When At Last We Are Sure, You’ve Been Properly Pilled, Then A Few Paper Forms, Must Be Properly Filled. So That You And Your Heirs, May Be Properly Billed……I Really Think I May Finally Be Properly Pilled

If you are a regular reader you know that my life seems at times like a soap opera.  It has all the story lines of one.  I am married and cheated on my wife.  She found out and lots of drama came about.  I don’t have any contact with my family but for some reason my parents have been trying to connect as of late to make my life a little more difficult.  My job situation has been fluctuating and I made the grand choice of eliminating my position at one job to merge the company with another because it was in the best interests of everyone else involved (except the bad owner).  All I need now is some one to be killed or go to jail and I will have it all.  But what do I get from all of this?  Headaches? Depression? Shame? Guilt? Ruined Marriage?

Yes, all of those. But I have also got a lot of other things.  I have gained a depth of understanding about myself, my wife, and our commitment to each other.  I have also learned one invaluable lesson that I will continue to forget and relearn over and over and that is you get what you are looking for.  You control what you get out of everything.

I mean if you look at my situation and my affair.  When everything unraveled all I could think about and see was the damage I caused.  All I could focus on was guilt and shame and the pain I put my wife through.  When I focused on these things I would see reminders, triggers, little jabs at me, in everything that I saw, read, watched, or talked about.

For example, every movie I have watched since DDay #2 has a reference to cheating in it somewhere.  I would be watching the movie trying to enjoy myself with my wife and kids and I would feel like I was just slapped or punched.  I did not feel like I was looking for these things but they would just stand out.  I would read a book and somewhere in it someone is cheating on someone else and for me it changes the whole story and how I perceive the characters in it.  It is crazy.  I thought about this a lot as I mowed my lawn the last two days.  I think the reason is I am looking for these things.  It may not be completely intentional, but I have conditioned myself to find these thing and draw my attention to them.  These things then feed into my guilt and depression which makes it difficult to function and get better.  The worse I get the more I see these things.  I could see a little boy riding his bike down the street and I may immediately think about how he could be the child for an affair or maybe the bike was a present from a dad who wasn’t around because he is off screwing his secretary.  Are these things real?  Most likely not, well I hope not.  The point is I was seeing the pain and destruction everywhere.

So you harvest what you plant.  If you plant the thoughts of pain and destruction then that is what you find.  I was focusing on the pain and that was all I could see.  It is still often all I can see because of my focus.  Many people on here commented that I needed to change my focus and try and bring more positive things in my life.  I know it is hard to do that when all you want to do is cry or not get out of bed.  I am all too familiar with not wanting to see or talk to anyone because you are afraid they may see right through you and see your pain.  I felt so alone at times and the misery almost seems like company and it is less work.  You just have to lay there and be miserable.  But once you can get past that and adjust your focus, it can be just as easy to be happy.

Today I was driving, a lot.  I was able to do a few crazy fun things for my family.  As i mowed my lawn I decided to mow a heart into it and have my wife go up to the second floor and see it out the window.  It was a spur of the moment kind of thing, but I knew she would like it and I loved doing it for her.  I also got to play the part of the shuttle bus for all my kids activities today and at one point when I had two of my kids in the car and we were laughing and making jokes I realized it had been so long since I had felt like this.  It had been so long since I had been able to make my kids laugh and for them to find me ridiculous and embarrassing (in the good way).  I am sure this has been hard on them even they do not know exactly what is going on.  They have probably only seen their parents falling apart.  They have seen us have an large amount of doctors appointments.  But even with it all I really enjoyed my day today.  Even the bad news and  the things I remembered I was supposed to be doing for work that I forgot about did not break my mood.  And as I am writing right now, I still feel really good.   Is a crash coming, probably,  but I am going to ride this wave of positivity for as long as I can.

Now where do I go from here.  I am not sure.  The bad news is kind of big and I have not shared it with my wife yet, but at least I have her here to share it with and to help me through it.

When at last we are sure, You’ve been properly pilled, Then a few paper forms, Must be properly filled. So that you and your heirs, May be properly billed. – Dr. Seuss