February.

Shitty. Crappy. Miserable. Down in the dumps. Wallowing. Depressed. Sad.
All I want to do is sit and do nothing and feel sorry for myself. I don't want to care for myself. I don't want to take care of my kids. I don't want to cook. I don't want to clean. I don't want to care for anyone or anything. I just want to allow myself to be sucked down into the depressing hole of sorrow and heartache.
I am angry. I find myself getting angry at things which stand in my way of self-pity. My kids mostly. I don't act on it, and even though I don't feel like doing anything, I am in fact very active and I am taking very good care of my kids and myself too. But I feel so miserable.
I don't like to be alone. When I was growing up I often came home to an empty house. I had an abusive parent. I am no stranger to aloneness and abandonment issues. No stranger, so much so, that I feel allergic to it.
In reality there is nothing going too bad in my life. I have a place to live, I have friends helping me with cooking, I have enough money for my living expenses, I am healthy, so are my kids. Nothing wrong on the outside. Inside, however, I am still re-living re-acting to the experience of him leaving and me being alone now and when I was a child. I hate being alone. I function so much better with others around. Although the thing is that I don't like to always be working with someone, when I do have someone close around, I do need a lot of time to myself. I hate being forced to take the time to myself. I hate that it's not an option.
At times, I wish I could get involved in another relationship. And at other times I cherish that I am in the YOP (which the UHJ actually states should be referred to as a Year of Waiting), and I am afraid of it ending, and thus ending this period of sorrow and deep exploration of the self. It's liberating, in a sense, to know that I am not only not expected to get involved with someone, I am in fact forbidden from doing it. It actually removes a bunch of pressure I would otherwise feel.
Of course, it leaves room for other pressure to come in. The sadness. How do I go on with my life, care for myself, my children, be joyful, make intelligent choices, model the type of behavior I want my children to grow up with while dealing with the sadness, the deepness of it all.
If I could just sit and write poetry, make art and express, I would be happy. I want to be very internally focused right now. I want to do deep, profound self-care, exploration and expression.
How do I create more room for that in my life?
There is a friend of mine I think I am falling in love with. When I started to feel this way, months ago, I brought it up with him (he has excellent boundaries and wasn't thinking in that way at all) and started to create more distance in my interactions with him. I certainly, did not want to encourage these feelings, but at the same time, I do like this guy, and wanted to make sure that we could be friends. It's impossible. There is no way I can be friends with him in this situation. If the YOW goes through then I can explore whatever path that relationship may take, friendship or other, and if it doesn't, then Hallelujah I have my dearest husband and family unit back and I can pursue definite friendship with the other fellow. Right now, the situation is too fragile emotionally for me to be closer friends than I already am with this guy.
It's tough. I am sure that other people have different things that come up for them in the YOW.
It's like all your issues that you have ever had in your life come to the surface, and you become aware of them. It's like the waters of your life still and you can see to the depths, as you are not adding more and more things to the surface and stirring up the waters which makes it harder to see the things you have already put into your life. The things which lay in your pool of soul and affect you in every way, every day.
I had another thought too. We live in space-time. Moving through space, we move away from objects, events. We can climb mountains and the path is difficult, but the reward is worth it. Moving through time, we also move away from events. In difficult moments every breath is a triumph, much like every step up the mountain a success. These breathes moves us away from the shocking event and as we move further away, as we struggle up the mountain, we are gratified by the journey and the view - and the event in the past, become less and less powerful to us.
It's just a question of allowing time to pass. And it will.
But OMG is it hard. As I said, I just want to sit and wallow and paint and take pictures and drink. The quintessential artist. I won't drink - but I am making art.
The hardest part is knowing that I don't have a support. That I need to pace my self because I need to be there for my children. Perhaps this is where the anger comes from. Perhaps I should just parent my own inner child more and trust that I will be able to be there for my kids when I need to be.
This guy, he's asked me how I am doing lately. I don't know what to answer him.
How am I doing? I am sad. I am lonely. I feel sorry for myself. I feel disconnected from everyone and everything. I am depressed.
What the hell type of answer does he expect? It bothers me. He is genuinely concerned, he really wants to know. But I can't share too deeply how I am doing, or I leave myself open to fall further for him, and I don't want to just say "ok". I want to be honest and truthful while still maintaining a good boundary in the relationship. How do I do that?