Not Losing Myself

So, last year, after the nice evening and me agreeing to give it a go for a month – it then turned into a weird few days. It took until Thursday that week for me to feel like myself – my new self, of course.

The rest of the week, I had been feeling agitated and on edge.

John was being nice, friendly but I didn’t want to speak to him every day. It felt like he had interrupted my peace. I was content getting on and not hearing from him. It had only been a few days since we had that conversation but each day there was a ‘good morning’ text. In the evening, he would call but not to speak to the children – just me. I had to suggest he speak to them at one point to which he replied “of course.”

I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach – like sick butterflies. I didn’t understand why. As each day went on, I would get more and more wound up – knowing that I was going to speak to him in a matter of hours. It was ridiculous. I was snapping at the children and was eager for them to go to bed so I could get through the call as quickly as possible and then lose myself in front of the tv.

That was the old me. The hours I’d spend in front of the box, so I didn’t have to think about who I’d become – what I wanted out of life – how unhappy I was. I could sit there and stare at the screen and not have to think about him sitting there, or me wishing my life were different, or wanting to be rescued.

Ultimately, I had to rescue myself. And I did. So why was I feeling like this?

I spent some time without the tv on – just thinking about why I felt the way I did. The more I thought about it the more I realised it was because I was scared (sensing a theme…) – scared of giving him the wrong impression; scared of taking him back and losing my new self; scared of taking him back at all and him letting me down again. I had made a decision and whilst I wanted to remain on a good footing with him, I was not convinced getting back together would be the best thing for any of us. But I did not feel that was something I had to decide at that moment.

I spoke to him and told him he needed to reign it in – we were just talking. There were no guarantees as to where this would end up. He said he understood.

There was no text waiting for me the next morning.

I breathed a sigh of relief.