This is my conundrum.



The thing is, I'm in a weird situation. For the last 11 years I've been living as married but not technically so. Not only do I have a 16 year old to get through high school but we own a business together and are ridiculously financially dependent on each other right now.



So, the decision was made that while the relationship is over we would keep the household together until the girl is in college. Giving us roughly a year and a half to get our finances in order so that neither one of us has the rug pulled out from under us.



I know, it sounds crazy, but we are both basically good people at heart and why be financially devastated as well as emotionally challenged when we need not be. We are adults, we care about each other and we can be civil.



Any separation, any divorce, any death of anything has it's own challenges. My challenge this week is navigating the narrow precipice of ego that is my ex's existence right now.



He ended it. I helped but he called it off. He makes arbitrary rules about our dating and the house and then from my point of view breaks them. When I ask where he stands and clarification of the rules (that I am trying to respect mind you) he gets up in arms and insists that I am telling him how he should be.



In fact, I'm telling him how I am. I have been telling him how I am for quite sometime now and he has often tended to take it as a mandate for how he should be. It's exhausting and I would expect it to be over now. Um, you ended it, there is no investment anymore for me to tell you how to be, I am trying to navigate respect for each others feeling here.



At any rate, it doesn't even matter right now. There is no one I even want to pick me up at the door, little own bring in the house for a drink or otherwise. I just feel I should know what the rules are and be able to counter with some requests of my own without being accused of being someone who tells him how he has to be.



If you've read this far you must be a friend, cuz this shit gets old fast.



The truth is, it all goes well considering. There is just so much exhaustion involved.

So I don't know how people do this. More accurately, I don't know how to navigate it myself. I feel so unsafe. I can't sleep at night, I go to bed with a heavy heart and I wake up far too early, unable to hold back the tears that are so desperately trying to empty the pain out of my heart.



Seemingly it's a never ending cycle. As soon as I'm all tuckered out from the crying my heart just returns to heavy again with in a few hours at best. I've always been a crier but MY GOD!, I can't believe I'm not fully dehydrated yet.



It's all so stupid. I'm just so fragile right now. Initially I anesthetized with another who made me laugh and feel feminine. Ah,sweet forgetfulness. Then for no particular reason that I can fathom, there were lies and stories and avoidance's. I so do not do well with lies. I take it so personally. As if it's a reflection of something horrible that I did but can not figure. It makes me feel like a puzzle to myself.



Cutting remarks and unkind words said to my face are so much more preferable. Those are waters that I can navigate. Half truths and hidden agendas lend me to feeling lost in the sea of myself.



I fool myself into thinking that I'm cynical. But I'm not. I'm hopelessly idyllic and trusting until I become acerbic and bitter. I seem to always vacillate between extremes. One might think that by a certain age I'd have found more balance in myself. Apparently I'm not at a certain age yet.



To make matters more painful, Andy has used his freedom to become all the things I was fighting for in the first place. Present in himself and unwavering in the face of disagreement. Kind and caring with openness and honesty. It is good to have these things in my relationship with him, but the price they come at is so high. There I go vacillating again.



Probably all of this is "normal". And I should feel great pain at the end of something that took up so much space in my life. Not to mention I should be feeling fragile and unsure and not really knowing who it is that I am anymore. Just the same, I could do with some sanity and a little harder heart.

Circumstances of my world are not for me to control. Circumstances of my world are not for me to control. Circumstances of my world are not for me to control.



And...



Now is my only moment. Now is my only moment. Now is my only moment.



If someone could tell me how to believe the above, I'm currently open to suggestions.

as done with Mercury Retrograde as I am? I don't know if it's just that my situation is so messed up already or if it is truly working it's wonders on me more than usual.



But "uncle!", I say.