It's been a while since I logged in...sometime in the early summer I believe, before I made the move across the pond. I want to make sure I say hello here, and don't Tj on the posts I have added to in other forums.
So first a big giant hug to AN! I have missed your infectious kindness and optimism! (big giant hug)
Second, I have spent that past few months getting acquainted to a new country where I do not speak or understand the language. I feel like a giant sized toddler here. I can walk and talk but make silly mistakes, can't understand or be understood.
Everything here is German to me. Well depending on the dialect. Sometimes I don't know what I am hearing.
What does this have to do with R?
We are reunited after 3 years of separation. The adjustment was/is difficult as some of it was spent transitioning our youngest DD into her new school environment in yet another country, and some of it involved leaving behind our adult, but no less, missed son at university. I have also left behind a life, I spent 3 years making...mostly on my own.
This has involved some er....adjustment on my part. Lets go with MAJOR leap of faith.
I really took the idea of managing my own life, my own healing and ran with it. I did in fact have time to work on my own sh*t without too many distractions. I made new friends, started a job I really enjoyed and after all that investment, I walked away. During that time, I was very conscious that I was part of a whole...a team. While I knew I would leave at some point, I still made some friends, and that was HUGE after all that betrayal. And those friendships (female) were all completely separate by the nature of location. Would these people qualify as friends of the M? Yes I believe so. But then it was never tested by the inclusion of my FWH. But still, I think I did a much better job selecting friends this time around.
Now I find myself in a place where I scarcely understand the words, the rules, the small nuances that make everyday living fairly simple. I can barely identify cooking oil from hydrogen peroxide. The containers confuse me, mayo comes in metal tubes, grocery carts have 4 rotating wheels, and I have to relearn the simplest of things. Let's not get into the way people communicate. Right after my FWS's A, I remember feeling a similar sentiment. While I understood the mechanics of the things around me...the world made no sense at all, and the intentions of people and their words were suddenly foreign and not to be trusted.
Now it's different in that my inability to comprehend, is not a result of a complete emotional shut down. Though I find being silent, makes me appear much smarter.
I'm pretty sure, I can decipher the body language of others...in fact at the moment, it's all I have. In fact it might be the only thing that is getting me through.
Already I have had some observations on the A front. The attitudes in this part of the world are not what SI would condone. The BS is most always to blame/and or the M. A's seem common and discussed the way one might discuss which brew of coffee they prefer. But what can I do? I can only still maintain who and what I am, what I seek to become and follow the set of rules I have made for myself. I figure I will feel stupid for at least another year or two while I learn the ropes. But I still have the strength I gained from my experiences, from this forum and from the generosity of others.
Anyway that's my story, not yet finished....
Hope all are healing or on their way to doing so. I hope each and every one of us can find our calm, our adventure, or our place of belonging where ever or what ever that may be. I hope that I can learn to read the universal languages as it seems I am constantly in some state of wandering on this planet. Trailing spouse or not.
