The practice of acceptance

Here are some good words to live by. I'm quoting them from a book I'm reading just now, a book that is providing no small insight about what I've been attempting to deal with the last four and a half years. These are some positive, helpful words in the midst of a lot of hard truths about trying to live in relationship with someone who, it seems, maybe has tendencies toward borderline personality disorder.

I can say that here safely because he has already moved on to a new relationship (yes, already!) and is completely disinterested in me, what I might do or write or think or have observed or (shocking!) even maybe "know" after four and a half years of shared intimacy with him. No one in his life ever was or has been closer. Of that, I'm sure.

Thus, also, sadly, no one else anywhere around us had any idea the Jekyll/Hyde effect I was dealing with. "High-functioning invisible," that's how the book I'm reading (by an expert on the subject) has defined it.

I am still in the throes of the excrutiating-ness of the sadness, loss, grief. I had so much hope and so many dreams for us. Now I have a sleeping bag made for one, instead of one half of a pair that would zip up together with his for everlasting camping harmony. :( Just one small, sad, painful detail of so many.

And so, as I thrash about in the emotional and psychic realm in which I'm now left to occupy my time... as I fill up already in less than two months time more than half of a paper journal that it ordinarly takes me over a year to fill... as I sift gradually yet voraciously through the stack of nearly 30 or more books that now crowd his side of the bed... as I sleep fitfully each night next to them instead of (fitfully) next to him... as I drive about the Northwest, going about my day from Seattle to Mt. Vernon and back, sitting stunned at my steering wheel with some version of PTSD... I attempt to internalize small simple helpful things such as this, let them be the salvation of my sanity:

Practice Acceptance

When you practice acceptance:

--You acknowledge that things are the way they are at this very moment and that some things are beyond your control. You didn't cause this, you can't control it, and you can't cure it.

--You live in the present, not the past nor future. You don't dwell on negative aspects of the past and try to assess blame.

--There's no place to go but up. Without acceptance, when you look around, all you see is what you don't have. After you've accepted the worst, you will see how much you actually have.

If only I can manage to hold these words close and internalize them. It can be so hard, during hard times. These are hard times, to be sure.