It can feel like your life fell apart when your partner left for someone else. It may have felt like plummeting off a cliff, landing on a narrow ledge. Your heart pounding, breathing fast and eyes wide open, stunned and in shock. You are paralysed into inaction, clinging on to the crumbling life around you. Peering up to your past that you can’t quite reach to pull yourself back up to safety. You look down and see that one unsteady step will propel you even further into oblivion. You tread carefully as though anticipating subsequent shock waves that will send you crashing down further. You stay on that narrow ledge of life unable to go backwards or move forwards, in fear of falling deeper into the abyss. This keeps you in a perceived safe comfort zone. Too fearful to make any changes in your life as the major change of separation was so traumatic that you avoid change at any cost in case it is too painful.
You can feel as though you were asleep during your relationship oblivious to your partner creating a parallel life. They awaited the right time to make their move and jump off the cliff opening their parachute floating effortlessly into their new life. On watching their departure, you stumbled and fell over that cliff, landing on a ledge with an almighty thud. You remember screaming all the way down, and felt your heart break as you landed heavily.
The pain was excruciating, nothing you have ever felt before. Your courage and fight for life extinguished as you barely survive. Every day you wake up, hoping it was just a nightmare, and your life is as it was before, but you realise that the nightmare is your life you are now living. You feel sick, unable to muster enough energy to get out of bed some days. At times, you wish you weren’t living, as the pain was more than you could bare. You keep running your life through a projector in your mind, rewinding the years of your relationship, looking for signs they were unhappy, signs that you obviously missed. Tormenting yourself with ‘How could I have prevented it happening?’ or ‘what did I do wrong?’ or ‘How could they do this to me?’
You proclaim that you just want to be happy again! And you keep waiting for your life to change.
Weeks turn into months; months turn into years. Self-sabotaging destructive habits form to get you through each day such as drinking alcohol, eating your emotions with comfort food, or escaping your own reality through endless hours playing video games or gambling. Each morning, you look into the bathroom mirror as you attempt to wash away the stress and anxiety etched into your face. It doesn’t wash away; your eyes have sunken with dark circles reflecting the darkness of your tortured soul.
You feel life is so unfair, your ex is happy and you continue to feel like an empty shell void of purpose, opportunities and happiness. You don’t even recognise yourself anymore as you once were.
It is time to ask yourself, ‘Haven’t I suffered enough, how long am I going to be prisoner to my past?’ It shouldn’t define who you are. You deserve happiness. The only person that can change your life is YOU!
If you are ready for change, it's time to come down from the ledge and walk through life on steady ground to build a happy life. The first step is to seek help. The Accelerated Recovery course can help you process your feelings and create a vision of a new life, so you can put an action plan in place to make changes for your transformation to a life you deserve.
As a Divorce Coach, I turned my negative experience into a positive one to help others rebuild their lives after painful separations. I can help you too!
Author – Cheryl Duffy, Divorce Coach, Mediator & Author
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