.....I'm not smoking and I'm not crying or depressed. My family says they can deal with this me better...I can too.<P>The update...well, smoking's a big thing. Robert's a reformed smoker and he HATES it. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for quitting as well. Not one single slip...although I've really wanted to. Hardest thing I think I've ever done. He's being great...supportive, loving, dealing with my moods like you wouldn't believe...like I don't believe he's ever done in his life! My, um, irritability has made me a little bold AND a little insecure, all at the same time. I've asked questions you would not believe, things I thought I was long past...he just takes them in stride, reassures me, answers more honestly than I ever thought he could and doesn't even seem to be bothered. That's pretty cool.<P>As for the rest of our life, well, we're fine. We're good. We have a good time, we're broke, got too much to do, too many things going on and we have learned, for the first time in our lives, just to DEAL with it...do what we can, let go of the other. That's a recently acquired skill for the two of us!<P>I wish I could give you guys some wonderful accounts of amazing progress, something to make everyone sit up and take notice. Fact of the matter is....we're just happy, just married, just going about our lives with each other.<P>Our joys are simply run-of-the-mill everyday joys...giggling over something stupid, Friday night dinner at the cheap new Chinese place, watching my favorite movie just one more time, making love. Finally saw "The Story of Us" and we both enjoyed it...a nice movie, didn't really push any buttons except to make us feel a moment of extra closeness. That, in itself, I guess is a good thing.<P>He was telling me something we supposedly did the other day and I just blurted out "Nah, that must have been your other girlfriend..", just as I would have done years ago, just kidding around, without even thinking. "Oh, yeah, that's right, I forgot....no you dingbat, it was YOU, remember.....". That in itself just amazes me....no triggers, no hard feelings, the fact that something like that even popped out....and HE didn't get upset in the least. That certainly feels good.<P>Our troubles are normal troubles. Teenaged daughter dating someone we don't trust, teenaged daugther just BEING a teenaged daugher, not enough money to go around, house falling apart, Mom's driving me crazy, work too much, the lawn needs mowing.......normal nice everyday things.<P>Isn't life grand?<P>Some moments are like a honeymoon, some like we've been married a hundred years. PT rarely comes up (remember he forgot to tell me she was transferred) and when she does, well, it's just not a big deal. Those insecurities I mentioned earlier...not about the affair, about now. Normal things (I'm a bit insecure by nature, I think)....our lives are centered around today and tomorrow, not what happened to us before. Sure we know it happened, sure we remember it, if we stop to think about it, but it doesn't color our lives. We're LIVING our lives.<P>I wish I could remember the moment when I felt us stop "recovering". Does that make any sense? I remember when he first came home, worrying about doing everything right, dealing with the mood swings and catastrophes along the way, wondering if he was gonna stay, what he was thinking, how things were going, how our marriage was, wondering what we should do next, what was gonna COME next.....you know the drill.<P>What I can't remember was when that stopped or how it stopped or WHY it stopped. When I started just living with my husband, not recovering, when we started just contributing to a great marriage, not re-building one, when we stopped thinking about healing all the time....all of a sudden I realized I never thought about recovering or healing or any of that stuff anymore and hadn't for a while. Weird, huh?<P>So, guys, that's my pretty boring update. But you know what? I love it! For just what it is, for the promise of what it will be, for all that I have....I just love it, every boring minute of it!<P>Take care everyone (and pray for my poor family while I continue to go without the smoking!! )<P>Love to all,<P>Lori<P>